Chinese Lessons

Exceptional access to a primary school class reveals how China's education system fails migrant workers' children.

In the bustling industrial hub of Guangzhou, China, filmmaker Haryun Kim films three migrant worker children during their final year at a privately run primary school. As she captures their passions, struggles, frustrations and dreams she discovers the shocking reality of China’s growing educational underclass. Propping up China’s economic boom is the largest migration in human history as millions of people leave the countryside to work in the cities. Many parents have no choice but to take their children with them. There are more than 20 million migrant worker children in the cities and under China’s residency laws they find themselves locked out of the national education system.