Last week, a father in China stabbed four people to death when his daughter's school teacher refused to let her attend class. It's a shocking crime but one, says Yuan Ren, that shows just how much pressure Chinese families are under when it comes to education
12:01PM BST 08 Sep 2014
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Most parents will do what it takes to give their children the best education possible: uproot to an expensive area, work long hours, fork out for tutors, or ballet and music lessons.
But wanting a better life for your child rarely drives a parent to such levels of desperation that their hatred for a perceived injustice ends in tragedy.
Last week, on the first day of the school term, Chen Yanfu, a father in China's Hubei province, stormed into a primary school, stabbing three students and one teacher to death and wounding five before committing suicide. But this was far from a random rampage killing: the man’s own daughter attended the school and had been told by a teacher she couldn’t attend her classes for failing to finish her holiday homework.
Clearly, Yanfu was deeply troubled. But we cannot ignore the fact that this case also exposes the intense pressures on children and parents in a country where education can become an all-consuming family burden.
It all hangs on the success of a single child
Chinese parents are emphatic about education. Research shows that overwhelmingly large proportions of family means are channeled into their children’s schooling, which can be expensive and all-encompassing, in a country with a high-pressure education system that is competitive from a young age.
A system of unforgiving exams, extra-curricular activities and a predominance of single-child families in cities (as a result of China's one-child-policy) can mean that a family's financial and emotional resources hang on the fate of just one son, or daughter.
A family's entire future can hang on the success of one child
A family's entire future can hang on the success of one child
The pressure also extends to relatives: just a few days ago I overheard an aged grandfather complaining on the phone to his granddaughter’s primary school teacher. Even in my own family, my granddad’s main preoccupation has long been my cousin’s test scores – the subject of various disagreements over the years.
The narrative of every single child family in China is the same from parents to grandparents: how to provide the best for the child.
But the issue is much more far-reaching than simply a family matter. The rapid accumulation of personal wealth over the last decade in China, means that money and power have come to dictate almost all social transactions - and that includes schooling.
Corruption has seeped in. Even the tradition of expressing thanks towards your child's teacher by giving them a present, has taken on a new currency. Indeed, increasingly lavish gifts and donations to schools now affect how some teachers treat their pupils in the classroom.
For those parents who can afford it, such practices are adopted in the hope of getting that all-important “edge” over other children.
The extra costs can be crippling
Almost all schools in China are non-fee paying for the duration of compulsory education. But a concentration of educational resource in cities has caused significant inequalities in the public schooling system. Getting a child into a good primary school in an urban area can come with a hefty price tag.
In Beijing, this is exorbitant. Gaining a place at a top school by paying half a million pounds for a 75 square-metres two-bed flat inside a school zone (in a country where the average salary is £5,000 per year) is almost a matter of course, for those who can afford it.
Education in China can come with a hefty price tag
Education in China can come with a hefty price tag
For parents like Yanfu - from rural China and at the opposite end of the social spectrum - such advantages are beyond reach, even though all Chinese schools fall within the same public education system.
Families on the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder are forced to make sacrifices to ensure a quality education for their children. Their struggles can be even more trying than the competitive manoeuvrings at the top. Educational resources in the countryside lag significantly behind those in cities. A lack of good schools within easy distance can force them to move to the nearest town - away from their support network of extended family members - solely for the sake of their child's education.
The chance of a better life
Indeed, young people from rural regions are still the main source of labour for China's vast cities. The majority fill jobs in building-sites, restaurants and shopping malls.
While gaining a university place is not rare for a child of rural background, for many higher education can still represent a ticket out of such low-wage employment.
And girls are still at a disadvantage. In the countryside, where two-children families are usually permitted, the prospect for young women is often in stark contrast to their urban counterparts - since priority is still given to male siblings. Such traditional gender biases mean that statistically, girls leave school earlier than boys in rural communities.
Girls are still at an educational disadvantage
Girls are still at an educational disadvantage
Perhaps in the eyes of Yanfu - the father driven to extremes for his ten-year-old daughter, an only-child - education represented a route to better life.
According to his sister, the desperate father had struggled for eight-years, doing odd jobs in order to buy a flat in town, so his daughter could go to school there. When health problems prevented him from taking on further manual work, his daughter’s education became his main purpose in the city.
The pressure for her to succeed must have been vast. In such an atmosphere, a teacher refusing to let a child attend classes can, presumbably, seem devastating.
In China (where there have been a spate of similar attacks on doctors from their patients) social disputes at the lowest denominator of power often signify a dead-end reality. Horrific acts such as Yanfu's are the desperate actions of those people for who money and status would have offered clear alternatives.
For a father who felt he'd given up everything to offer his daughter a life-changing chance at an education, society can become the biggest enemy of all.
Yuan Ren is a freelance journalist who grew up in both London and Beijing. She can be found tweeting @girlinbeijing
