Parent Student Conferences in Rural China

As an American, I am quite familiar with the concept of parent teacher conferences. Often routine, sometimes forced by bad behavior, they give the parent a chance to see how their kids are doing in class and give the teacher an opportunity to share the issues or successes of the student.

That was more or less my thought process when I went to one of my home room teachers with Aiden, a disruptive and disrespectful student from Class 185. Class 185's home room teacher, Mr. Luo, scolded Aiden for several minutes, interspersing stern words with a slap to the head and a kick to the leg that made me flinch, while Aiden stared dejectedly at the ground, occasionally spouting excuses and finally angrily muttering that he wanted to 退学, or quit school.

While children in China are legally required to continue study until the end of middle school (ninth grade), some quit once they reach fourteen regardless of grade level while others simply stop coming (generally to begin work as a migrant laborer in larger cities).

I will admit that I felt a slight sense of almost relief on hearing that, imaging Aiden's disruptive presence no longer throwing my class into chaos. With that I felt deeply sad at my inability to motivate Aiden and slightly ashamed at my readiness to get rid of him. I would like to say that this realization hardened my resolve to motivate Aiden in my class, but to be honest, after five classes that day, I was exhausted and mostly just wanted to return to my room and collapse in bed with a good book.

But not yet. First, I had to finish disciplining Aiden with Mr. Luo. After we both talked with Aiden for several minutes about his behavior, Mr. Luo called his mother, asking her to come the following day (market day, the ideal day for parents to come to the school, since they will likely be in town anyway) to speak with him and Aiden about her son's disruptive behavior. With that, we parted; Mr. Luo sat back down at his desk in the teacher's office, Aiden stalked back to Class 185's classroom, and I limped back to my room. As I left the office, I passed two home room teachers, Ms. Yang and Ms. Chen, shouting at students. Outside, another, Ms. Min, strode in front of three taller boys like an officer reviewing privates, slapping and berating them as three girls watched on the sidelines. I returned to my room, my sanctuary, mentally and physically drained.


The next day, I was in the teacher's office preparing for Chess Club when Aiden, his mother, and Mr. Luo came in for the parent teacher conference. Aiden's mother was worn beyond her years. Her spine was already partially bent from a lifetime of manual labor in mountainous fields. Her hair was black with a spattering of white, her face prematurely lined by the sun and her sons. She looked to be in her late fifties, but I would be surprised if she were older than forty.

Mr. Luo began by explaining that Aiden had misbehaved not only in my class, but several other classes as well. Aiden was disruptive, disrespectful, and did not listen to the teacher. He did not want to continue his schooling. What followed was not the parent teacher conference that I expected, but rather a parent student conference. A meeting both full of and utterly bereft of intimacy.

Aiden's mother, seated uncomfortably and ill-at-ease in a comfortable faux-leather teacher's chair, turned to her son, who was standing a meter to her left, staring at the ground in sullen silence. She launched into a sad, high-pitched scolding, starting with the importance of respecting and listening to his teachers (especially, she would say, gesturing at me, this 外国老师), briefly touching on the considerable impact of education on his future along with a reminder of how hard she had worked to insure his ability to stay in school, and repeating intermittently his status as a twin (and both how it made things more difficult for her and how it meant he should do better, like his brother). Eventually, most of her words were drowned out by sobs. Aiden remained sullen, staring at the ground, speaking only when forced to by Mr. Luo or, more rarely, his mother.

About fifteen minutes into the scolding, as Aiden's mother's sobs began fading away, Aiden's twin brother, Jerry, cautiously entered the room. Aiden and Jerry are identical twins (in different classes, both of which I teach), and they have most of the same clothing, making it hard to differentiate them at times. Aiden has a small scar on this right cheek that I now know well after having had to find him and make him write lines during one lunch. They wore different clothes now too. Aiden wore dark, torn jeans, a shirt with one mismatched button, and an orange and blue jacket while Jerry had jeans on that are four inches too long and an over-large sweatshirt. Both wore brown leather slip-on sandals that most every boy in the school wears (along with many of the male teachers).

While Jerry is by no means a star student, he has never been as disruptive as Aiden. Not long after I had made Aiden write lines during lunch, I asked Jerry about his brother. It ends up that Jerry is the older brother. While this may seem like splitting hairs to you, it has a large effect on his place in his family and therefore on his behavior. In Confucian philosophy, there is a rigid hierarchical family structure where the younger defers to the elder, and even after sixty-six years of tradition-bashing communism, this aspect of Chinese culture is very much still evident. Thus, Jerry is treated as the elder brother and mostly acts the part, more responsible and less disrespectful than his younger twin.

As Jerry entered the office, his mother turned toward him without interrupting her chastisement of his twin. She began to direct her words toward both of them until Jerry interrupted her, complaining, “妈！我不吵！(Mom! I wasn't noisy)” Eventually he was able to position himself by her side, and his mother started using him as an example rather than including him in the scolding. From there he watched the happenings with a mixture of interest and worry that the focus might return to him. His mother continued to castigate Aiden, mostly repeating herself by now as she told Aiden that he should behave in class and listen to the teacher and respect the teacher and study hard so he could succeed. Aiden got in barely a word edgewise, nor did he want to; he was busy staring at the dirty concrete floor, giving only one word answers when forced to respond by Mr. Luo.


As Aiden's mother's words continued to crash over Aiden's unresponsive features, I began to realize the great distance between them. Aiden, like the great majority of my students, lives in the school during the week, only going home Saturday morning for one night before returning to school for evening study hall on Sunday (students have to walk anywhere from one to four hours to go home, so their time at home is incredibly limited). Aiden's father, like many of my students' parents, works in the city for the majority of the year, only returning to Dazhai once or twice each year. Furthermore, when Aiden is home, he often has to work, constructing houses or working in the fields picking tea leaves. Aiden may be twelve, and may be going through puberty with the elegance of an elephant seal on land, but he does not have the privilege of remaining a child.

It made me extraordinarily sad. There had been no hug when his mother had arrived, either for Aiden or for Jerry. There was no touching at all in fact. The distance between them was extraordinary, a gaping absence longing to be filled. We teachers attempt to fill that role, but it is impossible, like trying to shove the square block through the round hole in the children's game I remember so well from my babysitting days. Or, more appropriately, trying to shove three hundred and sixty square blocks through three hundred and sixty round holes, one for every student I teach. Yes, we are able to make connections. Yes, I believe we make a difference. But we cannot replace parents. And there Aiden was. Alone in the world at the age of twelve, with his mother and twin mere feet away from him.


About forty minutes after the parent student conference had begun, the bell rang for the start of afternoon study hall, and Jerry grabbed some fruit from his mother's bag before jauntily turning to return to his class. I too had to leave; my manager was waiting for a phone call from me. I briefly apologized to Mr. Luo (perhaps the second time I had spoken during the whole affair) before walking between Aiden and his mother and out the door.

As I walked to my room, I turned to look back at the office. I wanted to see Aiden admitting his faults and his mother hugging him before she returned home. I wanted to see Aiden coming out of the office with an ashamed, yet confident look on his face, the face of a reformed man. I wanted to see that awful, oppressive distance between Aiden and his mother filled with something, anything. I wanted to see a conclusion.

The sky was a sharp blue with barely a cloud to be seen. Mountains rose up majestically behind the teaching building, terraced farms and small villages built into their slopes by many generations' of effort. The sun shone hard and bright on it all, throwing the office and its occupants into shadow, and I saw nothing at all.

Aiden at Tomb-Sweeping Day, several weeks before the parent teacher conference