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SPECIAL CLASS: Students in private Cangshan School in southwest China's Yunnan Province learn to plant vegetables (CFP) |
"It scared me somewhat," Tang said. "Children from well-off families seem to have more chances in the school and already know how to use money as power. I don't want my daughter to be like that."
But instead of teaching her daughter at home, Tang sent her daughter to a special school called Ririxin School in north Beijing's Huilongguan Community. Initiated in September 2006 by Wang Xiaofeng and several other parents, its original purpose was to gather their kids together and find some good teachers to teach them exclusively.
According to Wang, public schools don't care that much about building the personalities of students, which is actually more important than getting high marks.
The school has grown very quickly. Now it has more than 30 teachers and 200 students. "We keep the number of students in each class to no more than 15, so teachers can take care of everybody easily," Wang said.
At first, Tang sent her daughter to the school's trial classes. After one week, she found out Wenwen became much happier and more outgoing. Tang then transferred her daughter to Ririxin School.
Chen Zhen, another Beijing local, did the same thing, but in distant Dali in southwest China's Yunnan Province. "I was fed up with urban life in Beijing—the traffic, the pollution and pressure. But what worried me most was the education of my child. Everybody wants to go to prestigious schools and it is a heavy burden not only for children but also for parents," said Chen, who believes the highly competitive selection of students to top public schools creates an unhealthy educational environment.
Chen and his wife spent two years looking for an ideal place to live and better educate their child. They finally settled down in Dali and rented a two-story house with a courtyard in the middle of the Cangshan Mountain. They named the school Cangshan School.
"It has almost zero pollution and it is like a Shangri-La for us," said Chen, who started to accept students from all over the country in 2010. "We planned to admit a maximum of 15 students, teaching them cooking and planting vegetables in addition to academic lessons."
Many parents went there but only few finally decided to stay. "We understood their concern so we offered three weeks' trial lessons to show them what were going to teach."
Chen also meets some other people moving from big cities to Dali, including musicians, painters, and architects. "I make more friends here than I did in Beijing," Chen said. The artists are invited to the school to teach students music and painting. "We even held our own concert in 2011."
Unfortunately, the owner of the house refused to renew the rent contract in early 2012. Chen tried to look for the other places but felt unsatisfied with all of them. Finally he decided to take the students to travel around the world as a field trip.
The project is ambitious. Chen plans to travel along with his students in one continent each year and finish the whole planet in five years. In April, they started the journey in Asia. "We'll share our travel experience online occasionally. For me, travel is a very good way to educate," Chen said.
Xu Jiangyong, an official with the Ministry of Education, doesn't support homeschooling. "It needs financial support and some parents who think they might be qualified to teach children at home also might fail. If they don't have relevant experience, I have doubts about their teaching quality."
"I don't agree with that," said Yao Yongguang, who used to work in public schools for more than 10 years but quit to teach his daughter and son at home. "I actually try not to use the traditional teaching way to teach my children. I think not having relevant experience can even be an advantage."
Xiong Bingqi, a professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University, believes homeschooling is a trend in the future. "I think it should be a free choice for parents and children. But legislative efforts should be made to regulate the legality of homeschooling."
Email us at: yuanyuan@bjreview.com | 
