Teacher's suicide reveals rural education woes (2)

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POVERTY

Cheng was among at least 150,000 teachers to have been temporarily recruited at village schools in Yunnan during past decades.

These teachers were not on the government payroll and were paid only meager amounts by their village schools. Most of them grappled with poverty throughout their teaching years.

At Zhu's request, Cheng began teaching at Gonghe Village Primary School in his home county Yanjin, Zhaotong City, in the spring of 1977, earning 10 yuan a month.

Like most other rural teachers, Cheng was a mentor, babysitter, cook and nurse in one. In flood seasons, he carried children on his back to cross torrential rivers, and helped preschoolers clean up when they wet their pants.

A junior high graduate without adequate training to qualify as a teacher, Cheng could only be hired as a "temporary" worker, a title he had held for more than three decades.

Until 1995, he earned only 135 yuan a month, about one sixth the average for his colleagues. Neither of his two children went beyond senior high school, as the family was too poor to afford their tuition.

His only chance for promotion came in 1997, when the county government offered a one-year training program for temporary teachers. Cheng did not apply because tuition and lodging expenses were too high.

In fact, the absolute majority of the temporary teachers in the county did not apply. Despite their desire to be on the government payroll, their workloads were often too heavy for them to be absent for a whole year.

But they paid a heavy price for their selfless decision: From 2004, temporary rural teachers were replaced by new graduates.

In 2006, Ministry of Education decided to fire 448,000 temporary teachers, saying they were unqualified. Incomplete figures showed China had at least 500,600 temporary teachers in its underdeveloped western regions that year.

Cheng was even less lucky: he was fired in the summer of 2003, when his salary had reached an all-time high of 170 yuan a month.

Cheng's story was published on the front page of Southern Weekly last Friday and overcast the upcoming Teachers' Day, which falls on Tuesday.

The tragedy of Cheng and thousands of rural teachers has been a shock to China, a country whose mainstream culture is believed to be founded on the thoughts of Confucius, the teacher of all teachers.

While teachers at city schools are often surrounded by greeting cards, flowers and gifts on Teachers' Day, many retired rural teachers in the countryside are unable to make ends meet.

Zhang Xugui worked for two decades as a temporary teacher in Yunnan's Yiliang county but ended up in abject poverty. Unable to stand the poverty, his wife left him in 2009. His son quit university in 2013 to be a migrant worker.

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