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Where have all the good days gone for kids in big cities?
By Wan Lixin |
November 24, 2010, Wednesday
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Print Edition
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IN an article titled "Big cities, the meeting place of strangers" (October 9, Wenhui Daily) Liu Yanyan argued that "better city life" should not just mean concrete jungles, nor racing cars.
It should include the rearing of rule-abiding residents, so as to bring about trust, empathy and compassion between strangers.
Responding to the article, Su Xiu wrote (November 15, Wenhui Daily) that Shanghai in the past was not "a meeting place of strangers."
She referred to the mid-1950s, when her son was a first-grader and her daughter was attending a kindergarten.
On Saturday, the kindergarten let out at about 3pm. As both Su and her husband were still at work, they needed someone to pick up the daughter.
Su's solution was to have her seven-year-old son pick up this younger sister. Su would pay a pedicab driver in advance, asking the driver to take her son to the kindergarten at the designated hour and then bring them home.
Such was her trust that Su didn't need to note down the name of the driver.
In modern times, it's hard to imagine any parent taking this course of action as most of us are aware of the reports of abducted infants and children.
When we say we live in a city of 20 million people, we usually expect others to be envious. We take pride in the number of strangers.
I remember when I was an impressionable rustic boy, I tended to see this urban insouciance as a sign of sophistication and civilization.
But this indifference towards strangers is an acquired feat.
I remember when my son was three, he would smile at everybody he met on the streets, strangers or not. That's instinct.
Now after four years of schooling, he has successfully outgrown his exuberance. Even his natural curiosity in children his own age is somewhat moderated.
Growing up in a city is essentially about learning how to keep a proper distance from strangers. That's not only part of our urban ritual, but sometimes an issue governing life and death.
Standard school precautions already include such warnings as "do not take food from strangers." I wonder if students should also be discouraged from talking to strangers.
Children growing up in cities are universally deemed happy, that's because their need for companionship can be ignored.
I read recently that some urban people are trying to seek companions online for their only kids.
Since the one-child policy tends to be more rigorously enforced in cities, children must venture outside their home to seek companions.
Proximity and tolerable kindness used to be sufficient to occasion friendship among children in the neighborhood.
But as cities grow upward, the limited public space that could be used by children is taken up as parking space.
It is so easy to sacrifice the welfare of children to the idolatry of the market.
In Monday's Wenhui Daily there was a poem by Shao Yanxun titled "Where are the Kite-flying Children?"
"The kite-flying children are also the snowman-making kids/Children who caught cicadas and glowworms./Are you kids, too, like the glowworms, and cicadas, netted by somebody?" the poem reads.
It is wrong to say children are not noticed. As a matter of fact, they are overtargeted as consumers, as a source of profits.
Are children happy at school, with a classroom full of competitors?
Traditional education was primarily a grounding in ethics. Today our vision of education is strictly pegged to professional requirements, from kindergarten onwards.
And unless a pupil shines in scores, he/she risks becoming an object of contempt, facing diminished life prospects.
The purpose of education is to reduce their whole worth to a score.
It seems that children are not less lonely at school.
It should include the rearing of rule-abiding residents, so as to bring about trust, empathy and compassion between strangers.
Responding to the article, Su Xiu wrote (November 15, Wenhui Daily) that Shanghai in the past was not "a meeting place of strangers."
She referred to the mid-1950s, when her son was a first-grader and her daughter was attending a kindergarten.
On Saturday, the kindergarten let out at about 3pm. As both Su and her husband were still at work, they needed someone to pick up the daughter.
Su's solution was to have her seven-year-old son pick up this younger sister. Su would pay a pedicab driver in advance, asking the driver to take her son to the kindergarten at the designated hour and then bring them home.
Such was her trust that Su didn't need to note down the name of the driver.
In modern times, it's hard to imagine any parent taking this course of action as most of us are aware of the reports of abducted infants and children.
When we say we live in a city of 20 million people, we usually expect others to be envious. We take pride in the number of strangers.
I remember when I was an impressionable rustic boy, I tended to see this urban insouciance as a sign of sophistication and civilization.
But this indifference towards strangers is an acquired feat.
I remember when my son was three, he would smile at everybody he met on the streets, strangers or not. That's instinct.
Now after four years of schooling, he has successfully outgrown his exuberance. Even his natural curiosity in children his own age is somewhat moderated.
Growing up in a city is essentially about learning how to keep a proper distance from strangers. That's not only part of our urban ritual, but sometimes an issue governing life and death.
Standard school precautions already include such warnings as "do not take food from strangers." I wonder if students should also be discouraged from talking to strangers.
Children growing up in cities are universally deemed happy, that's because their need for companionship can be ignored.
I read recently that some urban people are trying to seek companions online for their only kids.
Since the one-child policy tends to be more rigorously enforced in cities, children must venture outside their home to seek companions.
Proximity and tolerable kindness used to be sufficient to occasion friendship among children in the neighborhood.
But as cities grow upward, the limited public space that could be used by children is taken up as parking space.
It is so easy to sacrifice the welfare of children to the idolatry of the market.
In Monday's Wenhui Daily there was a poem by Shao Yanxun titled "Where are the Kite-flying Children?"
"The kite-flying children are also the snowman-making kids/Children who caught cicadas and glowworms./Are you kids, too, like the glowworms, and cicadas, netted by somebody?" the poem reads.
It is wrong to say children are not noticed. As a matter of fact, they are overtargeted as consumers, as a source of profits.
Are children happy at school, with a classroom full of competitors?
Traditional education was primarily a grounding in ethics. Today our vision of education is strictly pegged to professional requirements, from kindergarten onwards.
And unless a pupil shines in scores, he/she risks becoming an object of contempt, facing diminished life prospects.
The purpose of education is to reduce their whole worth to a score.
It seems that children are not less lonely at school.
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