An interesting piece in China Daily on migrant labor, education and crime:
Criminal activities by migrant teenagers have been increasing in South China's Guangdong Province due to a lack of proper education within families and schools, according to a recent survey.
The survey, conducted by the Guangdong Provincial Prevention and Control of Juvenile Crime Organization, found that migrant teenage criminal cases accounted for nearly 52 per cent of the province's juvenile crime last year.
...
Officials and experts blamed the lack of proper education and protection by families and schools for the increase in migrant juvenile criminal activity.
This sounds fairly familiar: lack of education - or the failure of public education to retain alienated young men - is obviously an issue in the US and Europe as well. The problem takes a particular form in China, focusing on the "floating population" of young rural men who drift into the cities this time of year (just after Chinese New Year) in search of jobs. Sometimes whole families might move, but often young men make the journeys. They give up on education and seek faster money in whatever jobs they can find:
"Most migrant youngsters quit school after they move to the province, and then begin roaming the streets," said Ou Hui, deputy director of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of Caring for the Next Generation.
Rural workers, who move to urban areas in search of work, usually attach more importance to money rather than good education, Ou said.
Ou called the situation "an empty education" within the migrant family, which has become one of the major causes for the juvenile criminal cases.
What is most interesting in the story, however, is the mixture of the traditional "Confucian" notion that education will instill virtue (and, conversely, that lack of education is responsible for moral failings) and a more "Western" notion of rights consciousness.
The traditional sentiment has some truth to it: from a Confucian perspective, "education" by definition is moral education. Whether that is what is actually happening in public schools in China is another question, however. From my own experience as a teacher, I have come to the conclusion that high levels of education do not guarantee moral outcomes. The Hwang Woo Suk stem cell scandal suggests as much. Yet, while ethical behavior may not be guaranteed by education, education certainly can help to instill a moral sense.
Notice, however, how the problem is framed in the China Daily article:
Ou called for effective measures to prevent juvenile delinquency and create a favourable social environment for the growth of migrant youngsters.
"Protection of legal rights in terms of education and work is key to preventing migrant youngsters from committing crimes," Ou said.
He also called for government-run schools to give free access to migrant workers' children.
Usually, these children have to quit schools due to high fees.
"If the educational rights of the migrant children are encroached upon, they may violate the legal system in retaliation," Ou said.
Education is a "right" that the government should provide for but is failing to provide. In the Maoist era "rights" were considered "bourgeois" claims. But now rights are regularly asserted by people in all sectors of society: the farmers who are having their land confiscated, migrant workers looking for schools for their kids, and, even, prostitutes in Shenzhen! This seems to confirm Merle Goldman's argument that rights consciousness is growing in China. And if people are starting to understand themselves as rights-bearing individuals, how long will it be before they also start to understand themselves as free citizens who deserve more of a direct voice in their government. And if they had more of a voice in their government, maybe those migrant youth would get the education they are entitled to.
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