The Problem Of Rural-Urban Migrant Children's Education

During the last decades of the 20^th Century, we have witnessed more and more rural people coming to the cities to seek a better life. This new phenomenon has had a great impact upon the social development of China, and it has given rise to a series of new social reconstructions. The education of rural-urban migrant children has challenged the traditionally segregated rural-and-urban educational system. This thesis begins by analyzing the background of rural-urban migration, and then examines the social problems caused by it. Rural-urban migration also greatly affects migrant children's psychology and cognitive development. Although the right to equal education has been written into China's Constitution and has been readdressed in the P.R.C.'s 1995 Education Law, due to such deep-rooted unequal policies as the hukou (household registration) system, migrant students still do not enjoy equal rights to education. Our government now realizes that such inequalities exist, and it is presently enacting regulations and policies to protect migrant children's equal education rights. However mere tokenism of equal rights will not bring about the desired equity. This thesis is built upon the major principles of egalitarianism, and it examines egalitarian approaches in educational study. From this perspective, the thesis analyzes and interprets the data and information from a four-month qualitative study conducted in Shanghai into migrant children's education. The thesis views the rural-urban migrant children's education on three levels to find out the causes of this inequality in education, viz. on the macroeconomic level of government policy; on the socioeconomic level of the school education environment and family background; and on the level of personal psychology, of the students' emotions. After comparing other countries' successful experiences in reducing inequalities in their own education system, this thesis sets forth four proposals which attempt to address the present problem of migrant children reestablishing their rights to a good education.