Article
--- Yu Minhong, Founder, Chairman and CEO of the New Oriental Education & Technology Group, CPPCC Member
Rural education has been a top priority on the Chinese government’s agenda for the past five years, but the educational inequality between the city and the countryside is getting bigger. Students’life in the poor west is much tougher than most city dwellers could ever imagine.
Feng Ai, volunteer teacher from Fudan University
“All those kids, from middle school to high school, they don’t have any dictionary, not even a Chinese dictionary, let along English ones. Their living condition at school is also very terrible. A room in which 20-30 kids sleep is considered good living condition. In winter, it’s usually 20 degrees below zero. They only have very thin rugs, with some straws underneath, no bedding at all.”
Chinese children are offered free education from ages six to fifteen. Even so, a large number of rural students quit school every year.
“In China’s rural areas, in primary schools, the entrance rate from the first grade to the third grade is pretty high. But many students quit school in the fourth grade, because they can work at home. In the enclosed villages, students know little about the outside world. They ask me, what is the Internet? Is it for fishing or bird catching?”
Deprived of educational opportunities, rural students’lives on average remain enclosed in the villages, leaving the urban-rural differences further entrenched. United Nation officials have long said“the circumstances into which children are born should not define their educational opportunities.”What can the government do to decrease the educational inequality? Should private education play a role?
Guest profile
Yu Minhong is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of the New Oriental Education & Technology Group. He is currently a member of the National Committee of the 11th CPPCC. Yu’s New Oriental School is an English language training school founded in 1993, and is popular among students seeking college admissions overseas. Last year 1.5 million students enrolled in his school. Yu Minhong is regarded as one of the most famous educators in China.
Rural education
A: Let’s first start off by talking about the inequality in education right now because the gap really does seem quite large between rural students and urban students.
Y: I think the inequality in education exists everywhere, no matter in China or in the US. But in China, this is especially prominent, because we have clearly divided the country into two parts, rural areas and urban areas. And in urban areas, kids enjoy much better education than the rural area kids. This is a kind of history in China. It’s because China, traditionally speaking, it’s a large agricultural countryside. I think its government is trying to do their best in trying to bridge the gap between rural education and urban education for kids. The inequality exists mainly because that the rural area kids cannot enjoy the facilities, the teaching resources and the teachers’quality that urban area kids especially like large cities like Beijing, Shanghai, these big cities can enjoy.