Good Example Of Square And Round Factory Girls Essay

The focus of the chapter “Square and Round” of Factory Girls is on the healthy heap of motivational speakers and writers of books with titles like Square and Round. The chapter focuses on the etiquette and motivational schools in the city of Dongguan. The rise of factories changed the social and educational structure of the city. Factory workers attended night school to learn basic skills that directly related to their work, while those who were on traditional study tracks in the university found their degrees to be useless. The factory system had upended the educational system and turned it upside down. Being turned upside down is the theme of the chapter. During the Cultural Revolution, people had to learn Maoist rhetoric to keep up with the political climate. The new factory ethos upturns the educational stability for the elite. The stability of going to school was undercut by the demand of the factories — young boys and girls left behind their school books to join the factory assembly line. Traditional education has been upturned by factory girls learning etiquette. To be trained in etiquette apparently makes employees more competitive. In traditional Chinese school system, students do not speak, but in the night classes of Dongguan the instructors call on arbitrary students to stand up and speak. Only eleven percent of China’s freshman-age students entered college, and those who were not qualified were funneled into vocational and tech schools. But in the new world order, a massive number of students are looking to get educated in a different system. Without regulation, and outside of history, the Dongguan schools teach what they want. And it seems to work. The traditional precept of Confucian self-sacrifice combines with a new ferocious desire to get ahead. One teacher laments his students come to work in their factory clothes — there is no time to change they complain. The idea is that even with limited resources the students have to make a huge effort to stand out among the crowd. In Dongguan, there is a tremendous pressure to succeed. The tables have turned on history, as well. A teacher extolled the bravery of Chiang Kai-shek when Kai-Shek breached the dikes of the Yellow River to stop the invading Japanese army — although he fails to mention the act also killed hundreds of thousands of Chinese farmers. The teacher throws convoluted ideas to his students. But taken together they make no sense. White represents purity, and blue represents propriety. When pouring tea, one ought to only fill it seventy percent. Purple eye shadow fits all Asian women. These suspicious pearls of wisdom sound like attempts at bad marketing. But even though the classes these students took focus on etiquette, and not history, and on truisms rather than facts, the students are engaged. Although the curriculum focuses on the proper manner of speaking, and behaving, the lesson plans never speak of ethics. The outward appearance matter. It is not uncommon for students to learn how the office works without learning the requisite skills that come with the job. The students are eager to take what they need and to apply it advancing their careers. Going from 500 yuan a month to 1,200 yuan is their goal. Education has become a quick chance to rise to the top, and it does not matter how coherent the lesson. All that matters is the promise that it will work.