"Why did she change mentors" Behind the interesting subject matter is a serious issue

■ Observer

The teacher-student relationship also needs external intervention and supervision, otherwise it is easy to produce the alienation of the teacher-student relationship.

Recently, the first-year master's thesis "Why did she change her mentor" of East China Normal University became popular.

According to media reports, a blogger shared his paper on social networking platforms, and the title of the paper section included "Encounter with 'Xia Mawei'", "Pale Honeymoon Period", "Internship Storm 'Robbery'", "The Embarrassment of Acquaintance: 'I Was Really Stupid'", "Induced Indifference: "Yes, Yes, Yes", "Quietly Left: 'I Don't Want to Have Any More Entanglements'", etc., which the blogger called "the academic circle's own novel". The sharing received more than 10,000 likes, and the papers involved received attention.

It is understood that the author of the paper is a 2014 student of education related majors of East China Normal University, and the thesis is a master's dissertation, which was completed in 2017.

It can be seen that this is a paper that is some years old and has passed the defense, indicating that the school still recognizes the academic level of this paper. From the perspective of "appearance", the theme, title and writing thinking of this paper are more divergent, unlike traditional papers.

In fact, as long as the thesis conforms to academic norms and reflects a certain knowledge content behind it, then what the specific topic is is not so important, and the school should also have enough tolerance.

What is more noteworthy is actually the theme of this paper - the teacher-student relationship, to be precise, the teacher-student conflict, which resonates considerably. The main cause of the conflict was that the supervisor and the student had a disagreement over the topic selection, and the student thought that the tutor was "controlling".

This problem is not uncommon, and the reasons are as pointed out in this paper, including the solidification and closure of the tutor access system, the rigidity and singleness of the mentoring matching system, the dilution of education and scholarship, and the single subject of tutor evaluation. These reasons are also somewhat universal. From this point of view, this paper is valuable, it academicizes the topic of teacher-student relations in colleges and universities, and also gives constructive solutions.

At the master's level and above, tutors have a huge influence on students' academic performance, further study abroad and even graduation employment, and the teacher-student relationship is sometimes closer to an "apprenticeship", at least academically, students have a strong dependence on teachers.

Therefore, the relationship between teachers and students also requires external intervention and supervision, in order to better protect the rights and interests of teachers and students. And if the mechanism is not in place, it is easy to produce the alienation of the teacher-student relationship, resulting in all kinds of chaos.

For example, there have been media reports that many tutors have put forward various "extra" requirements for their students, including carrying bags, buying meals, doing housework, and being tutors. Conversely, sometimes students refer to the teacher as "boss," highlighting a certain anomaly in the teacher-student relationship.

In response to this phenomenon, in 2020, the Ministry of Education issued the Code of Conduct for the Guidance of Graduate Supervisors, which includes that graduate supervisors must not require graduate students to engage in affairs unrelated to their studies, scientific research, and social services, must not arbitrarily delay graduate graduation in violation of regulations, pay attention to graduate studies, employment pressure and mental health, and must not insult the personality of graduate students. How this standard is implemented remains to be developed at the school level to develop a more concrete and feasible approach.

In short, this "change of supervisor" paper leaves people to think, should not be just an "interesting theme", the topic behind this is actually quite serious, and all sectors of society need to explore feasible solutions, so that the relationship between teachers and students in colleges and universities is more harmonious and pure.

□ Jiangcheng (media person) (Source: Beijing News)