Debate: School selection fees

Wang Yiqing

Society to blame for state of affairs

Almost all parents complain about the arbitrary fees charged by schools to admit children, but interestingly most of them end up paying them. The "rat race" that education has become compels them to become part of the very system they criticize.

Perhaps the intense competition in education has something to do with the traditional Chinese concept about education.

Parents' emphasis on education does reflect that they still believe in the old Chinese sayings: "To be a scholar is to be at the top of society" and "A person who excels in study can become an official". Throughout China's history, parents have accorded priority to their children's education because they believe that only through education can recognition, respect and wealth be achieved. That is understandable, for education, to a large extent, gave people social mobility in feudal Chinese society.

Chinese parents have always had a strong sense of responsibility, especially when it came to their children's growth and development. They tend to regard their children's future as their responsibility. Under such circumstances, many parents are apt to emphasize the importance of education for their children even if they have to literally pay a high price for it.

Moreover, a huge number of Chinese families have only one child because of the family planning policy that China has followed for three decades. Since single-child families are tight-nit, parents' resolve to ensure their children get the best education possible has become stronger.

Parents can be blamed for being caught in a trap of their own making and furthering the blind competition in education, but we cannot convince them to give up their quest. The root of the vicious cycle lies in society. The situation has changed little compared with even the distant past. But again, society today doesn't provide many options for children to chart a good future.

In the competitive employment market, it is difficult to get a good job without a college diploma and sometimes even a college diploma fails to ensure that. We have little to say if children ask us what else they could do to pursue a better life except study hard and excel in exams.

A strong sense of social unfairness has heightened the worries of parents and their children about the future, and forced them to take the difficult road.

A recent incident in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, is enlightening. People across the country criticize the "Olympic Math Contest" training classes because they increase students' burden. But when the education department in Xi'an decided to ban the training classes, the students opposed it for fear of losing the opportunity to study harder and some of them even tried to drive the educational department administrators out of classrooms. One parent appealed in tears: "If the authorities want to ban these training classes, they should provide our children a fair and justifiable way to get enrolled in 'good' schools first."

The parents not only complained about unfair distribution of educational resources, but also demanded a fair rule for competition. In a society that is full of "hidden rules", exams and scores are the only "fair" way that common people can count on.

Children from poor families, especially from rural areas, can rely on nothing but their academic achievements to prove their competence and be accepted into the "mainstream". But it seems that even the last "fair" way of achieving success is getting narrower by the day.

To rid society of unfair "sponsorship fees" and unequal competition for admission to schools, maybe the authorities should first take measures to diversify the ways for common people to improve their social mobility and offer them more opportunities.

The author is a reporter with China Daily.

(China Daily 09/26/2011 page9)