Friday, February 17, 2012

Blog 5:Can China Successfully Educate Its Future Workforce?


               
In China there is a growing migration population.  Many of these migrants have traveled from the rural areas to find jobs in the city.  One of the growing problems with the migrants moving into the city is there are no schools available for their children.  Dexin School is one of South China’s private schools available to migrant children.  Dexin is a school that bars on the windows and a concrete courtyard that doubles as a playground. The teachers are under qualified and the parents might earn as little as two dollars a day. 
                China is trying to become a modernized economy, but with millions of migrants moving into the city, experts warn that this “could jeopardize the nation’s ability to grow and develop a skilled workforce.”  The Chinese governments are “unwilling or unable to offer public services like health care and education.”  Many nongovernmental organizations and individual citizens have set up thousands of elementary schools for migrant children.  With China not providing quality schools for all students this could result in “millions of migrant children becoming unemployable as adults. “
                As I read this article I was very disturbed because of the inequalities between people born in the city and those who are born in the rural part of China. Migrant children are born with an ascribe status with little mobility to achieve a higher status.  The article states that many of these children will grow up to be unemployed adults.  I believe that this is unjustified.  This particular situation is very similar with the situation of race in America.  Many minorities, which are under privileged and poor, cannot afford nor given the same opportunities as white students, same with China.  Many poor children are not given the same opportunities that are given to those children, who are privilege, born in urban parts.  I think that this is insane because both, migrant children and city children are Chinese people, but most important they are human.
                If China is trying to modernize the country, how can they ignore people who are the “structure or backbone” of the country?  These people work the hardest just to make sure that the people on top are being taken care of yet no one is taking care of them.  This situation is very familiar with the caste system that Dr. Sills describe to the class. The migrants are like the serfs supporting all those above them or in this case the rich.  No one takes care of the serfs or the work condition that the serfs work under.  Yet if it was not for the serfs holding the system “up” the whole system would fall.  I believe that China need to address the issues instead of looking the other way.  These are human being’s lives that are going unnoticed and this is unacceptable and unjust.  Whether China like it or not, migrants are moving in the city because their farm work is being depleted and the government needs to be held accountable for finding solutions to the problems.

No comments: