The Terror of Education

On the first day my daughter went to pre-school, we entered the classroom and the teacher invited her to sit on a small stool. All around was the sound of crying. My daughter also had tears in her eyes. The image I can never forget was that I saw twenty or more little identical porcelain bowls placed on that lengthy low table, all of them old. The edges of all the bowls had nicks of exposed silver where I don’t know how many sets of little teeth had nibbled and gnawed. I suddenly had the impression of another similar piece of tableware that I had encountered before. I remember now: the patients in the insane asylum each have the exact same large bowl with the porcelain enamel in poor repair. In one of Kunming’s prisons, I had also encountered prisoners each holding this same black porcelain bowl waiting in line for rice. Why are they all porcelain? Maybe it’s because it wears well. Please forgive these cruel mental associations, which relate our country’s blossoms to mental patients and prisoners. The kindergarten teachers are all incredibly warm and beautiful, of course, I’m not worried about them. But that identical tableware, those little gray porcelain bowls, in that moment really did make me comprehend the core substance of education.

On the first day my daughter entered elementary school I accompanied her to the term’s opening ceremony. Everyone grabbed a small stool and sat in the playground. The principal’s speech was actually exactly the same as the one given by our party secretary in my work unit. It was about the current great position of China both domestically and internationally, and the Chinese people’s courageous struggle against adversity. My seven year old daughter tiredly held up her head and blankly gazed at the principal on the lofty stage. After a while, when noticing a butterfly flying above the heads of the school children, she immediately forgot about that Mr. Principal wearing his western suit and red tie and watched the butterfly.

On the last day of the term for the first year students, my daughter wanted to join the young pioneers club. But how to join? Every person had to be voted in by the whole class. That day after coming back from a meeting, my daughter dispiritedly told me that her name was among the last few names on the roster. Her classmates had been accepted one after another, “and it still wasn’t my turn, still wasn’t my turn, still wasn’t my turn, and then the teacher called my name and all of the little friends raised their hands. I was so scared! What if everyone hadn’t raised their hands?!” My daughter still isn’t used to the word classmates, she calls them “friends”. In the class there were two friends who had not been accepted by the class. I asked her why and she said she didn’t know. This kind of thing is truly terrifying. Who really knows what kind of effect this event will have on the rest of those two poor babes’ lives. They’re not even eight years old.

Yu Jian 于坚

from Brown-cover Notebook – Loose-leaf Binder