In a bid to give their children a head start in life, wealthy Chinese parents are enrolling them in all kinds of early education programs, including CEO training courses.
Chinese state media reports that an early education institute in Guangzhou, China's Guangdong province, is offering a 'CEO training course' for kids aged between 3 and 12, at a price of 50,000 yuan ($7,500) per year.
Kids attend two classes per week, during which they engage in activities such as filing in missing words in sentences and stacking up toy bricks. That doesn't sound like anything special, but according to a promotional brochure released by the institute, the course "enables young children to become a powerful, competitive leader".
There's no denying that China probably has the most competitive educational environment in the world, which means parents would do almost anything to make sure their children don't get left behind, but experts believe such extravagant courses ultimately benefit the parents rather than the children. They regard their kids' attendance to such classes as evidence of the family's social status, completely disregarding the fact that the syllabus they offer is of no real value.
One parent interviewed by news agency Xinhua admitted that the children were playing rather learning most of the time, but because many other children living in the same residential complex were attending, he decided to pay the $7,500 so his child could go to. "We certainly don't want to be left behind," he said.
Experts argue that it is impossible to turn a child into a leader at the age of three, and that these elite courses actually do more harm than good. With an already exhausting school schedule to deal with, sacrificing what little free time kids have left to have them stacking blocks is only going to make them tired of learning at a very young age.
But peer pressure is very high and China, so as long as some families are willing to pay tens of thousands of yuan for such silly extracurricular courses, others will to, if only to maintain their social status. The more expensive the course, the more popular it becomes, one dressage training institute in Shenzhen told Xinhua.
Other elite courses for extremely young Chinese kids cited in the recent report include "royal equestrianism courses for young kids" and "golf summer camps for little children", both of which cost tens of thousands of yuan.