Chinese Schoolchildren Must Bring Their Own Desks to School

[jsr]

http://www.chinasmack.com/2012/pictures/chinese-schoolchildren-must-bring-their-own-desks-to-school.html

Chinese Schoolchildren Must Bring Their Own Desks to School

September 1, parents in Shunhe town of Macheng City in Hubei province are preparing for their children’s first day of school, and the most important thing is to bring desks to the school. At present, there are over 5,000 students in the entirety of Shunhe town. Before the beginning of the new semester, about 2,000 new desks were distributed to a Project Hope elementary school in the town and the town center school, which means there are over 3,000 children who have to bring their own desks to school as their elder generations did.


Lu Siling’s mother is riding the scooter, carrying her daughter and the desk, heading to the school which is 2.4 kilometers away.


Wang Ziqi’s grandmother is carrying the desk on her shoulders while Wang Ziqi’s elder sister is carrying a backpack and a stool to send him to school. Although the straight-line distance is only a little more than 100 meters, the grandmother is already out of breath from the weight of the desk


In the classroom, teacher Xiang Mingxiu is telling several registered children about safety rules. Below the platform, the varying heights of the”desks and chairs” look particularly incongruous.

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Meanwhile:

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/08/world/la-fg-china-corruption-on-wheels-20120108

China Communist Party bureaucrats like their cars high end

Reporting from Beijing — Even the police are driving Porsches.

Chinese officials love their cars — big, fancy, expensive cars. A chocolate-colored Bentley worth $560,000 is cruising the streets of Beijing with license plates indicating it is registered to Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party headquarters. The armed police, who handle riots and crowd control, have the same model of Bentley in blue.

And just in case it needs to go racing off to war, the Chinese army has a black Maserati that sells in China for $330,000.

"Corruption on wheels is an accurate description of this problem," said Wang Yukai, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance in Beijing, who has been advocating restrictions on officials' cars for years. ...

[valerief]

1. China is the Republican's Disneyland. nt

[jberryhill]

2. That's part of the Romney education plan

[former-republican]

3. Yet they score higher in test scores than us.

go figure

[physioex]

7. Not that simple....

My understanding is the Chinese have a tiered system, based on your papers. The people from the rural areas are not entitled to the same state benefits as the urban areas.

[HiPointDem]

9. education in china (& funded) through 9th grade. Only 80% of appropriate-aged children make

it that far; fewer make it to, let alone through, high school.

Education in the People's Republic of China is a state-run system of public education run by the Ministry of Education. All citizens must attend school for at least nine years.

The Ministry of Education reported a 99 percent attendance rate for primary school and an 80 percent rate for both primary and middle schools.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China

those international comparisons compare apples and oranges. for the most part, they're not measuring rural kids who bring their desks to school, they're measuring an urban elite. Most of china's population still live in the countryside, but only 70% of its high schools are there.

Even in the cities, large numbers of children are outside the reach of international comparisons:

Although regulations by the central government stipulate that all migrant children (children or rural workers who've migrated to the cities for work) have the right to attend a public school in the cities, the public schools nevertheless effectively reject these children by setting high thresholds such as school fees and exams or by requesting an urban registration.

Providing an alternative, private entrepreneurs established since the 90s semi-official private schools that offered schooling to migrant children for lower fees. However, this system contributed to the segregation between urban and migrant children. Furthermore, these schools often have a poor teaching quality, provide only school certificates of limited value and sometimes even do not comply with safety regulations...

Although Chinese scholars have conducted case-study research on migrant children and their schools,there is a lack in studies with a nation-wide scope.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China#Rural_education

[cherokeeprogressive]

4. "When I was a kid? We walked uphill to school, in the SNOW, with no SHOES..."

"... Then we walked uphill on the way HOME, while carrying our desks!"

Yep, I can almost hear it now. . .

[freshwest]

5. Wow. Not so much the desks, as the cars. It was more socialist here when I was in school.

It was the duty of the state to provide everything teachers needed to hold classes, except ink and writing paper. The whole world is going into an economic apartheid, with privatization and little or nothing for the Commons.

In a poor society, that seemingly lives very close to nature, it is great to see the dedication of the families to their children getting an educatiuon. So I would see nothing wrong here, except the extreme of wealth and waste at the top is pretty disgusting. Many people are working like slaves in order to create that wealth.

[chollybocker]

6. Don't tell Newt.

Children should clean toilets, not build desks.

[Bonobo]

8. Meanwhile at an Audi dealer in China...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021358450

[David__77]

10. The CPC needs to crack down on this stuff.

They have a system of inner-party law that should be taking care of this, but it's not being enforced. They better do so if they want to maintain any semblance of stability over the longer term.

As for the desks, I hope that in several more years, this is a thing of the past. China has developed so much, but it is still a poor, third world country, that possesses much less than it needs for its 1.4 billion people. I'm beginning to think that being "moderately developed" by 2050 may be too optimistic.