The
Dandelion School motto reads in Chinese characters ‘confidence, happiness,
looking for truth, and creativity’ painted over rainbow streaks. The
Daxing campus glints with glass and ceramic mosaics in dancing flower shapes,
an art project created by the students in collaboration with the artist Lily
Yeh. The color, as well as the four goals, attempts to hide the pain that
pervades the school, which provides middle school education for the children of
migrant workers.
According to statistics provided by the school, China has 236 million migrant
workers, most of whom are peasant workers. 3.7 million of those migrants
live in Beijing, accounting for 490,000 school aged children in need of
education. Most of these students lack the fundamentals of education
because of the poverty of their native villages. Though Chinese middle
schools focus on preparing students for the highly competitive high school
entrance exam, Dandelion School aims to give students a broader academic
foundation by fostering critical thinking, interdisciplinary studies, literary
and artistic pursuits, and a healthy lifestyle. This nurturing approach
seems a hefty task to accomplish in just three years.
I
entered a middle school classroom packed with five rows with six students
each. All the children folded
their hands together, elbows resting on their metal student desks. A few kicked their legs in
anticipation. "Hello,"
they sang in unison. My Global
Scholars classmates and I lined up at the front of the room, pointing to the
countries where we were from: the United States, India, Benin, South Korea,
Taiwan, and Nicaragua. The
students only knew where the United States and Taiwan were.
For a challenge as vast as that of the education of the migrant worker
community, the Dandelion School has succeeded in many areas. Though the
class sizes are large, teachers give attention to the children by dividing them
into levels based on math scores.
Testing serves only as a method for assessing the school's success – the
seventh grade teacher assured us that the curriculum focuses on student
progress and a passion for learning rather than statistics.
The
school structure uses collaboration and small group learning, veering away from
the standard Chinese system in favor of catering to the students' unique
backgrounds. The computer teacher
gave me an example of an objective assignment: her students would look through
manuals and figure out the answers for themselves instead of memorizing given
answers. The extracurricular
activities also stimulate curiosity through alternative approaches to
environmental conservation by maintaining a waterfall that powers the
electricity, a social enterprise program that combines the cultural tradition
of handicraft with business experience, and performing and visual arts clubs
that foster confidence.
I
sat with four students, trying to convey with as few and simple words as
possible the task we had given the class.
The project involved creating a new world, using categories such as
food, technology, and clothing.
Give eleven year olds the freedom to develop their own world and what do
they draw? Chopsticks with a fork
and knife set at the ends, cows that milk orange juice, white and brown rice
that tastes like white and dark chocolate, and apple pizza burgers. Though eager to imagine a place outside
the Dandelion School, they hesitated to share their imagination with the class.
Most
of the resources for their extracurricular activities, as well as renovations,
supplies, and food, have all been donated by foreign companies. The Dandelion School does not solicit
aid--companies traveling in Beijing often seek out a token underprivileged
school. But despite all of the
unsolicited contributions of basketball hoops, library books, and solar panels
for hot showers, the students' future seemed grim. Without hukou, the
government social security and identification system for Beijing citizens, the
students will never receive the same career and healthcare opportunities as the
true urbanites.
China
repeats the word "innovation" as the key for future development, but
creating innovation is a nebulous process. That afternoon's exercise on utopias sparked a pathway to
development, the topic of this year's Columbia Global Scholars Program. But these students may never have the
opportunity to develop their imagination beyond the classroom.
