BEIJING, Jan 29 — Think of a boarding school somewhere in the United States: children of the wealthy go to class in ivy-covered buildings, then play lacrosse and crew. Some of those students might even be the offspring of rich and powerful Chinese families. In China, however, most boarding schools serve vulnerable children: the offspring of migrant workers who left their kids behind in the countryside while they toil in cities. The rundown institutions are badly failing the estimated 33 million rural kids they serve, causing depression, malnutrition, and other problems, according to a recent survey.
These rural schools feature overcrowded dorms, inadequate numbers of teachers, and few structured extracurricular activities, said a Beijing-based research organization, Growing Home, after canvassing more than 30,000 students at 100 schools in 10 provinces, including Hebei, Hunan, Sichuan, and Yunnan. “Students were often locked in classrooms for long periods to study by themselves,” said an article about the survey in Caixin, a financial publication, earlier this month.
Why are these liushou ertong—or “left-behind children,” as they are usually called—left in the countryside when their parents migrate to work in cities? China’s hukou, or household registration system, prevents rural children from attending most legal, urban schools.
While private, unregistered day schools have opened to serve migrant children who accompany their parents to cities, they periodically are shut down by zealous officials for safety or perceived quality issues. “Some parents have sent their children back to where they came from, while other simply told them to stay at home,” an earlier report in Caixinnoted last summer. That has forced many migrant parents to choose to leave children in the countryside.
Conditions in the rural schools have been affecting the health of pupils. Most rural boarding students eat meat only once every few days, subsisting on processed junk food, the Growing Home survey found. Inadequate nutrition means the students measure up to 10 centimeters shorter and 9 kilograms lighter than peers elsewhere in China. Many rural boarders dwell in foul-smelling dorms, and about half have to share beds.
Some 63 per cent of rural boarding students in the survey report feeling lonely, nearly one-fifth describe feeling depressed, and many have considered suicide. “Students in boarding schools often feel lonely and insecure. Most of them are afraid of the dark and inclined to be more emotional,” Mei Dong, deputy director of Beijing Growing Home, told the Party- owned Global Times.
Sexual abuse by teachers is also a serious problem, according to a study released in 2013 by Beijing Normal University and the government-affiliated China Children and Teenagers’ Fund.Far from their parents, the students are likewise vulnerable to drug addiction. “Of course, some are better adjusted. But the fact is that the left-behind children often carry some sort of trauma. They usually don’t do as well in school, and there is the risk of them getting involved in bad behavior,” said Sanna Johnson, executive director of the Beijing-based Centre for Child-Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility, a business consultancy, in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek last year. — Bloomberg
