Happy childhood a dream
Many adults recalled the good old days of growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, when few families were rich but children were probably happier.
Today a happy and carefree childhood seems out of reach for both urban and rural kids.
In 10 years, city children such as Wei Yufan will probably be studying at a university in Beijing, eyeing well-paid jobs in big companies.
By then, Luo Tingxi may have become a skilled worker on a factory assembly line or in a coal pit. He might be married with two children.
If the economic disparity is not reduced, growing pains will persist on both sides.
While city children fight pain inflicted by demanding parents, rural children's pains often reflect the fast-growing, unbalanced economy. This situation could backfire and hamper further economic growth, warns Liu Fuxiang, deputy education chief in Yanchuan County of northwest China's Shaanxi Province.
"The yawning rural-urban income gap has worsened disparity in many other sectors, especially education," he says.
Rural children perform far worse than their urban peers on major tests, he says, but not because they are not clever or diligent. "They are victims of an unbalanced allocation of teaching resources."
Cities a magnet
Rapid urbanization draws migrant rural workers to cities and boom towns where schools have been built. Many rural schools were closed and children from several villages share one school. As many migrants take their children along to cities, poor village schools close. Remaining ones are more like day-care centers for left-behind children, orphans and handicapped children, Liu says.
These schools lack funding and qualified teachers. "Some schools only teach reading and arithmetic. Gym is about frolicking," says Liu. "Many kids wait for the nine years of compulsory schooling to end so they can get a city job."
The consequences of the disparity could be severe, as poverty can twist value systems. "Children are our future," he says, "but it will be gloomy if they are not well educated."
"Poor children tend to admire the material abundance in cities and even worship money," says Yang Yuansong, a rural teacher known for "Left-behind Children's Diaries," a collection of tear-stained diary entries written by rural children whose parents work in faraway cities.
"When young migrants return (to their village) with fashionable clothes and stylish haircuts, their value system changes. Others long to see the wide world instead of concentrating on school," Yang says.
Reminding children of the importance of learning and keeping their dreams alive is essential. But parents are often gone and not enough teachers can offer guidance.
Ding Xueqian, a rural school teacher in Gansu Province and a deputy to the local parliament, urges more funding from the central and provincial treasuries to boost education in remote rural areas.
"It's important to train qualified teachers and build safer classrooms for countryside schools," he says.
"By narrowing the gap between rural and urban education, we can expect to provide quality education to rural students and reverse the widespread prejudice that 'going to school is useless'."
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