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Reforms
afoot, but parents worry about effect
By Antoaneta Bezlova,
Inter Press Service |
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 Beijing,
10 March (IPS) - It should have been a cause for jubilation
but it made hundreds of Chinese parents worry when the Ministry
of Education announced that primary school students were not
going to get homework in the coming semester. |
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| The
announcement early this year that schools would boldly experiment
with new teaching methods aimed at raising ''well- rounded''
individuals, caused scores of one-child couples to panic. |
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| They
feared their children might not get into high school and university.
Moreover, they dreaded that new reforms would handicap their
sole offspring for life, depriving them of the potential to
get well-paid jobs. |
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''It is easy for them (Beijing bureaucrats) to say 'we are
going to ease educational burden on children','' grumbled
Zeng Xiaoyan, mother of a 12-year-old girl. ''But if they
let children play now, who is going to take the high-school
exams later?''
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| Zeng
is opposed to the plan, forgetting how just a month ago, she
was deploring the difficult situation school children face.
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| Her
daughter, Xiao Liu, was always exhausted and depressed because
she could never finish the overwhelming load of homework. Instead
of watching TV and playing with friends, she was staying up
until 11 p.m. to write essays and do mathematical equations.. |
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| ''My
heart was breaking just to watch her getting up at 6 a.m., not
rested at all, and go to school,'' admits Zeng. It is quite
different for Xiao Liu now, freed from the burden of never-
ending homework. Her mother, though, is still anxious, but for
another reason. |
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''I don't want her to pay for this leisureness for the rest
of her life,'' Zeng asserts. ''If she doesn't master her English
and doesn't get into the top 10 of her class, she will never
make it to the university later.'' |
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And this is tough on children in a society where urban families
are limited to one child. Parents pin a lot of hope on their
children whom they see as their main support in old age as well
as the sole carrier of the family line. |
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| Though
it is every government's goal, providing Education for All is
a tall order for the world's most populous nation. |
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| Despite
pledges by communist rulers that mass education is one of their
priorities, at the dawn of the new century and after 50 years
of communist rule, China continues to be a country governed
by a tiny educated elite while university education remains
a dream for the greatest majority of population. |
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| In
a country of 1.3 billion people, there are just 2.5 million
university places. Only three or four of every 100 Chinese pass
the entrance exams. Because of a high barrier at the university
level, students compete to get into high schools that offer
the best preparation. |
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| This
determines a child's future from an early age. Severe competition
begins at primary school where 10-year-old children struggle
to get the best grades, spending long hours over school lessons
and homework. |
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| Parental
pressure on children to excel in school resulted in an ugly
episode in the case of Xu Li, a 17-year-old secondary student
from Zhejiang province, who killed his mother with a hammer.. |
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| Like
Zeng, Xu's mother wanted him to be one of the top 10 but he
could manage only the 18th place. Angered, she refused to let
him play football with friends and allegedly threatened to break
his legs. In a fit of rage, the youngster swung at his mother's
head with a hammer. |
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| The
case triggered public concern and poignant debate in local newspapers.
Educated in the Confucian virtues of filiality and respect,
many parents were shocked by the violence and by the discovery
at the amount of pressure their children were under. |
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| In
early February, President Jiang Zemin made a widely- publicised
speech on education which seemed to signal a turn in education
philosophy. He called on schools to reduce homework and to teach
courses that would create ''a spirit of innovation''. |
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| He
talked also about the importance of creating 'well-rounded individuals'
with improved ''moral, intellectual and fitness levels''. The
decision by the Ministry of Education to experiment with new
teaching methods this semester, seems to heed Jiang's guidelines
about ''strengthening moral education''. |
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| Yet
instead of drawing applause, this decision has generated much
controversy. ''The ease of educational burden must begin at
the university level admission,' said the Economic Information
Daily this week, noting that if the teaching process is to be
made more humane, the educators should stop relying solely on
the grades when admitting students to colleges. |
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| But
even if tutors are serious about changing the pattern of education,
the fact remains that China is short of the university graduates
it needs to propel its reforming economy. There are too many
people competing for very few university places. |
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| The
country has failed to expand the university and college enrolment
adequately because its public expenditure on education is one
of the lowest in the world. |
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| A
table drawn up by the UNESCO in 1995 ranks China 119th of 130
countries in terms of its per capita spending on education.
China's education spending is less than three of economic output,
well below the 4.1 per cent average for the developing world
and half the level of spending in the developed countries. |
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| Ten
years ago, China promised to raise spending on education to
four percent of GNP by the end of the century. But in a frank
report submitted to the Asia-Pacific regional conference on
'Education for All' in Bangkok. in January, it admitted spending
had actually fallen from 2.8 percent to 2.55 percent. |
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| ''With
respect to the distribution of financial resources, the part
devoted to 'education for all and compulsory education', China
not only failed to improve as desired but instead tended to
decline,'' the report said. |
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| This
article is free of copyright restrictions and can be reproduced
provided that Inter Press Service is credited. |
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