China's One Child Policy

Today's report on the series dealt with how the one child policy has affected families on the educational front. The hope of the Chinese "Boy or girl, good or bad" is on this one child. The report went on to say that in the past educational competition was not as prevalent because everyone was equally poor, but now that there is possibility of social advancement, many families spend up to 50% of their income in extra tutoring for their children. Even Saturdays and Sundays are spent in some type of tutoring or in doing homework. "Having fun has no value in the Chinese community" because that isn't going to give these children any advantage when seeking a job. When I heard this, I was distressed over the constant advocacy that we as educators have to make for education. We have so many services that are provided for free to those who are willing to take it. At my school we had to cancel the Saturday morning Kaplan sessions for English and Math because we had such a poor showing. I wonder if my students would care to know that there are those in the global community with whom they will be competing for jobs, who instead of putting off their homework and their lessons are actively in pursuit of the jobs my students will one day want. I think that knowing this kind of information, letting students know this kind of information, "good or bad" lets them know that there is extreme competition out there. Perhaps it may motivate some students who up to this point have been assuming there will be a job out there that will allow them to live the lifestyle that they aspire to. Well, this job may exist, but it will likely go to someone living in China.

Continuing with the one child theme. yesterday on NPR they did a report on an area in China that has allowed families to have more than one child,(one at age 24 the second at age 30), only to find out that the citizens continued to have one child and not more. Part of the explanation was that the parents were raised with the one child philosophy and did not see a need for more children. The other was that they people would rather spend their money on things other than children, i.e., new car, tv etc.!

The video I watched on this theme showed that there was an increasing obesity epidemic among these little emperors because of what you said about the spoiling. There is now a campaign to encourage people to move and walk like the generations before who 1) had not other choice than to walk or bike, and 2) who had the leisure hours (all were in same boat of poverty) to walk in the evenings and stroll. With the growing economic opportunities people no longer have these two incentives. There are cars available and people are too busy working to take a stroll. It is interesting to bring this up with students when we look at positives and negatives of industrialization, in the increasing technology based economies, and in the efforts of third world countries trying to emerge into first world nations.