This dual system is only going to reinforce class differences and make it harder for those who live in rural areas to improve their lives. In a country that is officially a 'classless society', the institution of this dual system is creating just the opposite. But, I can see where the PRC would think that this practice is a good one. In many developing countries, governments favor urban areas as hubs for potential growth and advancement so they focus more of their resources on those areas. But, they don't realize that by ostracizing the rural areas, they are actually stunting socioeconomic growth. While this may seem unreasonable and too idealistic, I think China needs to spread the allocation of their resources more evenly throughout the whole population. By under educating those in rural areas, they are effectively loosing a huge chunk of their population in terms of productivity because they aren't as educated as those from urban areas.
This scenario reminded me of Three Cups of Tea and what Greg Mortenson is doing in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The places where he is building schools are those extremely closed off and rural areas that are denied government funding. His work is trying to reverse the effects of poor government decision making by trying to offer universal education regardless of location, which is what should be done in China.
Natasha brought up a good point about the significant gap between rural and urban education. Like I mentioned in my blog post, China must set priorities for allocating all of their resources. In this case, this gives a great advantage to urban children over rural children and ultimately creates different classes of people in the society. Although China claims to be a "classless society," this education gap between the rural and urban areas actually forms different classes of people.
ReplyDeleteI also thought this part of the chapter was extremely interesting. My first reaction was of course (like yours), "How unfair it is for rural children to be receiving a worse education than urban children." However, I began questioning myself in a back and forth sort of way. The rural areas of China are those with the most traditional people and highly focused on agriculture. As Gutek states, often children are removed from school by their parents to help with farming (90% enrollment but 60% regular attendance). Even if there were better schools, wouldn't parents still take their kids out of school in order to continue maintaining their farms? Or, if parents did put their children in these better schools, wouldn't children eventually move into urban areas where there are generally better job opportunities, therefore killing China's agricultural industry? Or is it the government's fault for not creating better opportunities in rural areas so that children don't have to move to urban areas when they have finished primary schooling? These are just some of the questions that ran through my head. :)
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