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Is China ignoring its rural uneducated?

By Ariel Tung (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-11-18 11:08

A recent article by China Daily titled "The poor stuck at bottom" made me reflect on education and social justice in China.

According to the story, progeny in rural families face more limited opportunities and find it increasingly hard to climb the social ladder.

Children whose parents have no money or power may find it harder to secure a good job compared to affluent parents, the story said, citing a survey.

As China continues to develop rapidly, with urban citizens enjoying growing levels of income, will their rural counterparts be left behind?

Although I have never been to rural China, I often think of an encounter I had during a trip to Beijing in 2004 that has made me think long and hard about China's education system.

Like many tourists, I was fascinated with the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and Tiananmen Square.

Like in any major city, you often see poor people begging for money or soliciting business from tourists.

What left the greatest impression on me was a little girl who was trying to sell a pair of pajamas to me near the Great Wall. She looked about 9 or 10 at the time.

It was a weekday and I thought that a child like her should be at school. Yet, there she was, helping her mother sell some items.

The prices were dirt cheap, but many told me that in China, you could bargain and slash prices by as much as eight to 10 times the initial price from stallholders.

I thought it was a fun thing to do. I cheekily offered to pay the girl 10 times less than the price she quoted me, and she was immensely grateful.

But when the mother discovered how little she had made, she gave her daughter a good scolding. The little girl lowered her head in shame.

Till this day, I feel guilty whenever I think about that incident. I do not know where this girl lives and what her name is, but I often wonder if she is attending school now. Is she still helping her mom?

If prospects for rural students do not improve in the future, college education opportunities could diminish in China's rural areas, which make up more than half of the total population.

I grew up with the mentality that an education system should reward those who work the hardest, and such an education system is a reliable one.

In Singapore where I was born and raised, it is the norm for parents and teachers to push children to study hard.

Rich or poor, we see schooling as the ticket to a successful career and material wealth. As long as one has a good education, one's future is secured. It is a system that I know won't fail me.

Despite the recent recession, the education budget made up 3.5 percent of Singapore's GDP, second only to defense spending, which is up to 6 percent of GDP. The government heavily subsidizes education, and a portion of education spending goes to modernizing schools and paying teachers.

On the other hand, regional differences and an unbalanced developmental path have seeped into the education system in China.

The China Daily story used a survey by Beijing-based consultancy firm MyCOS showing that the unemployment rate for young rural adults with a college degree is 35 percent in 2009. Those who found jobs also earned the lowest income among all graduates six months after graduation.

Pessimistic about their dim employment prospects and deterred by high college tuition fees, some rural students have chosen to leave school to be migrant workers. The universities have seen lower enrollments from rural students, with some 840,000 not sitting for the national college entrance examinations last year.

College entrance rates of students from rural areas have actually grown worse over the past 30 years, said Shi Weicheng, a PhD candidate of international politics at Fudan University.

Due to the huge gap in school finances, the students in a rural school in Guizhou province cannot get the same level of education as students in Shanghai.

"We need to think long and hard about how to provide equal educational opportunities to students from the countryside," Shi said.

China's central government has pledged to increase its spending on education to 4 percent of the country's GDP in 2012, a target previously set in 1993. China's education spending in 2006 was only 2 percent of GDP.

If this target is met, the education system, the quality of teaching, even school enrollment could greatly improve.

Most of all, education reform in China must take social justice into account. It should strive to improve the quality of education in rural places.

"Education represents the future of a society, a nation, and a state, and it must be seen in its broader context," Shi said.

The author is a reporter of China Daily US Edition.