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　　Zhang Hongwu, a 7-year-old boy in Beijing, will take on a new responsibility soon. As an assistant teacher at his father’s school, he will help correct the English pronunciation of his classmates in the new semester starting on September 9.
　　The small school, named The Loong Academy, will admit a maximum of six students publicly. Before that, Zhang’s father, Zhang Qiaofeng, spent one year teaching his son fulltime at home. “It proves that my teaching method works well and I have confidence it will work for other children as well,” Zhang said.
　　Zhang made the decision of teaching his son at home in September 2011, when he noticed his son looked less happy than before after just three weeks in school.
　　“I don’t understand if first-grade primary school students learn only two thin textbooks for the whole semester, how can they have piles of homework to deal with everyday? It is a waste of time,” Zhang said.
　　Zhang then decided to withdraw his son from the primary school and teach him by himself. As a graduate from China’s most prestigious Peking University, Zhang said he had confidence to be a qualified teacher. He gave up his job and a 300,000-yuan yearly salary. “I don’t regret that,” Zhang said.“If I regret anything, I think I should have started teaching my son at home earlier.”
　　Regarding the future of his son, Zhang is very optimistic. “Now, we have more choices for the future. My wife and I prefer to send him overseas for higher education, so it doesn’t really matter whether we follow the curricula defined by education authorities.”
　　
　　Good examples
　　Zhang’s confidence is based on quite a few successful examples. In June 2011, news spread that Chen Jiedi, a 17-year-old girl from Chengdu, capital of southwest China’s Sichuan Province, got offers from quite a few famous higher-learning institutions in the United States, including New York University and the University of Southern California. However, this girl never attended primary or middle school.
　　“She learnt very fast but the teaching programs in public schools proceeded slowly,”said Chen’s mother Wang Jun, who revealed that Chen could finish learning a textbook within 20 days. “I thought she could finish all the primary school lessons within one year and finish high school lessons in another three years.”
　　Wang, after discussing with her husband, started to teach their daughter at home. Chen, just as her mother planned, finished primary school lessons at age 8 and high school lessons at 11. Then she was sent to Chengdu Meishi International School for another six years to better prepare to apply to universities in the United States.
　　“There is always a misunderstanding that homeschooled children might have difficulties in communicating with other people,” Wang said. “This is absolutely wrong. Even though my daughter didn’t go to school, we took her to travel around and take part in social activities. After she went to the international school, she had no difficulties at all to communicate with teachers and classmates.”
　　Zhang echoed this opinion.“Students in public schools also have difficulties in communication. They are taught to focus on nothing but learning. I don’t think it is a healthy communication environment at all,”he said.
　　Chen has already spent one year at the University of Southern California and earned As in all courses. “She is very happy at the university,” Wang said. “I feel happy as well to choose special education for her.”
　　Zheng Yuanjie, a famous children’s book writer, is regarded as a pioneer in homeschooling in China. In 1990, after discussion with his son Zheng Yaqi, Zheng started to compile his own textbooks and educate his son at home.
　　“Schools are horrible,” Zheng said. “A lot of teachers care for nothing but urging the students to get high marks in the exams. Besides, there are normally more than 40 students in one class. They use the same way to teach everybody. It is absurd.”
　　Zheng then kept his son at home and let him play any way he wanted. The textbooks he compiled for his son are written as fairy tales and the content has nothing to do with the textbooks. “I think it is more important to teach kids how to protect themselves in the society and not break the laws, so I checked the crimes enumerated in the law and made up a fairy tale for every crime, telling my son not to do those evil things.”
　　Now, Zheng Yaqi, 29, has founded a publishing company and owns a photography studio.
　　
　　Education Shangri-La
　　The reason for Tang Juan, a senior executive of a large state-owned enterprise in Beijing, to drag her daughter out of school is somewhat similar to Zheng’s. Tang’s daughter Wenwen studied in a top primary school, which Tang is very proud of as its admission process is very competitive. But Tang gradually found the parents of the other students took turns organizing parties at luxurious restaurants where they would hold big banquets and give pricy gifts such as iPhones or iPads to the other kids, helping their own children to build good relationships in the school.
　　“It scared me somewhat,” Tang said.“Children from well-off families seem to have more chances in the school and already know how to use money as power. I don’t want my daughter to be like that.”
　　But instead of teaching her daughter at home, Tang sent her daughter to a special school called Ririxin School in north Beijing’s Huilongguan Community. Initiated in September 2006 by Wang Xiaofeng and several other parents, its original purpose was to gather their kids together and find some good teachers to teach them exclusively.
　　According to Wang, public schools don’t care that much about building the personalities of students, which is actually more important than getting high marks.
　　The school has grown very quickly. Now it has more than 30 teachers and 200 students.“We keep the number of students in each class to no more than 15, so teachers can take care of everybody easily,” Wang said.
　　At first, Tang sent her daughter to the school’s trial classes. After one week, she found out Wenwen became much happier and more outgoing. Tang then transferred her daughter to Ririxin School.
　　Chen Zhen, another Beijing local, did the same thing, but in distant Dali in southwest China’s Yunnan Province. “I was fed up with urban life in Beijing—the traffic, the pollution and pressure. But what worried me most was the education of my child. Everybody wants to go to prestigious schools and it is a heavy burden not only for children but also for parents,” said Chen, who believes the highly competitive selection of students to top public schools creates an unhealthy educational environment.
　　Chen and his wife spent two years looking for an ideal place to live and better educate their child. They finally settled down in Dali and rented a two-story house with a courtyard in the middle of the Cangshan Mountain. They named the school Cangshan School.
　　“It has almost zero pollution and it is like a Shangri-La for us,” said Chen, who started to accept students from all over the country in 2010. “We planned to admit a maximum of 15 students, teaching them cooking and planting vegetables in addition to academic lessons.”
　　Many parents went there but only few finally decided to stay. “We understood their concern so we offered three weeks’ trial lessons to show them what were going to teach.”
　　Chen also meets some other people moving from big cities to Dali, including musicians, painters, and architects. “I make more friends here than I did in Beijing,” Chen said. The artists are invited to the school to teach students music and painting. “We even held our own concert in 2011.”
　　Unfortunately, the owner of the house refused to renew the rent contract in early 2012. Chen tried to look for the other places but felt unsatisfied with all of them. Finally he decided to take the students to travel around the world as a field trip.
　　The project is ambitious. Chen plans to travel along with his students in one continent each year and finish the whole planet in five years. In April, they started the journey in Asia. “We’ll share our travel experience online occasionally. For me, travel is a very good way to educate,” Chen said.
　　The Concerns
　　Xu Jiangyong, an official with the Ministry of Education, doesn’t support homeschooling. “It needs financial support and some parents who think they might be qualified to teach children at home also might fail. If they don’t have relevant experience, I have doubts about their teaching quality.”
　　“I don’t agree with that,” said Yao Yongguang, who used to work in public schools for more than 10 years but quit to teach his daughter and son at home. “I actually try not to use the traditional teaching way to teach my children. I think not having relevant experience can even be an advantage.”
　　Xiong Bingqi, a professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University, believes homeschooling is a trend in the future. “I think it should be a free choice for parents and children. But legislative efforts should be made to regulate the legality of homeschooling.”