From The Times, 16 May, 2013: “China’s Tiger Mothers are driving a revolutionary shift in attitudes towards primary school cadres — the system that applies rigid communist-style structure to the jobs of child blackboard-wiper, hand cleanliness checker and window-opener.
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
For many years parents fought to secure the coveted positions for their children — feverishly lobbying and bribing teachers to grant responsibilities that would look good on a university application form.
The most hotly desired cadre positions for 11-year-old Chinese children have traditionally included Sport Commissary (organising games), Cultural Commissary (organising class performances) and Labour Commissary (organising classroom tidy-up operations).
But, according to teachers in the southern province of Guangdong, priorities have changed. As increasing numbers of Chinese parents thrust their children into the country’s ferocious educational arms race, the new emphasis is on exam performance, not Communist Party play-acting.
The effect of this, one teacher in the city of Guangzhou told Chinese media, has been a scramble by parents to unravel their previous machinations and release their children from onerous duties. Once liberated from their tasks, runs the Tiger Mother theory, children will claw back precious minutes that can be spent instead on exam revision.
After bullying teachers to give cadre positions to their children, parents are cravenly avoiding any part in the resignations.
“When their children were in second grade [seven years old], the parents made every possible attempt to get me to arrange cadre titles for them. Now those same kids are in fifth grade [11 years old], they put the same effort into resigning those titles,” said a teacher called Deng.
“Dear Miss Deng. Thank you for giving me so many opportunities, which have tempered me very well and greatly helped my personal development . . . I would like to step aside to give the same opportunities to other students and therefore tender my resignation,” read one of the letters.
She says she has received so many resignation letters from child cadres that she now faces a shortfall of “soldiers” prepared to sacrifice their exam performance for the dizzy heights of classroom officialdom.
One parent of a child in Guangzhou told reporters: “When my daughter first went to primary school, we would always push her to run for every cadre position, even if it was just the job of closing the doors. But she will have middle school entrance exams in a year. Being student cadre doesn’t help the exam, so now we mobilise her to study.””
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 