Classroom battle tests children for officialdom culture
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| A survey by Beijing-based newspaper Legal Evening News last month found that 90 percent of 180 interviewed first-grade students wanted to be "officials" in their classes, and 70 percent aspired to be the monitor. |
On a late October afternoon, Duo Duo went to the railway station after her primary school classes ended, instead of going home as usual.
Her plan to run away was foiled when police in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, noticed the fifth-grader and took her home.
Duo Duo's attempt to join China's army of street children was prompted by her failure to become class monitor -- an ambition that her father describes as an "obsession."
Despite getting good grades since starting school and being a class representative in several disciplines, she was not satisfied and had always wanted to be the monitor.
But the competition for the post was just too intense.
"We would have liked her to become the monitor, but we are worried that she is kind of obsessed," Duo Duo's father says.
However, her ambition is nothing exceptional in China's primary schools. A survey by Beijing-based newspaper Legal Evening News last month found that 90 percent of 180 interviewed first-grade students wanted to be "officials" in their classes, and 70 percent aspired to be the monitor.
In China's schools, each class usually has a committee, headed by a monitor, whose members are chosen from outstanding students to help teachers administer the class. The committee is appointed by the head teacher or be elected by fellow students.
A monitor or other class committee members have the authority to keep order when the teacher is absent and to punish troublemakers or recommend teachers to punish them, and often get preferential treatment from teachers.
Sociologists and experts believe the widespread obsession reflects the culture of "power worship" in the world's most populous country.
The Chinese have traditionally valued official rank. A saying in the Analects of Confucius, the collection of the words and acts of Confucius (551 B.C.-479 B.C.), famously goes, "He who excels in study can follow an official career."
The tradition still exists. China's 2011 national civil service examination to select government employees attracted 1.3 million qualified applicants, but only one in every 65 is expected to get a civil service job.
Some pupils surveyed by the Legal Evening News described class official posts as "awesome" because class officials "govern people."
"It looks cool to become a class leader and that would make me feel great," says Teng Haonan, a first-grade student in Shanghai.
Teng's bid for a post is supported by his mother, who believes it would give her son confidence and help him develop management and communication skills.
However, more immediate incentives also drive the trend.
Monitors are more likely than their classmates to win honors, which can earn them bonus points in competition for enrollment at prestigious middle schools. Sometimes the position itself is an advantage during enrollment.
"Class leaders always gain more favor from teachers," says Wu Lin, a fifth-grade boy in Beijing's Haidian District.
Many parents take part in the competition by asking for "special favors" from teachers. They make phone calls and visit teachers, and some even offer "gifts."
"Many parents call me before the election of class leaders and ask for special care for their children," says a teacher surnamed Huang, who was in charge of Duo Duo's class and described the situation as "embarrassing."
"Two thirds of the students in my class want to be class leaders, and some parents have talked to me about this," says Zhou Xiaofang, a teacher in a private primary school in Beijing.
Some teachers, in an attempt to cool the rivalry among children and parents, rotate the positions among students.
"We have 10 class officials in the 30-student class, and next semester we will offer more positions and let more students have a chance," Zhou says.
Wang Jin, a sociologist at Sun Yat-Sen University, says education authorities are to blame for the situation because official positions are used from primary school to university to reward good students.
Meanwhile, large class sizes in many schools make class officials indispensable in their management. A typical Chinese class can have 60 students, compared with around 15 in the United States, Wang Jin says.
"Children learn from adults. Some kids are apparently influenced by the misguided values of the adult world that judge a person's social worth by their official rank," says Wang Ning, dean of the sociology department at Sun Yat-Sen University.
Wang Ning says the problem is made worse by many adults who use official careers to gain personal benefits, instead of serving the public.
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