Does the above picture strike you as a bit odd? Look at the kid’s ear. Indeed, that is a cigarette tucked behind a 12-year-olds hair. A couple of minutes later him and a group of similarly aged kid lit up there fags.
This was the sight that I beheld today. We had a lot of fun today at the activities center, of which I will write in a later post. We hung out with a cool group of kids that we met that day and at the time that I snapped the picture we were at the roller skating rink at the center.
I saw the kids smoking, snapped a couple pics and asked the group of kids we were with me why those particular kids were smoking. They told me that was “because they were bad students.” As I was thinking about the day on our way home and found this to be quite interesting. It seems that people students often classify other kids their age as either good or bad student. The peculiar part is that these labels are attached because of more social reasons rather than academic reasons.
I am going to share my observance of this and offer a possible conclusion but I don’t claim to be authoritative by any means. Another instance I saw of this today was when we were having lunch with these kids we asked which of the boys had girlfriend. One of the girls said that one of the boys did not have a girlfriend because he was a “good student.” There have been many other instances where I have asked why certain kids were doing something I have been told the reason is because they are either a good or bad student.
Here in China it seems that great emphasis is placed on education, as it is in America. The observable difference is that it seems that Chinese students have a greater understanding of how important education is (as it define much more of their future) than American student who seem not to care anymore.
The response “because he is a bad student” becomes more notable when you start to consider how an American student would respond. If you asked an American student what he/she thought of a 12 y/o that was smoking a likely response might be that they are lazy or a punk. Not that that response would be bad, it just highlights the difference being discussed. Of course the lack of a diverse collection of English worsd might lead to this, it was something that highlighted to me how the Chinese embrace education.
Be cool; stay in school!