Back when Gao Chen Wan was a student, class consisted mostly of manual labor. Education was, in many ways, discouraged by the government. But by his senior year in high school things were changing. Getting a secondary education became acceptable and the college entrance examination was re-instituted in schools across the nation. That year, among all the students of Da Qiao school, only Gao passed the exam.
Today, Gao Chen Wan is the Vice Principal of his alma-mater. Last month I was part of a lengthy conversation with him regarding the methods of education in Da Qiao. We asked why the students were required to work such long hours (scheduled activities from 6am-9pm). I had previously assumed that the reason behind this was purely educationally driven. Gao conveyed a different purpose in keeping the students busy, namely, their well being.
Many families in China are broken. Parents often live in the city where they can make the highest possible income. Children live in their home province, perhaps with their grandparents who are too worn to raise them properly. The school is left not only to educate, but also to care for their student body. The teachers are not just teachers, they may be the closest things to parents their students will ever know.
Vice Principal Gao and his colleagues are stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they work the students too hard, they may break. If they give them too much free time, they may get themselves in a load of trouble. Leadership at the school in Da Qiao choose to keep the students busy, occassionally allowing them to watch movies in their classroom and play ball on the school fields. Other schools take the risk of giving the children time to roam the town, sometimes with devestating results.
Last September, two such female students arrived in their grandparents home wearing new dresses. After lengthy investigation, it was revealed that the girls had been given these dresses in exchange for their virginity. Once school and local officials were notified, it was discovered that one man, Deng Jun (43) had purchased the virginity of 17 female students (12 under the age of 14).
There are no easy answers to the education problems in China. How can parents afford to stay home to raise their children? How can schools be expected to parent thousands of Chinese kids? How can the students endure the pressure to be one of the few to pass the college exams? No easy answer will suffice. But men like Gao Chen Wan and the teachers at Da Qiao school are part of that answer. And they are in my prayers.
2 comments:
wow. :( thanks for keeping us informed.
I was talking to the fifth grade teacher at the school today, and she told me that she never learned how to write letters until she moved to the states from Taiwan. She said that because of that, she has messy hand writing when writeing english, but when she writes chineese, it is very neat.
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