Is it difficult for children from poor families to succeed?

By APD Writer Yang Siyao

“Poverty will not last forever. However, if we don’t spend the money on education, we will always be poor,” said He Faneng, a farmer in southwest China’s Yunnan Province.

In 2005, the man went blind due to uveitis and lost the labor capacity. The family of five, including He Fanfeng, his wife, his elderly mother and two young sons, were supported by meager subsistence allowances and incomes from pig and chicken-raising. However, the parents still pinched and scraped to send their children to school.

Their painstaking has proved to be worthwhile. In 2014, one of their sons was admitted to the Department of Mathematics of Peking University, one of Chinese top universities. God never give this young man any preference. However, he proves that poor children can be outstanding.

In recent years, the media frequently hype that the people from humble families will have no promising future. He’s son’s admission to the country’s most prestigious university slapped the media.

In today’s society, social hierarchical system was increasingly consolidating with the gap between the poor and the rich widening.

For example, four generations of Bush family are Yale alumni. "I inherited many connections from my family,” said U.S. former president George Bush. Wealth, connections and educational resources of upper class are handed on from father to son.

Students from well-off families always achieve all-round development by learning English, the violin and painting from childhood. They even can choose to study abroad rather than taking national college entrance examination, which help them broaden their visions.

In contract, it becomes more difficult for poor children to succeed because they have lost at the starting line. For example, some of them even can’t afford tuitions. And their friends are only those from similar families. Thus, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Although some of poor children could also succeed with all their efforts, but for well-born children, this success is so easy. If they want to catch up with the winners of ovarian lottery, they need to spare no pains to struggle in their lifetime.

But, anyway, as for children from poor families, they have no choice but to study hard.

(Asia Pacific Daily)