Can you stay in the gorgeous building with a good conscience ?

Yangzhuang primary school, in Yingquan District of Anhui Province, China, applied for international aid funds. Teaching building of the school seemed to be dilapidated, while the local government house is magnificent. The phenomenon seems to be very ridiculous and shocked, at least, in my opinion. (Nanfang Metropolis Newspaper 4th Nov 2007)

Japanese Mr. Shuiguzhun, a staff of Japanese aid organization, coming to do a field survey, surprisingly found the vast differences between the two buildings (primary school teaching building and local government house). He doubted that why government lavished so much money to build such a splendid building, while the primary school teaching building looked like “ruin”, although, the Japanese organization finally approved of allocating supporting funds to the school. But this survey was put on a Japanese newspaper. Chinese shame, isn't it? Treating pupils as this way, really unbearable.

It is universally acknowledged that Japan is generous to education. The most beautiful building you can see in countryside is absolutely a school teaching building, because the Japan education funds take up 6% of its national income, ranking 1st in the world. After world war Ⅱ, controlling consuming, saving money for education became their basic national policy. So how could Mr. Shuiguzhun understand?

Chinese either. Though local government “quibbled”, construction of government house was legitimate, and they didn’t spend a penny of public finance. Meanwhile the hardware facilities of school were provided by country, which wasn’t local government’s responsibility. Also they said the government of Yingquan District was too impoverished to afford it.

How paradoxical! How dare you stay in a well-decorated, full-appointed office, but take no notice to the school in such a tough condition only 10 km far away. Compulsory education should be one of the significant issues that government concerns. Don’t you feel ashamed of using others money to rebuild the school, and you, enjoy the “sinful” comfortable, and disregarded totally!

Shabby school, and the grand government house, being put together, it is self-evident. The more the government explained the more embarrassed. That's enough of your cheek!

It’s not a single phenomenon. Frankly speaking, I witnessed the same situation in my hometown. Beside my mother’s old house there was a school, with a klunky building and simple and crude equipment. However it’s the only one primary school for children in that village, while government there loves fireworks. When festival, the night sky is gorgeous, shining the frazzle, below.

Underachiever Discrimination

Teachers of Dongguan Huizu primary school in Henan Province, China, asked the underachievers to pretend to be ill in order to “escape” from District uniform examination assessment.

Li crying for the whole day, made his mother Ms. Li quite worried. “I tried to ask him, and he told me that because he didn’t do well in past exams, his teacher asked him to pretend to be ill. It’s ridiculous!” The mother of the 11-year-old boy still couldn’t help being angry.

As Ms. Li said, it’s not the first time that her son’s teacher asked him to cheat, and other students who didn’t have good marks in exams were required to do the same thing. “It’s the District uniform exam. If pupils don’t do well, it will bring bad effect to the teachers’ reputation.” said Ms. Li, with extreme furious, “I think my son has the right to take the exam, no matter how he does it.”

Well, it sounds to be quite absurd, but still ordinary in China, where exam-oriented education system takes the leading position, although government always emphasizes the importance of education for all-round development. I think it’s a meaty theme for study and debate.

To be honest, when I was a pupil, I didn’t need to take any exams since I did well enough in during-semester tests. (That’s our school’s encouraging policy for hard-working students.) I used to wish if I could escape from all the exams, it would really be the most fantastic thing in the world. But oddly disappointed feeling came up when I saw others taking exams, because I think, I lost the chance of taking exams.

Now just come back to the issue. First of all, taking examination is students’ right, obviously. Depriving of it, I mean in such a situation, it will be kind of esteem detriment. It doubtlessly must make Li feel seriously frustrated and heart-losing. You know it’s always not very easy for children to rebuild self-confidence. Here is a picture showing that a boy wanted to jump from the building to commit suicide because the teacher’s words hurt him(from Information Ontimes in China).

Secondly and importantly, it’s cheating. In order to deal with the assessment of education, teachers made a choice of telling lies, which surely set a bad example to children. The reputation of themselves, and the prestige of school, both will be elegant reasons. But, if teachers were cheaters, what would the children think?

Then a problem has arisen. Why are the teachers so anxious about the marks of students? The answer is that education evaluation department assesses teachers work by their students’ mark of exams. Using this ruler, can the result of assessment come up to the education evaluation department’s expectation? I believe not.

Blaming on teachers too much makes no sense, I think, because both students and teachers are the “victims” of exam-oriented education system. It’s necessary for teachers to treat every student on an equal footing, and more pressing issue must be adjusting the education evaluation criteria practically. A relaxed education environment surely makes students more comfortable.

Don’t worry if you are not a top student in class, Bill Gates either.