The International Forum on Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development, focusing on how to keep the momentum going and work towards a more sustainable future, is being held on Thursday (Dec. 15) afternoon and broadcast live. Organized by The University of Hong Kong and The National Revitalization Administration, experts, NGOs and business organizations from diverse communities gathered online to exchange ideas and share their experiences on poverty reduction and sustainable development.
Professor Scott Rozelle from Asia-Pacific Research Center of the FSI International Studies, Standard University gave a speech titled Common prosperity Begins at 0-3 Year Old: Examining the most fundamental source of China's urban-rural inequality.
Emphasizing the importance of education of children at the ages of 0-3 as well as investment in education, Professor Rozelle analyzed Chinese rural children's current situation in cognitive development. He noted that the level of educational inequality in China is one of the highest in the world with children's reading ability being No 1 low. Mentioning the huge difference between rural kids and urban kids in China, Professor Rozelle said that although the difference has been narrowed a little, it is still very wide.
Professor Rozelle in the speech presented some studies on major cognitive development, language abilities and socio-emotional skills. He said in a study carried out in 10 provinces with 18,000 observations, it is found that 45% of children have cognitive delay, 46% have language delay, and 41% have social-emotional delay. The study shows that 60% have at least one delay.
"It appears as if there is a severe problem among all rural Chinese families that potentially has great consequences for the level of education and ability to learn of the whole labor force," he said, adding that it may even persist across generations.
For solutions to the problem, Professor Rozelle said that parents play a very important role for children's development of cognitive. He said in China 80% of families don't ever read to their kids. "Cycle Stimulation is necessary to young children for development of cognitive development and language abilities and socio-emotional skills," he said. He attached importance to training programs for parents, stressing that training parents on how to stimulate their children helps promote their cognitive development.
Professor Rozelle said that common prosperity begins at 0-3.
"Prosperity will continue to increase if China can reduce inequality. Inequality has to be overcome to let everyone prosper and allow China to keep growing. Equality can only improve if educational inequality is reduced. And in China's competitive education system, children need to be able to learn and thrive in school. China has made great strides in improving rural schools, so today one of the fundamental sources of inequality is poor levels of cognition, language, etc." Finally, he advocated that, as many countries have launched parents training programs, China needs nationwide investment into parental training now.
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