A Research On The Unemployed People's Attitude And Acts Toward Their Children's Education

With the furthering of the reform on our nation's economy system and the transformation from planned economy to market economy, many deficiencies of the old system appeared, which include a lack of industrial structure, administrative mode of enterprise management, overstaffing, low efficiency, and enterprises' being burdened with social responsibilities. It was imperative to lay off redundant staff and smash the iron ice bowl nationwide. The "full employment" phenomenon disappeared, as numerous workers were laid off from the state run enterprises. Most of them have received less education, owned no professional skills, and are advance in age. The labor market usually prefers to seek younger people with university education background. Sociology study finds that the most effective way for individuals to move up the social ladder is education. Only the improvement of the education situation of the low class's off springs can enable them to get a decent position, leave poverty behind and secure a good social life. The unemployed have recognized that good education is the only way out from their current invulnerable situation and the way to stop the passing-on of poverty. For the time being, the stress on the invulnerable group's children's education helps construct and develop the national education system; in the long run, it serves to realize educational equity and social equality, as required by the socialist education.Parenting can play virtually unnoticeably innovation on child's education outcome, particularly parent's attitude and behavior towards education. Therefore, it is significant to study the impact of the laid-offs' opinion and acts toward child education. At the very beginning, the paper presents an introduction to unemployed people's conceptions about child education, their recognition degrees, their expectations and the education effects. The findings show that, due to their similar social status and living experiences, the laid off workers are common in their attitudes toward education. They all recognize the importance of education for their younger generation. The majority of them hope that their children can receive higher education and are optimistic about their children's future.On the next move, the impact of unemployed people's attitude upon their behaviors is discussed in terms of education budget, use of social capital, after-school tutoring and informal education opportunities. The finding results indicate that the laid-off workers have made few improvements in their investment on basic education, the application of social capital and children's homework tutoring. They have great difficulty to afford tuition as it is increasing over the years; they are faced with individual education inequality. Because they are busy making a living and lacking time, experience and adequate education, they can hardly provide tutoring to their children. Their economic state can hardly satisfy their education expectation for their children. Just as the saying goes, "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak".The study on the employed people's attitude and behavior toward child education provides us a profound understanding of the difficulties they meet in the process. To solve these problems, we need to offer more relief, make efforts to eliminate the invisible discrimination against the children with unemployed parents, and ensure equal education opportunities to them. These measures can help provide sufficient manpower capital to achieve good social mobility and promote the harmonious development of the society.