Shanghai To Offer Migrant Worker Children Free Education

From KDS:

What about our children?!
By the end of next year, 100% of migrant workers’ children will enjoy free compulsory education.

"Thinking back to when I used to walk past this place..."

"...I could only sneak a few peeks..."

"Today, having actually walked inside..."

"...my heart is so excited."

Shanghai strongly promoting education equalization. 67% of migrant workers' children are enrolled in public schools.

Comments from KDS:

大头鞋:

Why must they take Shanghai citizens’ tax money and give it to people from other places to use?

喜多郎:

Shanghainese children are taught by their parents from when they are small to be reasonable and have manners, so they will definitely be bullied if they are put together with hard disks raised in the wild. Looks like in the future, our children will have to start learning karate or taekwondo from when they are small.

曹启泰:

I’m afraid that my child will be made crippled by them in the future.

小荣:

If Shanghai was [like] Taiwan, how great this would be, not suffering the government’s oppression.

和谐:

We spend over a million to buy an old apartment in a good school district for our children to get an education…[poor us] Shanghainese…

[Currently, it appears that migrant worker children can go to any school near their residence, but Shanghainese children can only go to the school their hukou is located in, which is why Shanghai residents typically try to buy a house in a good school district to relocate their hukou to that school district so their children can go to that better school.]

格里高里:

Those above who want to emigrate, [some commenters threatened to leave Shanghai and emigrate elsewhere]
after you successfully emigrate,
those foreigners will say, what right do you have to come enjoy our education system, we paid a lifetime of taxes, why should we provide education to your children?

ARALE:

What will our Shanghainese children do? The children of migrant workers are even more garbage than YP children.

沈玉琳:

With everyone swarming to the developed coastal cities, what will China’s undeveloped areas do? Who will build them up?

After these children receive education in Shanghai, they will never go back to their hometown.

阿拉伐是宁:

I support it, only Shanghai’s “losers” would push out wai di ren like this.

Shanghai’s big development came from our grandfathers and grandmothers’ immigration, and the future for a people that excludes foreign cultures definitely has no hope to speak of.

fox:

For a fifth grade little girl to think of writing a letter to our great party secretary, pretty impressive…for this grade to have this kind of ability is pretty impressive…

merlot:

If they just build migrant worker schools, then fine, let them study!
Shanghai taxpayers money is no doubt important, but even more important is the healthy development of Shanghai children. If Shanghai’s good elementary, middle, and high schools carelessly let YP in, then Shanghai’s education system will really be screwed…

Kitagawa:

Hope Hong Kong and Macau will also be opened up,

to lesson the burden on Shanghai people.

BUNNY:

MLGB,
telling Shanghainese people to only have one child,
but when wai di ren have children, they have a brood,
and you want to let them go to school for free in Shanghai?!?
*******

眼科飞猪:

Those children being able to study is still better than having them run wild outside, basic elementary school enrollment is simply inadequate, this is a fact, many primary schools have been combined or closed. Moreover, migrant workers’ children has always been a [social] issue, and no matter what you say, migrant workers have still made a very large contribution to this city. There is no good reason for TF to attack this kind of issue. As for [the migrant workers] having more than one child issue…what, now you guys don’t talk about human rights and freedoms?

wolf76:

Children from outside of Shanghai receiving an education here in Shanghai and you guys are already this angry? Do they have to become illiterate for you guys to feel more balanced in your hearts, so you can think of yourselves as superior?

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  1. I think it’s great…just look at the conditions of migrant’s children on other articles…however i do feel ” a bit” sad for Shanghainese lol, school might get overcrowded and not a lot of children will get attentions from the teachers on their work…Hope Beijing , Guangzhou and other big cities also do the same, to lessen the burden on ShangHAI!.

  2. I can’t believe some of these comments!! Selfish and ignorant!
    To not have an ounce of respect for those who are holding the country up on their backs is appalling. I’d like to see the rich Shanghainese residents do what these millions of migrant workers do on a daily basis; work hard all day, only to come home to worry about their uneducated child’s future. Is it their fault that this is their life?
    Those who are feeling negatively about this decision are probably worried some gifted child of a migrant worker will out-test and out-smart their slow, stupid, spoiled son who is not used to having to work to get ahead.
    Maybe you should be afraid, Shanghainese!

    • Ignorant is true because the chinese government is trying to address the incredibly large aging population issue. This is probably why they are doing this. And the fact that these Shanghainese can’t see that it will actually help them in the long run is what is wrong with most people, and exorbitantly so, in Shanghai. Good job by Shanghai Gov just people are to dumb to realize.

      This type of reaction is pretty normal, parallels being, people in all the boarder states of America were pissed as hell back when Bush gave the mexicans essentially free citizenship. Welfare is always a touchy issue. They call Obama a communist for taking tax money and trying to distribute more evenly through state run medical insurance. Which we still don’t have.

      In terms of who’s fault it is? one can probably point it at the migrant worker direction. Don’t forget the communist revolution was the revolution of the underclass i.e. peasants/migrant workers. We reap what the generation before us has sowed and so will our children…wink wink global warming.

      High horse dismount!

    • I don’t get all these anti-Shanghai posts, my take is that alot of people (especially laowais) are simply jealous that the locals can afford places even they can’t buy on their foreign salaries. Their mentality is not that much different than your average city folk from any big city. If you tell people of Manhattan that suddenly the kids of illegal mexicans can also attend the same exam schools which they have sent their kids to (after spending $$$ in tutoring + extra activities not to mention buying a small apt located in an area with good schools), the wall street elites would be writing op-eds on every major newspapers to fight against this.

      For you people who still insist on Shanghaiese being selfish, try to go to PTO meetings in a good neighborhood in the US or Europe, you will be drowning in pettiness.

  3. Wow, as a foreigner I am surprised at the comments. This does reaffirm my believe regarding Shanghainese

    . You are a bunch of selfish fucks and the stuff I hear about you over here in the West from both Asians and non-Asians aren’t exactly pleasant. Thx for confirming that.

  4. this is probably a mistake. it is always more dangerous to have a well educated mass that doesn’t have anything to do rather than an ignorant one that doesn’t have anything to do i.e. ignorance is bliss.

  5. LOL… the comments here are really funny. It seems that many Chinese city dwellers have forgotten that the great proletariat revolution was spurred in part, by rural dissatisfaction of the excesses of the urbanites. That’s why Chiang and the KMT were thrown out. Be careful in that a few years from now, if enough country bumpkins get angry, they may revolt again. Then another mass wave of city dwellers will be forced sent to the countryside to be re-educated. LOL…

  6. The similarities between the comments of the Shanghainese and right-wing conservatives in the US regarding migrant workers is uncanny.
    How does one shape one’s head to hold the belief that to be poor and hardworking is to be less than human?
    There must be some form of mental illness involved — a normal brain can not think that way.

    • A good analogy.

    • There is a far greater similarity between the stereotype of the ugly shanghaiese and your actual expats living in China. The expats tend think they know more and what’s the best for China than any local. It’s evident in every forum. Then you get the expats who thinks they are better because they make more $$$; the Asian expats are the worst in this category, especially the Taiwan folks who always use the word “mainlander” as a derogatory term.

  7. The amusing thing about the argument about Shanghai residents’ tax dollars going to migrant educations is that those migrants are only still classifed as migrants because of China’s outdated hukou system. Those migrants are, for all practical purposes, already Shanghai residents, and if they were allowed to formally settle in the city, they might eventually contribute to the city’s tax revenue. Therefore, they would be less of a burden.

    Therefore, the anger of the Shanghainese is misplaced. It should be directed at the central government, which has thus far refused to repeal the hukou system. If that system did not exist, the Shanghai city government would have no need to contribute its citizens’ tax dollars to people from other provinces.

  8. I got a chance to teach at some of the Migrant schools in Shanghai for a couple terms. When I first started we taught at this tiny school on the outskirts of the city. It had deplorable conditions and was illegal, but necessary as the kids had nowhere to go. The next term I taught at one of the gov’t built schools and the facilities were amazing, it was actually a step up from my middle school back home and the best thing of all was the kids from our old cruddy school had joined the new school with fresh uniforms and textbooks. As for Shanghainese complaining, that’s nothing new and I can say that in all honesty, my Dad’s side of the family is Shanghainese :P

  9. Oh wow, what a bunch of elitist pricks. Why don’t the migrant children deserve the same rights to an education as native children? If China doesn’t start educating ALL of its citizens, it’ll never catch up with the rest of the world.

    • Why don’t you say the same world to the public schools in the States? for example Berkeley. Why should the non-resident students pay higher tuition?!!

      Discrimination is everywhere, you have no qualification to say such words!

      • at least they don’t deny education all together

      • Hang on, now.

        UC Berkeley is mostly funded by Californian taxpayers, so Californian students get to pay lower tuition than someone from, say, Texas, who hasn’t paid a dime in taxes towards our schools.

        After all, it is “University of California”, Berkeley for a reason.

    • Elitist pricks? Feeling of entitlement? Before pointing the fingers at the Shanghai folks try the expats on this forum and elsewhere in China first.

  10. This makes Shanghai ten times less appealing. First I wanted to live there, but realized the cost of living was insane. Then i wanted to visit, but the people living there aren’t worth a visit.

    I hope the rich kids get shamed by high grades from the migrant worker’s kids!

    But who know, it might also be a great learning opportunity for the Shanghainese kids… If they’re not too spoiled already.

  11. Having recently returned to Shanghai for work after 16 years abroad it strikes me that people here always feel a sense of entitlement. It is not the sort that comes to having achieved anything but just having being born in Shanghai. You go to restaurants and most of the wait staff are treated like shit simply because people here feel entitle to do so. I am the customer and I am god and I will treat you however I want seems to be the most common theme. No consideration is given to how busy the restaurant is or how unreasonable the requests may be.

    Allow the kids to have a proper education; there is nothing wrong with it. Even migration worker pay taxes when they work here. It may be not much because they don’t make much but then again how did Shanghai get so prosperous? It is on the backs of those workers, those that were willing to do the jobs that Shanghainese people though that are below them, the jobs that were too dangerous or those that didn’t pay enough.

    Remember Shanghaiese people, you are only able to make the high salaries today because there is an army of people supporting you below. A few generations ago your parents where the migration worker.

  12. Retard stuck-up asians with lots of money they should go fucking die. Should shove them into the state of how these migrants live and see if they like it fucking ignorant bastards. Children raised in a state of wealth are more likely to turn to crime and other hazardous activities (such as drug taking, smoking) if you bother reading the statistics stupid ass people.

  13. i cannot wait until the darwinism actually kicks in. we will see who gets the highest gaokao score now! to be honest, even though the country bumpkins may be at a disadvantage with lower tech gadgets, the bumpkins can still use public libraries and will actually study at night (the parenst realizing that this would be their only way out of a dismal future will push their studies even more…). hey, maybe in the future china will ACTUALLY win a Nobel on home ground?

  14. Shanghainese are the lowest form of animal life.

  15. American parents are forced to send their children to school with blacks unless they can afford over $10,000 a year for a private school, complaining about your kids going to school with poor Chinese is pretty petty in comparison. Before you start calling me a racist you should read this article:

    http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/20091204_Asian_students_under_attack_at_S__Phila__High.html

  16. Unfortunately, I feel like the bulk of people in China would pretty much behave like this if they were in the position of the Shanghainese.

  17. This is similar to the attitudes of many people to immigrants from foreign countries in many other countries of the world…

  18. Yeah and to how many Americans feel about blacks…

  19. shanghainese people are a bunch of self centered cunts!

  20. HI I AM BAAAAACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    Want to know what? fuck! if anybody here is from shanghai and complains about the invasion of migrant workers all I have to say to you is : FUCK OFF
    STOP saying that the chinese always stick together cause when it comes to helping themselves inside of their own fucking country they treat each other like RATS. shanghai or beijing IT IS ALL FUCKING CHINAAAA
    PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO LIVE ANYWHERE THEY WANT

  21. Shanghai people should wake up and stop being so bloody selfish, spoilt and territorial. Don’t forget that, migrant workers also pay taxes and want to participate in the development of Shanghai. They should be entitle to the same education rights as any other human being.

    These migrant children will grow up and become professionals or workers who will pay tax. It is not like they are having a free lunch of Shanghai resident.

    • So white westerns are so bloody selfish, spoilt and territorial for several hundreds of years!

      • This is free primary and secondary education for children which I am referring too. I am not even referring to tertiary education which may have its own discriminative pricing

        So you are asking poor migrant children to pay more for the same equivalent education as Shanghai kids going to the same schools, teachers, curriculum and quality??? or are you asking migrant children to be denied a right to education.

        Its insane. Not all migrants are bad people and to take the lower moral ground to tar them using the same brush. And use excuses about the US college tuition system just shows lack of empathy, compassion and wisdom.

      • So because other people were bloody selfish, spoilt and territorial for several hundreds of years, that gives them an excuse to be too?

        Other people suck so I’m allowed to suck too?

        Wow, what a world you live in. I feel really bad for you if that’s what you believe.

  22. Wow, this is brilliant.

    China’s middle-class will have to start getting over their “classism” now.

    I’m for this change :) China is finally taking steps towards human rights.

  23. I’m impressed. Shanghai, even if you have a few stupid TF, you’re taking a step forward in the right direction. I guess you guys might be leading another change in the country again.

  24. This is a good news for migrant workers and their children. I sure that those kids will better educated and have bigger role in China than children of above commenters. Education best way to fight poverty.

    Comments from KDS is stupid and narrow minded. Maybe they are afraid that migrant kids will take their “granted” workplaces, as migrant kinds will study better and have bigger will to success?

    Anyway, this is great news!

  25. WOW,

    no response after reading the replies,

    all I can say is,

    “ROCK ON”

    another great article, GET SMACKED!

  26. Are you Angles? Are you representer of human rights?

    Wake UP! What are you doing now?!
    Dare You White parents send children to study in a school fulfilled with blacks and Mexicans?!
    Dare You students ask a school to charge same tuition for IN STATE students and OUT STATE students?

    SHUT UP, LOOKING AT YOURSELF!!

    • ….study english please.

    • US College != US public school system. You’ve tried to make the same point 3 times already, and no one cares. From other comments, I assume everyone besides you understands, but so I will explain it to you.

      1) Educating kids is necessary. College is optional
      2) Kids have little choice in public school. Often it’s whatever location is closest to their home. Sometimes they can move within the same city, but rarely outside of that. It seems quite similar to the Shanghai system. An adult can choose any college on the planet to go to. If you really can’t afford an out-of-state school, surely there’s a large selection within your own state.
      3)There is no discrimination or prejudice of class or race in setting college tuition. The rule doesn’t care one iota who you are, just whether you’ve been paying state taxes.

  27. Kevin, you are obviously a Shanghai person who is green with envy. Your way of thinking is not the way of being a harmonious society. You are a elitest and only care about your own iron bowl.

    Good on the laobaixing to live in Shanghai. They are Chinese as well and they have an iron bowl, Kevin.

    Shanghai people came from eastern Jiangsu and Northern Zhejiang. So there, you guys weren’t the sons of soil man.

  28. Most of those Shanghai kids are spoilt little brats with NO manners anyway. That’s what happens when you’re the only child of a family. A bit of mingling will do them good. This whole Shanghai vs rest of China thing has always been out of hand. I’m from Shanghai, but those snobbish comments make me sick. What makes them think they’re any better? They probably still dump their bones on the tablecloths in restaurants, and not long ago walking around in your pj’s was prevalent in the daytime. Chinese people complain about racism from white folks, but how can we expect people to respect us if we can’t even respect each other? My only concern is how badly these migrant children will be treated in schools. Teachers will treat them like sh!t if they don’t get a decent monetary bribe from the parents.

    • … if you are worried about them getting picked on, i have a funny feeling they are a bit tougher than the little emperors. in some schools migrant worker children might even outnumber the rest… reminds you a lot of the ccp’s early days eh?

      • I’m referring more towards the TEACHERS doing the picking. It is common for teachers to verbally, physically abuse and mistreat children who’s parent’s haven’t paid the teacher a considerable sum of bribe money or gift. Being children of migrant workers, I doubt they’ll be about to afford this.

        • hmm…. well i am a teacher at a good school and have seen no such greenbacks…. am i doing something wrong or do you just have a bad angle?

          • It’s up to the teacher really. Your students are lucky you’re ignorant about the issue. But yes, most parents today aware of having to give a little bribe money.

    • “They probably still dump their bones on the tablecloths in restaurants”, I’m not chinese and that hurt me D:

    • If you are from shanghai you should know that the most arrogant of the Shanghaiese population are actually the folks from outside of Shanghai who have made it in the countryside and finally managed to get a huoko in shanghai by buying properties there.

      Elitism exists everywhere, and is probably the reason why most people actually try to do better in their lives.

  29. If those children are not allowed to attend school in Shanghai. What do you expect them to do?
    You guys never think of the difficulty of those immigrant workers who doesn’t have a place to stay.
    You guys are losers of society.
    What you think is only your own benefits. Every children in Hong Kong and Macau are allowed to attend schools.
    You think you are superior only because Shanghai has a higher GDP per capital. But it relies on the Central government’s economic policy and the work of those immigrant workers.
    Why their children don’t have rights to attend school but yours can?
    I can’t imagine what a bad idea it is to hold an expo in such selfish narrow-minded city!
    Shanghai can never be comparable to Hong Kong and Singapore if some children can’t go to school.
    You guys immigrate to other countries, other provinces, your children can attend the public education system, why you don’t allow other people’s children to do this?
    Stupid Shanghainese people!

  30. Slogans for the expo 2010 such as 做可爱的上海人 (Be a lovely Shanghainese) and Better City, Better Life just seems like a big fucking joke after reading the comments from a bunch of inward looking Shanghainese motherfuckers

  31. Even if they do get into good schools and get good grades… most won’t have much of a future. Its who you know not what you know. Schools don’t teach about networking.

    University grads are damn common. You either must really be a standout talent or just have networks. Dumb rich kids have their parents networks to do amazing things. A smart poor kids who didn’t make his own networks still have nothing but a low pay 9-5 job.

    There won’t be much of a social class shuffle. But educating the poor sure upgrades living standards and manners.

  32. Fantastic news.. Migrant workers have as much right as anyone else to use the services in their community. The term migrant worker shouldn’t be a bad thing, these people are still paying taxes and supporting the local economy, so when i heard some say “Why must they take Shanghai citizens’ tax money and give it to people from other places to use ” I was quite amused.. When the money is handed over to the government it is no longer shanghai’s money, it is China’s money thus it is spent anyway they choose, which in this case is on Chinese people who decided on creating a better life for themselves and not living a life of false consciousness.

    大头鞋: you sound like an elitist idiot, more and more people are adopting a functionalist perspective towards changing who they are, they might not have much chance but they are having an optimistic outlook on life.. But what do you show? Pure pessimism towards the growth and development of China, it’s like they shouldn’t even have a chance in your eyes.

  33. Children problem, almost solved.

    But what about teacher…. Sometimes I feel like homeless uneducated people THINK of applying for teacher’s job, and one of ‘em gets the job…. LOL what he gonna do with the children, their personalities, skill learning stage …

    Personally, I would like to be HARSH on teachers who teach rubbish and don’t care”

    On the other hand, RESPECT to all great teachers!
    HATS OFF!

  34. From my view, migrant workers whether also contributed to Local ShangHai people as human resources since majority of them migrant workers act as employees right ???

  35. Shanghainese ppl will always be shanhainese ppl, you ppl already have made yourself a name in sydney.you ppl are selfish we already know that but why blame other ppl for your own childs discipline.

  36. “Shanghainese children are taught by their parents from when they are small to be reasonable and have manners, so they will definitely be bullied if they are put together with hard disks raised in the wild. Looks like in the future, our children will have to start learning karate or taekwondo from when they are small.”

    Shanghainese have manners, reasonable and being bullied? No way. It seems to be another way around. They are ruthless, rude, look down on people…look around the forum, see what these people says and think, you;ll get my point

  37. “Shanghainese children are taught by their parents from when they are small to be reasonable and have manners, so they will definitely be bullied if they are put together with hard disks raised in the wild. ”

    Lol, that’s what you get for being a sissy cityboy.

  38. Funny things is that richest people in Shanghai are even Shanghaiese… Many of them from the hated Wenzhou with the “native” Shanghaiese themselves from hated Ningbo just 50 years ago.
    http://bbs.xinjs.cn/read.php?tid=616753&fpage=5

  39. Shanghainese, Chinese, Japanese…they’re all pink on the inside.

  40. If you force people into being solidary, they become the opposite…

  41. Increased competition for resources can lead to friction or downright animosity. We all know this. So why is everyone acting so shocked? Would people in Beijing or Hong Kong act any better then those in Shanghai? Are Beijing or Shanghai even planning to offer migrant children a free education? Just curious.

    • I meant to write:

      Increased competition for resources can lead to friction or downright animosity. We all know this. So why is everyone acting so shocked? Would people in Beijing or Hong Kong act any better then those in Shanghai? Are Beijing or Hong Kong even planning to offer migrant children a free education? Just curious.

  42. I much rather have my tax money go to the proper / equal opportunity for education to these children than have it be funding for officials to pig out at banquets with. That aside, the comments are just colored with discrimination but also a ‘hidden’ insecurity and fear that their comfort zone is slowly / rapidly diminishing. Get humbled and a move on Shanghainese because your ass grove won’t be around forever.

  43. I think that poor children need access to free and also, a quality education. It will produce a better future for the society as a whole.

  44. I think the hoards of Chinese students studying abroad are more than enough to prove the point that “you can pay for school, but you can’t buy class.” Why not give these worker babies skill training so they can pick up a shovel and continue the family legacy when they reach adulthood. Buildings aren’t going to build themselves 10 years later either.

  45. Now that I think about it, this could potentially be a very shrewd move on the part of the Shanghai decision makers. If Shanghai is looking to expand, it will need more cheap blue collar labor. Free education for your young ones could be just the perfect incentive to attract hard working parents. While reading this story, I kept thinking of this guy:

    http://www.chinasmack.com/stories/impoverished-farmer-father-abandoned-girl-daughter/

    This new law would be perfect for him. But I would beware of class warfare, which could lead to middle class flight to other cities. Then of course Shanghai will be screwed.

  46. So these people would rather have a growing population of uneducated masses? I don’t envy them in a few years…

  47. @black oreo

    Why do you call yourself that? Isn’t it a redundancy? Is there such things as a “white” oreo?

    PUSAN PLAYA is right about American black students being anti-intellectual. They believe the more intelligent you are the ‘whiter’ you become.

  48. China is a vacum of ill-morals and backwardness.

  49. The problem is Chinese peoples habit of abusing anything and everything until it breaks, then complain about it breaking.

  50. I’ve been working in Shanghai’s schools for the past few years and the number of students is going down by the year. Something to do with the fertility rate of below 1 child per woman methinks. If they don’t find kids from out of town to fill the empty classrooms then there’s gonna be a lot of teachers sitting idly on their thumbs. Without kids, the local education system is going to wither.

    The attitude shown by some Shanghainese commenters above is disgraceful. There are 6-7 million migrant workers in Shanghai at this very minute. That’s a whole lot of tax. And it should all be spent on Shanghainese, you say?

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