School
Uniforms in China
10
May 2007
In China, school uniform is an
issue, with accusations of school
administrators using it as a money generating
instrument heard from time to time.
The latest allegation involves
a primary school in Yunnan in China's
southwest. It is said that the school
authority demanded 50 grade six students, who
are about to graduate in couple of months, to
purchase new uniforms, and this was the third
set of the uniforms that the students were
ordered to buy in four years.
Do those kids all come from
China's newly affluent families? Sadly, no.
The school is located in a poor mountainous
region where the average annual income of a
peasant is just a little over 1,200 yuans,
that is about half a US dollar per day. With
45 yuans - the price tag for the uniform -
many poor students could survive on meagre
meals for half of the school term.
The school administrators
apparently have discovered an inexhaustible
revenue stream in uniforms. But oddly, the
school buildings are still seriously rundown
and ill-equipped, and the students were seen
doing their outdoor activities barefoot on an
unpaved, dusty playground.
Since '90s, some certain
elements in China promote tirelessly an
unchecked free market model and an
unrestrained commercialism spirit, and the
national psyche has experienced a rapid
shift, with many schools beginning to view
themselves more a business enterprise than an
educational institution. To some of them
students are just commodities, and they are
pretty happy to squeeze as much profit margin
out of them as possible. The tuition fees
used to be their big money draw, but since
early this year the central government
decided to foot the bills for rural students,
there is little that they can mess around.
But so what, they still have school uniforms
to play around with.
A villager girl
carries her baby sibling on her back.
Since all ethnic
minority Chinese, that include Bais,
Dongbas, Tibetans and Uighurs, are not
targeted by one-child policy, the cosy
scene of sibling interaction can still be
observed among these people.
Pre China
at a Glance May 07 |
Next: A
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