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Poor families finding hope through education
(Xinhua) Updated: 2008-03-05 23:27 BEIJING -- Fate surprised a girl named Han Xueyi, born in a remote village in the southern province of Hainan, who found that she was to get a free education at a town school. "I've never seen such a beautiful classroom or a computer. It's just like a dream," said Han, who's in the first year at a prefectural junior middle school. The backer of the project is Wei Liucheng, secretary of the Hainan provincial committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Another 270 students like Han, including her two brothers, benefited from the project. The project, called "education migration," is a new way for Hainan to support the poor. The government sent children from poor families in remote villages to towns, where tuition, housing and medical costs are paid by the government. Han's hometown is a pilot region for this experiment. The uneven distribution of educational resources is a major cause of urban-rural disparities, said Tan Songhua, a research fellow of the Educational Development Research Center under the Ministry of Education and vice-chairman of the China Society of Education. Tan said that Hainan's program was a good way for children to enjoy high quality educational resources. Wei's favorite proverb is "knowledge changes one's fate". He was also born to a poor family, and his fate changed when he attended a school that was several miles away by foot. In Wei's eye, the root cause of poverty results from unfavorable environment, out-dated means of production and poor education. "Hainan is home for many families like Han's, with six members living on only a little field. You can lay roads to their doors, provide electricity for their houses or even upgrade their homes from huts to multi-story buildings. But such things can only improve their lives, not change the situation of poverty," Wei said. |
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