8
China's only children carry family hope
To view this content, Javascript must be enabled and Adobe Flash Player must be installed.
Fang Rong and her daughter walk down an alley holding hands
A 2007 family photo
TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: In this country, it's not all that tough to imagine a life without siblings. There are families with just one child all over the place. Now, though, extend that to a life with no cousins. No aunts or uncles. Just one child, mom, dad, and maybe grandma and grandpa. For tens of millions of kids in China today that's the reality -- almost 30 years after the government banned Chinese parents from having more than one child. This week on the broadcast we're taking some time to explore the economic effects of that policy, which has now produced a whole generation of only children.
Marketplace's Scott Tong picks up his series in Nanjing in eastern China.
Scott Tong: For sixth grader Fang Jin Xue, the day starts at seven, sharp, with a...
Fang Rong: Baobei kuai dian!
Hurry up! From her mom. The 12 year-old grunts a word of compliance. And then pulls on her clothes: Green hoodie sweatshirt, black cotton pants and pink eyeglasses. The morning hustle feels like my house on a school day -- but this is a Saturday.
Fang Jin Xue explains why: Tutoring class, every weekend.
Fang Jin Xue: First, two classes of English. Then one science, one writing, one Chinese. Then two math classes. It goes late, so we eat dinner at the school.
Mom Fang Rong nukes some sesame porridge. They wolf it down. And scamper down seven flights of stairs -- no elevator here. It's hectic, mom says. Every family is racing to get its one child ahead.
Fang Rong: Competition is fierce, so we all feel we have to do something, right or wrong. If parents don't put kids in tutoring classes, they panic.
Fang Rong, the mom, is a factory quality control worker, making $7,000 a year, about the median income in urban China. Dad works at a factory too. Together, they spend 10 percent of their income on their daughter's schooling. Surveys suggest other families shell out as much as 50 percent.
It makes for a thriving education market, says Tom Doctoroff at the marketing firm J. Walter Thompson.
Tom Doctoroff: Anything that helps a kid become smarter, and able to compete in an increasingly dog-eat-dog landscape is a priority for the parents. Whether it's English lessons or piano lessons, parents are gonna spend money and time in making sure their kids are equipped to rise.
As they board the city bus, Fang Jin Xue's Mom carries her "Hello Kitty" backpack for her. Mom says the books are too heavy. It seems an overdose of caution. But my Chinese friend, John Lu, explains.
John Lu: Our hope for the future depends on one hope. Good or bad, he or she is the only hope.
Fang Jin Xue and her mom now get off the bus, and walk five blocks to a Nanjing middle school that's she's applying to. She'll take an assessment test today, with dozens of other sixth graders. As she walks in the gate, her mom says:
Fang Rong: Baobao buyao ji.
Slow down, baby. She says every parent here looks stressed; the kids, too.
Fang Rong says it wasn't always this way. When she grew up in the 70s, children in her neighborhood just played, outside the weapons factory where their parents worked -- until five o'clock came.
Fang Rong: When the factory horn went off, we grabbed our book bags and sprinted home. We took out our homework and pretended to work, just as my mom got home.
Back then, almost everyone in China was equally poor. Now, there's social mobility, more competition. And, many say, more stress.
Fang Jin Xue emerges from the test 90 minutes later. She says teachers had her read articles aloud and converse in English. Results won't be out for a while.
They zoom home for lunch, and later it's off to cram school for six hours. Beginning with English.
Teacher: Ready, go!
Students, in unison: What's the weather like? It's raining.
Now, right around now in my house in Shanghai, my kids are focusing their brains on the monkey bars. Risking life and limb. Education value: zero.
My friend, 30-something mom Shirley Wang doesn't get it.
Shirley Wang: We don't think fun is that important. Skill, your capability to survive in society is more useful, more meaningful than to just have fun.
Oooooookay.
Back at the Fang household in Nanjing, it's now Sunday morning. Sixth grader Fang Jin Xue knocks off some math homework with mom. And then, one brief indulgence: They walk to a stationery store and buy a special pen that writes in multicolors.
China's consumer market for one-kid families is huge: Fast food, toys and especially infant formula. Chinese TV is full of ads for it. This one promises, "Buy this. It helps brain development."
Again, ad man Tom Doctoroff.
Tom Doctoroff: Even if you're talking about a Happy Meal, that Happy Meal isn't just for happiness. It has to have an educational lesson in there. Or it has to have something that helps move the child forward.
Piano playing and ballet teacher counting
Fang Jin Xue's last weekend class is ballet. Mom Fang Rong pays nine bucks a class, because, she says, her daughter's "used to it" -- not that she's passionate about dancing, or for that matter anything.
Fang Rong: Nothing makes her very happy, or very upset. In our time, I used to dream about eating a meatball every day. Kids today have no passion. They have everything.
Fang Rong admits she's conflicted about investing all this time and money putting her daughter on the education treadmill. But everyone's doing it.
At least, she says, Fang Jin Xue can hang with other children at weekend school. That's where all the children are.
In Nanjing, eastern China, I'm Scott Tong for Marketplace.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONBjEEpKrH0&feature=channel
here is a short video that captures the feelings/thoughts of EVERY 'only child' at one time or another. Please post feedback if these are your thoughts and you are an 'only child'. Thanks
Our children truly do need a childhood in order to develop in every way. An essential part of childhood is being, not only loved, but accepted! When parents think they know best and skip the childhood in order to push their children to "excel" or compete in an adult world something eventually breaks down in the life of the child.
I am the mother of eight children whom I educate at home. Their lives are rich in great literature and lots of time to think, to listen to birds and to dream. My adult children are very competitive and "driven" to achieve but it is a self-motivated and it is done with joy and excitement...because they have a happy childhood as a foundation.
I have so much mixed feelings on the piece that I really can neither criticize or condone that system. Having said that, I must also note that many US cities parents are doing pretty much the same thing. I guess my question is when the society, in terms of employment preference, prefers on college degrees or even post graduate degrees, whether the job needs it or not, and college admission rate is so low, especially in elite colleges, what else can a parent do? One final question, is that the fault of the parents or of the society?
The pressure on these Chinese parents to give their only child the skills necessary to earn a living wage (there is no social security, after all) is the primary reason that China is producing more and more scientists, engineers and doctors. I believe this attitude will be the key to the expansion of the middle class that China is striving for, and also to China's future economical success. The desperation brought on by the one-child policy certainly accelerated this process, but at a great social cost.
I also feel the need to defend the oriental education system in general. I grew up in both the US and Taiwanese public education systems. I learned from the experience that the US and oriental education systems are at two different extremes. Each side has their strengths and weaknesses. While the rigidity of the Chinese and Taiwan systems does not give much room for gifted children to thrive, it also does not allow for mediocre children to underachieve. I was pushed beyond my limits under intense pressure while I was in Taiwan, which gave me the discipline and work ethic that I otherwise would not have had to over-achieve when I arrived in the US.
As for James's comment about China not dominating the 21st century with such a system, I would like to point out that Taiwan, Japan and South Korea have all found tremendous growth and success under similar societal and educational norms, with very few natural resources (a disadvantage that does not apply to China).
In defense of the Chinese education system, I must say that it works. The negative side effects are that Chinese children are lacking in creativity and direction as well as being put under immense pressure. The latter is an unavoidable consequence of the shear size of the competition (it's like the college entrance pool x10). But I believe that the former is not so much a problem because the culture/mindset in China is centered around getting a stable paying job, unlike wild dreams that are common in kids in America. As a slight critique to the American education system, it becomes nearly identical to the Chinese system when you replace weekend cram school with student council leadership, sports teams, band and orchestras, and a slew of other extra-curricular activities that many highschool kids cram in their schedules.
RE: Scott really thinks that playing on the monkey bars has "Education value: zero" then he is sadly misinformed about how the brains of children develop and how important play and movement are to that development.
When kids play on monkey bars they are making sense of thier world, learning spatial relationships, developing muscle control and physical strength, they learn how to make judgments, develop all kinds of social skills, cultivate imagination and critical thinking processes, resiliency, physics, the relationship between cause and effect, and yes, they are having fun :0)
I am not sure whether to be encouraged or horrified by this story. As an American I am encouraged that China clearly will not dominate the 21st century because all the energy, passion and creativity of its kids are being systematically beaten out of them. As a parent, however, I am horrified by the nationwide pattern of near-child abuse he is describing and by the spillover effect it has on US parents, rushing their children down this same future-less path.
Oh, and if Scott really thinks that playing on the monkey bars has "Education value: zero" then he is sadly misinformed about how the brains of children develop and how important play and movement are to that development.
