Regional Perspective on Human Rights

Regional Perspective on Human Rights Education in China

Education seldom comes as the first thing into people’s minds when issues of human rights are raised, though it is an important part of social, economic, and cultural rights. This might due to the fact that educational rights are more related to future than those rights that have a more immediate visible impact, such as the right not to be tortured. But it is through education, that we increase the potential of an improvement on our lives; learn about our civil and political rights, and ensure cultural transmissions. As it is argued in “Human Rights and Education”, that education “is not only encompassed within the concept of human rights, but it is the ultimate sanction and guarantee of all the other.” 1(P3) But when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was passed in 1948, China was still in the marsh of civil war. It was not until 1949 that the People’s Republic of China was established, and the Ministry of Education was set up in November the same year. The education policy proposed at the first education meeting stated that education should serve the construction of the nation, and should enroll workers and farmers. This meeting has a lasting effect on Chinese education; for in the later years, the Chinese government changed private schools and universities into public schools and ensured the education opportunities for workers and farmers through law. Even the policies emphasized education opportunities for workers and farmers; those who had better chances to go to universities were still children from intellectual families. In order to clear the Sovietized revisionist education and the traditional elite school system, schools and universities were closed in 1966 when the Cultural Revolution started. Lower schools reopened gradually after a year or two, but colleges and universities only provided undergraduate courses four years later. In 1970, workers, peasants and soldiers were admitted in quantity, and everyone, from the age of 7, were attending schools, in the rural areas minimally as far as junior schools, and in urban areas to senior high schools. Revolutionary education was instilled and courses were shortened, university entrance exams were abolished and enrollment priority was given to worker and peasants with practical experience, as directed by Mao Zedong. The understanding of education rights during the Revolution was different from the statement in UDHR, which claims, “higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit”. Higher education opportunities were primarily given to the working people since they have been underprivileged comparing to children from intellectual families. It also reflected Mao’s idea of giving opportunities to “renmin”, meaning “the people”, but which is not a neutral concept as it may sounds. It refers to those followers of Mao’s propaganda, and during the Cultural Revolution, many intellectuals were treated as “enemies of the people”, so they and their children could not share the rights of “the people”. When the Covenants came in force in 1976, a year marked the end of the Revolution; China was faced with a generation with large crevices in education. The

1 Norma Bernstein Tarrow. Human Rights and Education Vol.3. New York: Peragamon Press, 1987. more pragmatist post-Mao leader Deng Xiaoping, decided that the country was in need of talents who can contribute to its construction, so the university entrance examination was restored in 1977, and Deng’s address in 1978 relieved intellectuals of political pressure and encouraged them to develop science and technology in teaching and research. China has implemented 9-year compulsory education in 1986, but still faced with the problem of high dropout rates in rural areas and especially female students and minority group students. At the end of the 20th century, the huge change in social and economic structure brought new problems into education, the migrant workers’ children. These children could not enjoy the privileges of compulsory education in the places they migrated to, and getting a higher education is even more difficult. More funding was allocated to these underprivileged groups and policies were devised to protect their rights, but it is still a problem of how to best protect their education rights and find a good balance between egalitarian and elitist education.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Covenants

The Human Rights Commission in charge of drafting the UDHR was set up in 1946, headed by Eleanor Roosevelt, and one of its two vice-chairs was a Chinese representative, called P.C. Chang. The first draft was a collaborative effort based on drafts submitted by a wide range of individuals, states and NGOs. When it was put a vote on December 10, 1948, China voted in favor, which was somewhat surprising due to KMT’s previous violations of human rights. The People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, and its four constitutions have shared commitment to civil and political rights, as well as to social, economic, and cultural rights. But as a socialist country, China has shared the views with the other socialist countries that emphasize the social and economic aspects and consider all rights as collectively based and subordinate to state sovereignty and state security. The UDHR’s statement that “higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit” was exactly what the Cultural Revolution leaders disputed. As early as the first meeting in 1949, it was devised that schools should enroll workers and farmers, and later in the Great Leap Forward, educational opportunities in secondary schools and universities were largely expanded for children of workers, peasants and party officials. The selection criteria reversed to academic performance in the early 1960s, but the 1966 Cultural Revolution pushed the direction of education to a purpose of equalizing the quality and quantity of education to different classes of people, and the beneficiaries of the policy were children from working-class families and children of leading officials or cadres. Nomination of college candidates was determined largely by leaders of the applicants’ working unit, and required two years of work record and good family history. Academic was reduced to second importance. Mass education was expanded at this time, but elite education was disputed and curtailed. When the post-Mao government came to power, the university entrance examination was restored. The work requirement was dropped, and strictures against children from intellectual families were lifted. The university entrance examination still arouse many questions concern education inequality, such as the huge difference in admission scores among provinces, but none as severe as the challenge of Cultural Revolution that deprived many of the chance of higher education. When the drafts of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) were adopted in 1966 and in force from 1976, China was experiencing its craziest days of the Revolution. The judicial system was shut down and people’s understanding of justice has no resemblance to the international standards. In 1997, China signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights a year later. It is not surprising China chose to ratify the ICESCR first in 2001 since it emphasizes the social and economic aspects and the duty as a developing country to improve the basic standard of living for its citizens. It is undeniable that China has lifted over 150 million people out of poverty in less than a decade and has reached a high primary enrollment, yet it still realizes that not all the articles of the ICESCR have been fully realized, and social and educational inequality still widely exist.

Children in Rural Areas, Gender Discrimination and Minorities

Education has been highly esteemed by the Chinese since the imperial time, and this might be one of the reasons why the Revolution targeted at the university entrance exam. After that, popularization of the 9-year compulsory education has been an objective enshrined in a number of important documents since the 1980s. The adoption of the Law on Compulsory Education of the People's Republic of China in 1986 marked the start of the first major reform in China's basic education. The concept of "basic education" includes 3 years of junior high school and 6 years of primary education. Though it is called compulsory which implied it should be free, it was not completely free in the first twenty years. Parents need to afford miscellaneous fees such as books and computer usage. Especially because the central government has shifted the responsibility of making up shortfall in educational fund to county and township governments, rural population suffered from unreasonable taxations. In 2000, the government capped the standard fee for per primary pupil to 160 yuan and 240 yuan per junior student, and in 2007 these miscellaneous fees were altogether abolished, but somehow illegal charges still continued, even after repeated official reprimand. The popularization rate of compulsory education reached 99.7 percent in 2010, but it only indicates that enrollment in primary schools is high and ignores the fact that many students dropped out in junior school, left the 9-year compulsory education an unfinished cycle. Among these students, the dropout rates of children from poor families, female students and minority students are higher than other groups. It can be a burden to families in poverty to support children to schools, even compulsory education became cheaper and eventually free, not considering there are illegal charges on them, senior high schools and universities’ tuitions are still expensive for them. Without the hope of getting into high school or university, and with the possibility of no good job after finishing university with borrowed money, many students chose to drop out and find a job in the cities. And if the family possesses more than one child, the girl is more likely to be the one drop out of school to help her family with chores, even she is equally excelled in academics, and in many occasions, since girls shoulder more familial responsibilities, and her performance in school will be affected. According to statistics from the Ministry of Education in 2002, 70 percent of the dropouts are girls. There are NGO groups initiated projects to help these children, such as the Hope Project to help children from poor families, and Spring Bud Project aims at helping female students return to school. Both of these projects have been in operation since 1989, the former has helped more than 2.9 million people, and the latter more than 1.6 million female students, what they achieved is still a long way from the destination. The national minorities account for 8 percent of China’s population, and most of the minorities lived in the border regions. These regions might be rich in mineral but are far lagged behind in social and industrial infrastructure than the coastal areas. Some of these regions have the highest illiteracy rate in the country, and the attendance rate is lower than the national average. Many of these regions still faced with the problem of insufficient funds since most of government’s funding goes to production not education, and some parents in the mountains do not have any money to send their children to school. In addition to that, the low attendance rate sometimes is relating to religion since some parents prefer sending their children to temples. The cultural difference between minority groups and Chinese is another factor, since many subjects are taught in Chinese due to the scarcity of science materials in minority languages. Preferential policies in university entrance exams were given to these regions, such as lower admission scores and exams in minority languages, measures were taken to include more minorities into higher education, such as setting up national minority institutes and minority classes in key point universities. But the huge gap between border regions and coastal area are still widening, and in order to have a good future, it is important for many minorities to learn Chinese, and some of the best students were selected and educated in the eastern coast area, this resulted in the dilution of minority culture, which is also a tricky issue in education and in the relation between minority groups and Han Chinese.

Migrant Workers’ Children

Railway tickets are the scarcest commodities before every Lunar New Year and behind this phenomenon is the huge number of migrant workers in this country. It is estimated in 2011 there are more than 242 million migrant workers, and the number of their children is more than 70 million. Some of these children were left in their hometown to grow up with their grandparents, facing a vulnerable adolescence, and some of these children migrated with their parents to the cities. Due to the restriction of China’s Hukou (household registration) system, and the education system attached to it, these migrated children could not enjoy the same privileges of education as the local kids do. The household registration system was initially implemented in the cities in 1951, and the purpose was to maintain social peace and order. It was not until 1955 when a comprehensive household registration system was established separating rural hukou from urban ones, with the purpose to prevent unplanned migration and control rural flux to the cities. Urban hukou meant subsidized food and urban employment, which includes subsidized housing, healthcare, pension, and other benefits. Educational funds are allocated to the places of household registrations, therefore the children migrated with their parents could not enjoy public schools as the local children do, they had to pay sponsor fees as well as other fees to enter. And these fees are higher when the school is better, and it can reach 50,000 yuan in Beijing, which is a huge amount compare to the 300 to 500 yuan tuition fee in the migrant schools. Thus about half of the migrated children enrolled in migrant schools. These schools are founded in the early 1990s, and usually without permissions from the government; they were started as a means to prevent the kids from wondering around and becoming a new generation of illiterates, and the teachers were recruited from the locals with no requirement for qualifications. Later those with entrepreneurial spirit started to see the profit in it and turned it into a market. In order to cut cost, these schools usually lease converted warehouses as classrooms, so no playground is provided for extra curriculum activities. Curriculum contains mainly mathematics and Chinese, with no other courses provided in public schools. Both teachers and students are mobile, many teachers leave when they find better job, and children leave school when their parents change job. These schools provide no certification of graduation since they are not approved by the department of education, so the students have less chance to go to junior school and even less to go to high school, not to mention universities. Since it is required that one should take university entrance exam in one’s household registration place, these children need to go back to their hometown to take the exam and the contents and concepts taught might be vastly different. In 1966, the promulgation of the “Trial Regulations on School Enrollment for School-Age Children or Migrant Populations in Urban Areas” marked the beginning of government’s concern for the migrant workers’ children. In 1998, the “Provisional Regulations on School Enrollment for Migrant Children” contains regulations that aim at controlling the outflow of school-age children, and the collection of “lend-lease” schooling fees that shows the government is considering resolve the issue by means of government-run schools. In 2001, the “Decision of the State Council on Reforming and Developing Basic Education” stated that the solution should rely on local government in the places of migration and on government-run elementary and secondary schools. In June of 2006, the Compulsory Education Law stipulated that the local government should provide migrant children with the conditions for obtaining equal compulsory education. Though law guaranteed their rights, the shortage of educational funds and educational resources still hampered the implementation since the local governments allocate education funds and resources according to the number of students with local household registration. The reform of household registration system is the key to the problem, but somehow no timeline of the reform has been announced yet.

Development in 2011-2012

In 2011, the popularization rate of 9-year compulsory education has reached nearly 100 percent, and more funding was allocated into education, equating 4 percent of GDP. More NGO groups have stepped into the sphere of education and formed a good interactive relation with the governments. Free lunch for compulsory education students’ program was started by NGO organizations, and the central government has also allocated 16 billion for the cause. The NGO organizations are also providing help to rural children and migrant workers’ children, such as art education, psychological consult and voluntary teaching programs. But education inequality still merits attention since good education resources, schools and teachers are in the cities, the education level of rural areas is lagged further behind. Even in the cities, education resources are in a very unbalanced state. Although it is regulated that compulsory education students should enroll in the school nearest to their homes, people are willing to pay huge sum of money to get their children into better schools. This has contributed to the monopoly of good education resources by the rich and powerful. Another problem facing China is the quality of education. The admission rate of higher education has reached 72 percent in 2011, with so many students attending universities; many universities are faced with the problem of insufficient funds and capable teachers. Because of higher education is enrolling more students than ever before, it is becoming more difficult for graduates to find a job, which also discouraged parents in poor families to send their children to universities. Those in the cities who become dismayed by the education reform chose to send children abroad. In cities like Beijing and Shanghai, those who quit university entrance exam and go abroad are increasing at a rate of 20 percent every year. In September 2012, a protest against national education broke out in Hong Kong. The protestors criticized the textbook for “fostering blind patriotism”, and it may teach the students to “confuse a country with its ruling party”, and the students might lose the ability to criticize the government and might be brainwashed. What happened in Hong Kong is like a break out from China’s usual state of negligence of individual rights, which has its traditional and historical background. After all the years of being accustomed to the imperial and Confucian ideas, the general attitude in the Chinese education emphasizes group rather than individuals, emphasizes duties and obligations, and asserts the legitimacy of hierarchical authority. But during this protest, people are trying to influence education, a state matter, with their own voices; and to decide what should be there in their education, and make this education produces more critical thinking citizens. In general, education in China is still faced with many problems, and how to best protect everyone’s education rights, solve the problem of education inequality, as well as how to design a more suitable education for everyone merit continuous effort.

Compiled by Meng Li Center for East Asian Studies Stanford University