Thoughts on education
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I'm standing in a crowded subway car with a heavy bag weighing more than 10 kilograms on my shoulder. It's fragile, and I can't deposit it on the floor.
Sitting in front of me is a Chinese mother in her early thirties. Beside her is a 6- or 7-year- old boy. He occupies a seat but doesn't sit.
He gesticulates as if he wants to try all and each muscles of his little body. He twists constantly like a snake toy. When he kneels, he brushes his shoes on my skirt and on the pants of the old man sitting to his right.
None of his movements last more than 60 seconds. The child gets bored very quickly and keeps changing positions. His face moves, too; he makes funny faces, each one uglier than before.
Then he rubs his mother's right breast – up, down, up, down – falsely inadvertent and obviously conscious. He "voices" his emotions: vruch, mseee, kaingg, bluum, tronp – a spontaneous language that he never learned and that not even he understands. He shouts, in fact – noise over the noise!
At least 10 minutes have passed. All that time, the mother doesn't say a word, smile or tell him off. She never detaches her eyes from her little emperor.
She contemplates him. She worships him. She adores him. She is not shocked that her child caressed her breasts. He is her blood, her milk. She belongs to him.
Chinese mothers are so full of admiration for their progeny. Their exclusive child! Their one and unique child!
I can't stand it any longer. I am disgusted. Too often have I witnessed such behavior. I turn around.
I'm now facing a European mother. She has a little girl about the same age as the monkey-boy now behind me. Both are reading a book.
The girl says, calmly: "Excuse me, Mom," and she waits for her mother to finish reading her sentence. Her voice volume is adapted to the situation.
When the mother turns to her, the child asks the meaning of a word, than thanks her mother. At that moment they both see me. The mother has no time to tell her daughter to leave her seat to the senior I am that the girl is up – by herself – and she invites me to sit with an angelic smile.
Not easy for the girl to continue to read while standing. She and her mother close their books. They chat, low voice and smooth tone. The girl tells her mother the story she has just read. The mother checks her understanding through appropriate questions. For them, education starts at home and continues after school.
When I left Canada for China in 1991, my twin granddaughters were only five months old. I was blamed by the Italian community, as Italians are very family oriented: "How can you leave your daughter to raise two children alone?"
In my family, children belong to their parents, who are responsible for their education. This doesn't mean that I don't care for them. Incredible the number of letters I exchanged with my daughter before there was Internet; the drawings, and later the letters, I received from my granddaughters; and in these modern times, the e-mails on a variety of topics. Let apart their five visits to China and my more than one-visit-a-year to Canada since I have come to live in this country.
They know me and I know them better than if I had stayed in Canada. Would I dare visit them at home every weekend or call them once a day? Love doesn't request you "see" your beloved ones. Intensity and frequency are two different things. The quality of a relationship can't be measured by the number of kilometers between two people.
As I was able to observe during two decades in China, very few Chinese children know about their parents' youths or their grandparents' stories. Education is given as a varnish and not planted as a tree.
Most Chinese children – even up to 12, 15 years old! – need to be reminded constantly to "jiao nainai" and "jiao shushu" when they meet these adults. They won't do it by themselves. Education is not rooted in them.
Lisa Carducci is a freelance writer in Beijing.
