'Barefoot Teachers' Left Behind in China

Sun Jingxia displays awards she received in her more than 30 years of teaching. She and other 'barefoot teachers' lacked formal training but helped fill a desperate need in China. (By Maureen Fan -- The Washington Post)

Sun recalled being so nervous that day in 2002 that her hands shook as she signed her name on the first page of the examination. She hadn't slept for two days, so her vision was blurry. Her reputation, career and long-awaited chance to raise her income all were at stake.

After the test, she said, she asked about her score, but her principal at first professed ignorance. Later, when she ran into him in the village market and demanded to know the truth, he told her that even with extra credit for her experience and awards, she had failed by one point. Sun said she crumpled into a heap by the side of the road, her bicycle clattering to the ground beside her.

"The test was not difficult; I knew the answers," Sun, 53, said in a halting voice. "I was sick, and I was so nervous because this is the exam that will determine my fate. But I never expected I would fail it."

In Jinzhou, about 2,900 barefoot teachers were promoted to professional status after the test, according to Wang Yinghua, 52, a barefoot teacher from a village 30 miles northwest of Sun's home. About 800 were dismissed from their jobs.

Wang was one of those dismissed, 27 years after starting work as a teacher. She had failed the exam by four points.

The government, Wang explained, had said "barefoot teachers should be treated the same as professional teachers when they retire, that they will gradually make all qualified barefoot teachers into professional teachers, step by step."

But as Wang and others learned, it didn't work that way. Instead, they say, the system was undermined by corruption.

Shortly after the test, the peasant teachers of Jinzhou began to hear stories about people promoted to professional status despite not having graduated from middle school, one of the necessary qualifications. They discovered former barefoot teachers who had not passed the exam. And they heard that some had bought their positions by paying local officials up to $6,400.

"As soon as I learned I had failed and there was corruption involved, we began to petition," Sun said. "In July, we went to the Jinzhou municipality government office building. There were 200 barefoot teachers, and we sat in their yard for four days. None of us could afford a hotel; we just slept on the ground."

That protest lasted more than a month, according to Wang. There were larger sit-ins in Shenyang late last year and again in March, June and July.

"Many of the new professional teachers are not even as good as us," Wang said. "Some are shoe sellers from the market. Some are butchers. One is even mute. He doesn't teach, but collects the salary and pays a cheap substitute to teach in his place. His father is a township government official."

Said Sun: "There is a professional teacher in my school, I won't mention her name. Her name is not on the list of people who passed the exam. She wasn't even a barefoot teacher before. I heard her family paid the education bureau. There are many people like her in every town in this place."