Barefoot teacher Wang Yanshou was dismissed from his teaching post by Beichuan County government, Sichuan, after 23 years service.

Wang Yanshou used to be a teacher. The fifty-something father of two taught for twenty-three years in a number of primary schools in the villages of Beichuan County in Sichuan Province. He was a good teacher and was often commended and rewarded for the good exam results achieved by his pupils. He worked very hard and at one time taught three separate grades simultaneously.

But Mr Wang's teaching career came to a sudden end in the year 2000 when he was summarily fired by the local authority. There had been no problems with his performance, he had not reached retirement age, nor had he breached discipline.

Mr Wang was fired because he did not hold a teaching certificate.

To understand the background to his case it is necessary to look back more than 30 years to a time when, lacking qualified teachers, China recruited many thousands of "barefoot teachers" most of whom had received no more than a high school education. The government believed a basic grounding in reading, writing and arithmetic was better than nothing at all for the millions of children attending ramshackle village schools.

But times have moved on. China's economy has boomed; higher education has expanded and is turning out vast numbers of qualified teachers every year. Local authorities in rural areas that once depended heavily on unqualified teachers have, for more than a decade, been phasing them out in favor of university graduates. Teachers who were once honored as performing a heroic duty of educating the next generation are being cast aside, in many cases without ceremony or compensation.

Barefoot teachers received a sentimental big-screen portrayal in Zhang Yimou's 1999 feature "Not one less", which told the story of a middle-aged rural teacher and his fourteen year old apprentice. There was rarely a dry eye in the cinema when the young girl, addressed as "teacher" by a television presenter, made an on-air appeal to a truant to return to school. The reality, however, is often very different.

When Mr Wang was hired in 1977 there was no mention of terms of employment, pensions or social security. Despite his twenty three years service, when he was dismissed, Mr Wang was being paid around a quarter of the wage of a qualified teacher. He has always been poor. After spending almost his entire life as an educator, Wang could not afford to send his own son through college. When he was laid off, he received no compensation.

To add to the injustice, he told us, some teachers were allowed to keep their jobs after paying bribes to government officials.

For some government officials with their eyes firmly fixed on GDP growth targets, the barefoot teachers are likely to be seen as an uncomfortable and unfashionable reminder of a poorer but more equal era in which duty and social solidarity were seen as more important than economic development.

But this is a problem that undoubtedly affects thousands of people across China. In Beichuan County alone, 50 former teachers have signed a petition protesting their unfair treatment by the authorities. For most of the petitioners it is not just a matter of money. In China, teachers are treated almost reverentially, even today. To be stripped of the title of teacher, to be told they are unfit to hold it after a lifetime of service is an unbearable blow to the barefoot teachers' pride and self-respect.

For the past eight years, the dismissed teachers have been petitioning the Beichuan County government for compensation. Eventually the local authorities made an offer of compensation. According to the proposal, the dismissed teachers would receive an annual pension of between 950 yuan (US$139) and 1200 yuan (US$175) depending on length of service. At best this would provide a monthly income of less than 15 US dollars.

The teachers dismiss the county government's offer as derisory. They say it is entirely unreasonable for their former employer to treat them as temporary workers given that most of them have more than ten years continuous service. They say the compensation on offer is far too low and are demanding the same pensions as qualified teachers. They say they will accept not one penny less, and are planning to travel to Beijing to put their case to the central government. It remains to be seen if their story will have a happy ending.

(China.org.cn by John Sexton and Pang Li, Beichuan, May 22, 2009)