Heroic Kids Risk Their Lives To Learn

[BeBMan]

In Vietnam.

Every morning when the sky is still foggy, dozens of students in the mountainous commune of Trong Hoa in Minh Hoa District, Quang Binh Province take off their uniform, put on plastic bags and swim across Khe Rao River to get to school.

Around 7 km away from Trong Hoa Commune is Ong Tu Village with 106 inhabitants and 20 households. Of them, 14 are studying at Hung Primary School. And in nearby Ka Ooc Village, 10 students are taking class at Trong Hoa Junior High-school.

To these 24 students, Khe Rao River is their only road to school.

“In flooding seasons, school is closed for a month,” said Ho Danh, a 4th grader at Hung Primary School.

And in drier days, Danh said he and his friends had to overcome their fear to swim across the river.

“We wade across the river in winter also,” Danh continued.

It takes boys couples of minutes to get to the other side. For girls, swimming across Khe Rao is much more challenging.

Ho Thi Thoai, an 8th grader at Trong Hoa Junior High said she used to be very scared of the swift-flowing river. But she had to muster courage to learn swimming from a friend because she wanted to go to school.

According to 79-year-old Ho Nhung, who is Ong Tu Village’s chief, students here have had to swim to school since last winter.

The village used to have a boat to take them to school but it was swept away in a flooding season.

“No child has been hurt but accidents can occur at any time,” Nhung said. “We all dream of a bridge but it is yet to come true.”

On September 17, the Trong Hoa Commune People’s Committee gave students in this village a boat and life-jackets as a temporary solution.

Dinh Xuan Tien, Chairman of the committee, said the commune had asked higher authorities to build a bridge crossing Khe Rao River as well as a road to connect Ong Tu and Ka Occ village.

But Tien said the commune doesn’t want to move local residents to clear sites because they are needed to protect the forest.

Dinh Quy Nhan, Chairman of the Minh Hoa District People’s Committee, has also told Vnexpress newswire that the district could only urge parents to take their children to school and offer life-jackets because it would be beyond the district’s budget to build a bridge.

Shame they can't afford the bridge.

http://en.www.info.vn/science-and-education/faculty/36635-swimming-to-school-.html

[Combat Ingrid]

Their grandkids will never hear the end of it

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I'm going to wait about ten years and then buy all of the surviving kids a drink.

[KrazyHorse]

The lesson from this is how important the rise of cities is in the development of economies. Never forget that when you look at images of shanty-towns: those people have come to the cities to flee rural poverty and to gain access to the enormously improved opportunities they see where you and I see only slums. Bucolic happiness is a rich country's fantasy.

As it says in my sig, stadtluft macht frei.

[DaShi]

That's misleadingly inaccurate. You're basically comparing two piles of **** and trying to say one smells better. While individual circumstances may vary, many in urban slums die of communicable diseases and violent crimes that they would not have experienced in the countryside. Often these individuals are driven out of the countryside because their homes were destroyed by modern industry, including war. While I know that your intention is to further demonstrate the benefits developing market economies, using the dichotomy that "cities = good" and "rural = bad" is not only naive, but undermines your position. Plus, it makes you look like a privileged tool, like HC.

[Hauldren Collider]

So your key observation here, DaShi, is that cities are not better in absolutely every respect than the countryside. But I don't think city dwellers have to swim surging rivers to get to school, even if they have to deal with violent crime. And although there are communicable diseases, unlike the countryside, cities have doctors.

There is a reason people build cities. There is a reason cities become huge. People move to cities seeking a better life and they usually find one. You can prove all of KH's statements with the simple observation that cities tend to grow over time and as an economy advances, the proportion of rural residents to urban residents skews urban.

[KrazyHorse]

That's misleadingly inaccurate. You're basically comparing two piles of **** and trying to say one smells better.

Yeah, everything is **** until it gets better. My point is that poor people in these countries have judged for themselves and are rapidly making th choice to abandon the countryside for the cities. The exact same pattern as occurred in the West 200 years ago.

While individual circumstances may vary, many in urban slums die of communicable diseases and violent crimes that they would not have experienced in the countryside. Often these individuals are driven out of the countryside because their homes were destroyed by modern industry, including war.

You're a ****ing idiot. That's all I can say. The idea that development has made the average person's life worse flies in the face of all evidence, according to pretty much any metric you want to name.

While I know that your intention is to further demonstrate the benefits developing market economies, using the dichotomy that "cities = good" and "rural = bad" is not only naive, but undermines your position.

There's no dichotomy here, you ****ing buffoon. This is a statement about averages. There will be a net flow into the cities, driven by individual human decisions and the urge to improve one's own lot and the lot of loved ones.

Plus, it makes you look like a privileged tool, like HC.

I'm not the one who looks like a privileged tool here. Unlike you, I have enormous respect for those in the ****ty 80% of the world that are pulling themselves up out of the ****. You, on the other hand, would like them to stay in the 19th century. Because it satisfies your idea of how human beings should live.

**** you and your ilk. You're no better than pedotard killing Africans by frightening them off GM crops.

[giblets]

So your key observation here, DaShi, is that cities are not better in absolutely every respect than the countryside. But I don't think city dwellers have to swim surging rivers to get to school, even if they have to deal with violent crime. And although there are communicable diseases, unlike the countryside, cities have doctors.

I don't think most rural dwellers have to swim surging rivers to get to school either. Also, while providing access to services is going to be easier in cities, it's not like the countryside necessarily has no doctors at all.

There is a reason people build cities. There is a reason cities become huge. People move to cities seeking a better life and they usually find one. You can prove all of KH's statements with the simple observation that cities tend to grow over time and as an economy advances, the proportion of rural residents to urban residents skews urban.

People move anywhere because they expect the quality of life to improve if they do so. The same is true if someone leaves a city and tries to make it as a farmer. Cities and rural areas each have their own set of advantages and disadvantages, so that rural areas are more beneficial for most people at low levels of income and cities are more beneficial for most people at high levels. I don't see how this is a reason to glorify cities.

[Hauldren Collider]

I don't think most rural dwellers have to swim surging rivers to get to school either. Also, while providing access to services is going to be easier in cities, it's not like the countryside necessarily has no doctors at all.

Not in the USA, but in poorer countries doctors are rarely available in rural regions.

People move anywhere because they expect the quality of life to improve if they do so. The same is true if someone leaves a city and tries to make it as a farmer. Cities and rural areas each have their own set of advantages and disadvantages, so that rural areas are more beneficial for most people at low levels of income and cities are more beneficial for most people at high levels. I don't see how this is a reason to glorify cities.

More people live in cities, and over time cities grow relative to rural areas thus we can conclude more people think cities are beneficial.

In the united states, you can get essential goods and services pretty much wherever you are, so it comes down to what kind of atmosphere you prefer. This is simply not the case in most of the world.

[KrazyHorse]

rural areas are more beneficial for most people at low levels of income and cities are more beneficial for most people at high levels. I don't see how this is a reason to glorify cities.

If so, then why are rural 3rd worlders pouring into cities at an enormous rate?

Cities provide them with easier access to basic services like schools, lights, roads, and most importantly, access to other people, including those who are richer and better educated than themselves. They want to sell things to these richer people and make sure their kids learn from them.

Obviously there are benefits to the countryside; there is more space, if you really like nature it's better, you don't have to listen to your neighbors ****ing at night etc. But on balance, according to the only metric which matters (the choice of individuals) we can see that the cities win. When countries reach the required level of sophistication (both technological, economic and governmental) required to support large numbers of people living in very close proximity to each other, the people come.

[giblets]

If so, then why are rural 3rd worlders pouring into cities at an enormous rate?

Cities provide them with easier access to basic services like schools, lights, roads, and most importantly, access to other people, including those who are richer and better educated than themselves. They want to sell things to these richer people and make sure their kids learn from them.

It would have something to do with the decreasing share in the labor force of agriculture IMHO. If society's income is low, most of the income and most of the labor force is employed in agriculture, where living in a city wouldn't make sense in spite of its advantages. The move to the cities is a product of economic development and the advantages cities provide facilitate economic development, but economic development isn't caused by a move to the cities.

[Jon Miller]

People are optimists.

JM

[KrazyHorse]

It would have something to do with the decreasing share in the labor force of agriculture IMHO. If society's income is low, most of the income and most of the labor force is employed in agriculture, where living in a city wouldn't make sense in spite of its advantages. The move to the cities is a product of economic development and the advantages cities provide facilitate economic development, but economic development isn't caused by a move to the cities.

I think you may be confusing cause and effect here. Agriculture's share of the labor force is high when employing machines, fertilizer, irrigation etc is more expensive than employing people. The cost of the capital components of agriculture are similar in the West and in the 3rd world. The difference is that the people are cheaper both because they lack human capital and because they lack access to an economy which would value low-skill labor higher than it does. Both problems have at least partial solutions in the cities; it is easier to develop human capital there, and it is easier to sell things to rich people (either directly to richer people in the city or through work in a factory selling to rich people in the West).

I agree that the decreasing cost of productivity enhancements in agriculture was more of a driving force in the West 200 years ago, but now the technological developments have already been made.

[DaShi]

Absolutely brilliant.

[DaShi]

So your key observation here, DaShi, is that cities are not better in absolutely every respect than the countryside. But I don't think city dwellers have to swim surging rivers to get to school, even if they have to deal with violent crime. And although there are communicable diseases, unlike the countryside, cities have doctors.

There is a reason people build cities. There is a reason cities become huge. People move to cities seeking a better life and they usually find one. You can prove all of KH's statements with the simple observation that cities tend to grow over time and as an economy advances, the proportion of rural residents to urban residents skews urban.

Cities do provide better economic opportunities and make better use of the labor force than rural areas. However, slums do not. Slums are wastes of potential and are destructive to capital. People live in slums not because they are seeking a better life, but because their attempt at a better life failed.