Challenge not to lose temper over homework goes viral

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A Chinese school teacher's challenge to third graders and their parents to “keep the peace” made headlines recently.

Cheng Hong, a teacher at the Zhuhua Road Elementary School in Wuhan City, central China's Hubei Province, asked his class of 44 students and their parents to not lose their temper for 21 days.

By the end of the challenge, a set of twins and their parents were the only ones from the class who passed.

“The ratio of parents who were angry and upset in the 21 days is 25 percent higher than that of their kids, and homework-related issues are the main reason why they threw a temper tantrum,” Beijing Youth Daily reported Cheng as saying.

To do the homework students and parents had to fill out a 'diary' by describing their moods as weather. /Screenshot via Wechat

The intention was to make both sides aware of how the family environment can affect kids' ability to control their anger, according to the teacher. The assignment is said to have made many parents realize the impact that their emotions have on their children.

To complete the assignment, students and parents had to document their mood daily as a type of weather. For example, “sunny”, “cloudy” to “rainy” were used to represent moods in their diary.

Another Chinese math teacher asked fourth-graders to count 100 million grains of rice. /Screenshot via Wechat

A picture of a page of the assignment quickly trended on Chinese social media.

Some netizens wondered if it was healthy to keep your temper for that long. Many said keeping calm for 21 hours is already hard enough, let alone 21 days.

Overall, both the assignment and the teacher were praised by netizens for their ingenuity, unlike another assignment that went viral on Chinese social media recently, in which a Chinese math teacher asked fourth-graders to count 100 million grains of rice.