Chinese school uses baby dolls to teach rebellious teens empathy, sparks debate

A special education school in eastern China, Yuanzhong Special Education School in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, is using an unconventional method to teach empathy to its students. The school accepts adolescents who are rebellious, unmotivated, addicted to online games, or show early dating tendencies. Students are required to carry 2.5kg toy dolls throughout the school day for a full week, mimicking the responsibilities of parenting. They must manage the dolls' eating, sleeping, and nighttime needs, and even simulate teaching toddlers to walk by squatting while supporting the dolls. The school's principal, surnamed Du, explains that this gratitude education helps students understand the sacrifices their parents made. Critics, however, argue that this approach may backfire by making students associate parenting with hardship and thereby discouraging them from having children in the future.

The experiment has gone viral on Chinese social media, with clips showing students carrying dolls during classes and nestling them in their arms at lunch. One student commented that after walking 1 km while squatting with the doll, they finally understood their parents' hardships. The school believes this hands-on experience fosters empathy, but the debate highlights broader societal concerns in China about declining birth rates and the pressures of child-rearing. The method is part of a growing trend of 'education through experience' in the country, though it remains controversial for its psychological implications on teenagers already labeled as 'problematic'.