Losing at the Starting Line

Losing at the Starting Line

The inequality on Early Child Education Between City and Country

Abstract: In recent years, topics about inequality on education are booming, especially on the part of Early Child Education between city and country. Some experts may argue that Early Child Education accounts for only a small part of the inequality. However, in this paper, I will probe into the facts that the inequality on Early Child Education between city and country does exist severely in three respects: Firstly, mother’s physical and mental preparation on the early child education; Secondly, the investment of nutrition and medical care on the early child education; Thirdly, the start and continual time of the early child education, which leads to the inequality on the student’s following educational path.

Key words: inequality, Early Child Education, city and country.

Introduction：

Recently, the progress of the equality of education is moving fast, surpassing the last decades. However, there are still many serious and latent problems desperate to be solved, especially the inequality of education between city and country in terms of the partial policy of the government and different socioeconomic backgrounds, which implies clearly that we still have a long way to go before reaching the final  educational equality balance. 

Among all these inequalities in the education between city and country, the Early Child Education (children aged under three) is usually the easiest one to be underestimated and ignored , to which rather less attention is paid, compared with the abundant researches on the elementary education, middle education and high education.On the contrary, its effects on the results is phenomenal, evolving into the saying “ children are losing at the starting line.”

Main Body：

Early Child Education is often defined as the period of education that children received under the age of three, including simple parenting, home-tutoring from specialized teachers in the fields,such as music and dance, and institute-based kindergarten.

A 13-year research of early child development conducted by the Harvard University has suggested that , nearly most of the language (around 1ooo words）used in ordinary conversations for the remaining of our lives is already acquired before the age of three. Besides , this research has also further claimed that , during the first second and three years of life, children would get the basic skills that they will adapt to, including auditory comprehension, verbal ability, both at home and at school. Almost at the same time, children’s personality has formed and shaped. And finally, once over the age of three, instead of reacquiring their basic skills and reshaping their personality, most children would choose the easy way, just continuing to expand on existing knowledge while ignoring their mental growth , to some extent.

According to an anonymous scholar in 2008: ‘ Since parents do not normally send children to preschools under the age of three, especially the poor socioeconomic families located in the countryside. Compared with the highly well-developed  parenting at home and preschools in the urban region, are children from the country missing out the most important years of all? ’

Unquestionably, that is real, to some certain degree. Many studies have shown that ,normally, young children from poor countryside do less well and overshadowed by the children that come from better socioeconomic families in the city in the current educational system. What are the real and fundamental reasons lying behind the result?

Here are three major respects that lead to the inequality: Firstly, mother’s physical and mental preparation on the early child education; Secondly, the investment of nutrition and medical care on the early child education; Thirdly, the start and continual time of the early child education.The following is how this cause mechanism work:

It is usually a default in most modern family that, no matter in the city or in the countryside, it is the mother that mainly in charge of the children’s early education. Nevertheless, there are enormous difference between mothers capability, no matter in the field of the physics and mentality.

It is generally reckoned that mother in the countryside are usually put in a rather unfavourable situation : Normally, they have not received sufficient and appropriate physical exercise even if they are girls at home or students at school, due to the unawareness of the importance of physical exercise inherit from their family, or serious“mark-oriented” educational test system in their regions,which sacrifices the class of the physical exercise for liberal teaching. Undoubtedly ,the results are striking: on average, many of the women in the rural areas do not prepare their body well for the coming pregnancy. They may highly incline to catch a disease and then take some nonprescription drugs without consideration on its potential hazard toward their baby. In contrast, with the guarantee of a fit body and the well-advanced medical suggestions and aid, the women in the urban region usually enjoy a steady and protected situation, ensuing their unborn baby a perfect start.

Besides, when we move on to discuss mother’s mentality, one part we could never neglect is that different social background breeds different social culture. Generally, the women in the countryside tend to be pregnant nearly seven years earlier than that in the city.( women in the countryside usually have a baby at the age of 18-23, while women in the city prefer to conceive a baby at the age of 23-30.) Therefore, it can be implied that, normally, the women in the city receive more education, with an average educational period mounting up to 14 years, usually with a diplomat of bachelor’s degree or at least with the high education. On the contrary, most women in the countryside only finish the compulsory education and extra professional job training, including the elementary education and middle education, adding up to less than 11 years.

Subsequently, the women in the city possessing more knowledge and skills are provided with better social economical resources over the women in the countryside. And consequently, like female animals storing and reserving food for their breeding seasons, the women in the city make great preparation for their pregnancy . Therefore, they would likely invest more money on their education. On one side, they would choose the food with high nutrition and collocation well with the diet ,allowing the baby unborn grow more safe and sound; on the other side, they would turn to specialized experts ,doing proper prenatal education to activate their baby ,with some certain movements and music to arise their baby’s awareness.

Furthermore ,once their baby come to the actual world, they would take particular attention and care and then start the early education at a rather young phase(8 months perhaps or even earlier), fostering children’s intellectual, language, social and motor-development step by step scientifically. Unfortunately, the majority of the women in the countryside would likely to fail to help their children’s intellectual development, not to mention that some inappropriate behaviour, such as sneering and accusation, may suppress their children’s talent. What’s worse is that, in the remote areas, the education would sometimes stop for a period of time due to the women’ job change or they shift their guardianship to the last generations ,as we define these children as ‘left-behind’ children, extremely lacking the sense of belonging and normally be overshadowed by the well-cared urban children in the following competition.

Discussion: 

In this essay, it discusses the causes of inequality on the Early Child Education between the city and countryside mainly by reading previous relevant papers and individual analysis based on the data provided. Therefore, depending only on the simple paper reading, without the well-designed experimental research and questionnaire, it is hard to make a “seeking truth from the facts” conclusion.

Conclusion:

The inequality on Early Child Education between city and country does exist severely in three respects: Firstly, it relates to mother’s physical and mental preparation on the early child education; Secondly, it is relevant to the investment of nutrition and medical care on the early child education; Thirdly, it concerns with the start and continual time of the early child education, which leads to the inequality on the student’s following educational path.

References:

Early Child Education, ielts.book 5,passage 1 ,page 62-63

Reference in Chinese is omitted.

                 

Author: Puen/ Emma

Student card: 3151701056

Class: English of 1503

Finish date:5/30/2018

Losing at the Starting Line