My initial impressions of the migrant district of DaXing were somewhat muddled by the jet lag I had accumulated from a 20 hour layover in Dubai. Nevertheless, as I traveled across the city from Beijing international airport in the north east to the migrant districts in the south by car, it was pretty obvious to note that the quality of infrastructure and environment fell off rapidly. Brick and mortar stores gave way to street vendor stands lining the unmarked and often poorly paved road. Piles of rubble and whatnot dotted the streets, indicating construction and renovation. The scenery very much gave me the feeling that the migrant district was a transitory, ephemeral thing detached from the city center. I do admit that this feeling was influenced by the fact that I was in Beijing 12 years ago when this section of the city was still crop land and the partially built subsidized housing complexes sprouting up across the outskirts of the city were fields of watermelon. On the other hand, the Dandelion school gave off a different sort of vibe. The school itself was an old factory and its premises were isolated from the rest of the district and surrounding urban area by concrete walls and gates. Everything needed was located on campus be it a kitchen, bathrooms, dorms, library, or classroom/office space. In addition, the school itself was tastefully decorated with everything from painted murals to colored glass tile mosaics. The school has a sense of permanence and order unlike the transitory and always changing and fluid migrant world around them. That being said, this impression is quite ironic given that the entire district is soon to be demolished. Another thing I noted is that many of the slogans on the walls of Dandelion relate to some variation of “study/work makes good citizens” which is interesting to me. In the USA, most of our schooling was done just to pursue credentials and knowledge for jobs or just for the sake of knowledge. There’s a lot of emphasis on group activity and ritual at Dandelion that one would never see in the US. For instance, during the flag raising ceremony I watched a class of students march in military lock step carrying the flag while the rest of the student body lined up in neat little columns. This was followed by speeches by a teacher regarding things that affect the school such as litter and what not. This is done every week. It’s quite interesting to see an education system that places citizen training and ritual at a significant level. One possible reason for this focus on character training might be the fact that many children here often do not go beyond a middle school education and the administration has decided that teaching children to be upstanding citizens is a greater service than boosting their scores on the Zhong Kao. I have also heard from Professor Litzinger that the principal has a rather Maoist/Neo-Confucianist outlook on education. I’d be interested in delving into the reasons for and the implications of this character focused education. During the English class on May 22, one of the children, Wu ShiYu was crying as his mother picked him up from school. His parents were moving to Shanghai for work reasons. Because of his family’s status as rural migrants, he had to go along to Shanghai. Later on we discussed with this instructor Chen. Many of the migrant students will leave during the course of their education at Dandelion. Many due to work related reasons and others due to the intertwined nature of the hukou system and the education system. Many of the brightest students, whom have a chance of making it to college, are sent back to their old homes to live with their grandparents. This is because one cannot even register for the college entrance examination without a hukou or household registration. Instructor Chen told us that many of these children do not like this because the curricula are different between provinces and the regional dialects are borderline incomprehensible to children born and often raised in Beijing. These unfortunate circumstances really do tie back to the earlier commentary I had about transitory existences. I am now of the opinion that stability and predictability are among the most important things in a child’s development. |