| The world’s remotest school ANANOVA |
Children in a remote part of China
face a hazardous walk to school –
because it is halfway up a sheer cliff.
The school in Gulu village,
Sichuan province, lies halfway up
a mountain and climbing up from
the base takes five hours.
The elementary school has only
one teacher who has been there
for 26 years, reports the
West China City Daily.
Villagers say going to school is
very dangerous for the children,
since the path is only 1ft 4ins wide
at the narrowest point and has a
sheer drop on one side.
Walking along the narrow, zigzagging
path also makes the children feel dizzy,
they say.
.
The school has five concrete buildings
and a playground with a basketball
hoop made of two wooden poles
and a broken blackboard.
However, the children are allowed
to only pat the balls,
as if they throw them and they go over
the edge of the cliff,
it would take half a day to retrieve them.
Shen Qijun, 45, the teacher,
has threatened to quit several times,
but each time the villagers plead with
him to stay as there would be nobody
else to teach their children.
Shen teaches Chinese and Math to
the students, but says only two
students in 26 years have gone on
to university because of the isolation.
A volunteer who has been teaching
there for three months said:
“The students work very hard,
but they have never seen computers,
cars or even flushing toilets.”
.
