The BBC special program is titled "Schools in China." It's a standard piece about three schools in Anhui, a poor province in central China. I just happened to turn on the TV after dinner, and ended up watching it with my 8-years-old son.
The first half of the show is about a high school and a middle school in Anhui: what the schools are like, how hard the students study, their lives and dreams...yada yada yada. You get the drift.
Then the camera crew goes to this primary school for poor children. I'd assume it's one of those showcase schools, where the government officials and rich people can tour and see how well their money is spent and how grateful to them the poor are.
You see these cutest peasant children with rosy cheeks, six, seven years old, sitting very properly in the classroom for the visiting foreigners.
The class starts. The teacher walks in. Kids stand up to greet her.
The teacher turns around and writes on the board: "Love the Eraser (translation)."
She then proceeds to tell these young children that she heard someone in the class has been very naughty and did not use his eraser in a respectful manner.
She breaks the class into several groups, tells the kids to take their erasers out of their drawers, and has the group leaders inspect each eraser and pick the worst one from each group.
She then singles out the worst looking eraser: one that's slightly dirty and has a few holes in it, obviously poked with a pencil by a bored seven years old.
She asks the owner of that eraser to come to the front. It's a robust little boy with pink cheeks that now turn flaming red. He looks horrified and ready to burst out in tears.
She then tells the whole class they are going to do a little "play." She takes out a sweater with many holes the size of your fist. Another boy and a girl come forward and read from a simple script she provides.
The new boy and girl take off the crying boy's sweater, and put the torn-up one on him. They take turns grilling the sinner why he ruined his eraser. How does that make his eraser "feel”? They accuse. How does he feel now that he's wearing clothes with holes?
The guilty little boy tries his best not to cry. With a choked-up voice he robotically confesses to the whole class how bad he has been, how he shouldn't have done it, and how he'll never do it again.
When the teacher is finally satisfied, she has him walk around the classroom and pinky promise each and every one of his fellow classmates. Some kids tease him and call him a dog when he walks around the room.
At last the teacher lets the boy go back to his seat, but only after ordering him to wear the torn-up sweater the entire day. He sits down, and starts to sob.
This is not something that's caught on a hidden camera. All of this was done very proudly in front of the BBC crew. It's meant to be a showpiece for the foreigners to admire.
All these, for a darned eraser.
My 8 years old son and I sat in front of the TV, our jaws dropping. My son, with his drawer full of erasers, each and every one looking worse than that little boy's, turned to me and made me promise I'd never send him off to that school.
A little boy's broken heart, for a darned eraser.
I want to take a whole box of erasers to the teacher. Throw them in her smugly face, and tell her to leave that little boy alone.
China, despite all its newfound money and glory, can never give a little boy his dignity back.
What do you make of it?
Maybe one day you'll catch this program on BBC. Maybe then you can drop me a line and let me know if I was just imagining what I thought I saw.
For a darned eraser.
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