Save the Village Children
One Hundred Chinese Doctors submit a Written Appeal to Premier Wen Jiabao

The Epoch Times


A little girl from a poor peasant family in Henan Province earns money by performing acrobatics on a street in the business district in Hefei, Anhui Province. (Getty Images)
China’s agriculture, village life, and the peasants are always key issues discussed at the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress and the political consultative conference. After a thorough investigation of Chinese villages, over 100 doctors submitted a report to Premier Wen Jiabao regarding the difficult situation of education in rural areas. They hoped the Chinese leader can solve this problem of rural education.

Hong Kong’s Da Gong Bao said that the 2000-word report was written by over 100 doctors from the Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University. When “a hundred doctors visit villages,” these doctors stay in the rural areas for two weeks. The report, detailing the current situation of villages and peasants in China, was written after listening to the peasants and talking to the administrators in the rural areas.

The report stated, “When staying in rural areas, we can see how difficult it is for village children to go to school. When we saw the low dirt wall and the dilapidated school building, we were very upset and could not calm down. This compelled us to write to you to appeal to rescue the village children.”

The report also described in detail the difficult situation of rural education. Some of the most basic needs are not provided. The schools lack resources; some have no computers. The village schools are short of teachers, and even the ones there don't have consistent qualifications. Some of the teachers haven’t even finished elementary school education. The infrastructure in schools is therefore extremely weak. Children attending school face huge obstacles in order to even make it to school. Village children must bring their own food and bedding, and walk almost 10 miles through mountain roads to get to school.

One of the participants, Dr Guo Yajun, said that when the agricultural tax issues are solved, the problem in rural education becomes very prominent. The radical solution for problems in villages is in education.

According to statistics, the current rural labor force in China is approximately 482 million. About 87.8% of these have never received any education beyond junior high school, or even lower. Some school children have no hope of entering school, and will lack the necessary skills to make a living, and thus be forced to stay at home. With this current lack of education, their lives seem hopeless. Every year approximately 10 million children leave school and return to their home villages to work on the farms.