Lifting a stigma in China

A new course offered for students in many of China’s vocational schools is a drama workshop. The goal, however, is not a job in theater. Rather, students are encouraged to speak out in a theater setting about the public stigma – and self-stigma – of being in vocational school.

They are taught to write a play and perform it before an audience based on their feelings about a deep social prejudice in China against those who do not follow the academic track for a university degree. They verbalize the internal shame, helping them reshape a negative identity, according to Wang Zijin, former program director at Hope School, a platform designed for mainly rural schools.

Some students find it helpful to joke about the stigma. Others feel a freedom just in responding to the labels attached to them – such as “loser” or “washout” – for not passing the rigorous exams to get into high school or university. “We are not inferior to others; we respect ourselves,” one student wrote.

Ms. Wang cited the ultimate goal for students: “By playing themselves they become new versions of themselves,” she wrote in Sixth Tone, a news website in China. They lift themselves above a social curse.

The drama program is a key part of a cultural effort in China to treat vocational training with equal importance to general education. In fact, that goal was stated in a 2022 law that included dozens of reforms in what is the world’s largest vocational education (voc-ed) system.

China will face a shortage of nearly 30 million workers in the manufacturing sector by 2025, according to official data. The shortage may hinder a plan to create an “innovation economy” that can reduce the high rate of youth unemployment – a problem caused in part by a surfeit of university graduates who cannot find work in their fields.

The reforms – beyond trying to end the stigma against vocational training – include allowing voc-ed students to take some academic courses and pushing employers to set up more and better apprenticeship programs. In addition, hundreds of new voc-ed schools are being built, while teacher quality is being improved.

“It will take time for people to stop stereotyping vocational education,” Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the National Institute for Education Sciences, told Sixth Tone. “For decades, many Chinese have believed education is to train literati and boost talents that can govern society. But education should also equip people with the abilities for labor. We need to change people’s mindsets.”

Or as Ms. Wang wrote about voc-ed students taking the drama workshop: “They can see that life doesn’t end when vocational school begins.”