Three thousand yuan for a root canal and a crown. This question sat on Zhihu for a day, drawing more than 1.5 million viewers. The argument wasn’t really about teeth—it was about whether he should be allowed to spend that money.
The tricky thing about dental treatment is that the money goes into your mouth, where nobody can see it. You leave the dentist after getting a tooth fixed, and your face still looks the same. That’s all there is to it.
But financial aid is assessed by things people can see. How much a meal costs. How much a pair of shoes costs. How much you spend on phone bills.
In 2015, a university in Wuhan set a threshold: if a meal in the cafeteria cost a female student more than 6.2 yuan, or a male student more than 7.2 yuan, they could lose their eligibility for financial aid. The rule was widely criticized and made the news at the time; China National Radio republished a story from China Youth Daily about it. The Ministry of Education’s 2018 guidance did indeed list student spending as one factor in determining eligibility, alongside family income, family assets, and unexpected circumstances. The same document also said students must not be made to compete over who has it worse or compare their poverty with one another.
Put those two points side by side, and you don’t need me to explain how difficult that makes things at the grassroots level. The rules say not to make students compete over who has it worse. But if they don’t, what can the poor be measured by? Schools have no choice but to go back to counting students’ everyday expenses, and only after that can they make a judgment. Can you really measure that accurately?
And so we got the 2023 democratic review form from Tianjin that spread all over the internet. The level of financial hardship accounted for half the score; the other half was based on attitude toward learning, obeying the law and school rules, cleanliness, moral character, and diligence and frugality. An orphan has to compete with classmates over who is more hygienic. Does that make any sense?
Many people think financial aid goes to whoever is poorest. In reality, it goes to whoever can most easily prove they’re poor.
The people selected by these two approaches can be worlds apart. Buy a pair of 500-yuan shoes, and the whole class can see them. Spend 3,000 yuan to save a tooth that’s decayed down to the nerve, and only you and the dentist know. The first could get you reported. The second gets you asked, “Where did you get the money?” Why?
This system, in effect, rewards poverty that can be seen, and punishes poverty that spends money on things nobody can see.
Anyone who’s applied remembers the form: per-capita household income, number of family members, special circumstances. Fill it out, then the class votes. After the vote, it gets filed away. Nobody tells you why you were rejected; the review process itself doesn’t record the reasons. The Ministry of Education’s 2016 notice specifically said that eligibility must be determined based on a family’s financial situation, without bringing in other factors. On paper, everything is right. What happens in the classroom is another matter.
On-chain systems deal with the same kind of problem. Who gets an airdrop and who doesn’t: the criteria are written in the announcement, wallet histories are public, and anyone can use the same data to run the numbers again. If a decision is wrong, at least you can point to a rule and ask, “Why?” This system isn’t clean either. People farming interactions or running batches of accounts are putting on an act too—performing for the scripts. It’s the same impulse as buying a couple of secondhand clothes to pass a review. Technology can lay the books open. Whether you trust it is another matter.
I thought about it all night, and came to a pretty down-to-earth conclusion. Spending 3,000 yuan to fix a tooth isn’t a luxury; it’s damage control. If you let it go until it becomes an apical abscess and you need to be hospitalized, you’ll spend enough to pay for ten root canals. A poor student can do that math just fine. When the pain really hits, who’s thinking about appearances?
The Ministry of Education’s document doesn’t set a specific spending threshold. Each school decides for itself, and there’s no clear answer on whether the detailed rules have to be made public. I couldn’t find out whether Wuhan’s 6.2-yuan threshold was ever withdrawn.
That tooth, at least, got fixed. The review form probably still says: “Financially disadvantaged family.”
#助学金 #贫困生认定 #Spending records
$BTC $ENS $USDC
The tricky thing about dental treatment is that the money goes into your mouth, where nobody can see it. You leave the dentist after getting a tooth fixed, and your face still looks the same. That’s all there is to it.
But financial aid is assessed by things people can see. How much a meal costs. How much a pair of shoes costs. How much you spend on phone bills.
In 2015, a university in Wuhan set a threshold: if a meal in the cafeteria cost a female student more than 6.2 yuan, or a male student more than 7.2 yuan, they could lose their eligibility for financial aid. The rule was widely criticized and made the news at the time; China National Radio republished a story from China Youth Daily about it. The Ministry of Education’s 2018 guidance did indeed list student spending as one factor in determining eligibility, alongside family income, family assets, and unexpected circumstances. The same document also said students must not be made to compete over who has it worse or compare their poverty with one another.
Put those two points side by side, and you don’t need me to explain how difficult that makes things at the grassroots level. The rules say not to make students compete over who has it worse. But if they don’t, what can the poor be measured by? Schools have no choice but to go back to counting students’ everyday expenses, and only after that can they make a judgment. Can you really measure that accurately?
And so we got the 2023 democratic review form from Tianjin that spread all over the internet. The level of financial hardship accounted for half the score; the other half was based on attitude toward learning, obeying the law and school rules, cleanliness, moral character, and diligence and frugality. An orphan has to compete with classmates over who is more hygienic. Does that make any sense?
Many people think financial aid goes to whoever is poorest. In reality, it goes to whoever can most easily prove they’re poor.
The people selected by these two approaches can be worlds apart. Buy a pair of 500-yuan shoes, and the whole class can see them. Spend 3,000 yuan to save a tooth that’s decayed down to the nerve, and only you and the dentist know. The first could get you reported. The second gets you asked, “Where did you get the money?” Why?
This system, in effect, rewards poverty that can be seen, and punishes poverty that spends money on things nobody can see.
Anyone who’s applied remembers the form: per-capita household income, number of family members, special circumstances. Fill it out, then the class votes. After the vote, it gets filed away. Nobody tells you why you were rejected; the review process itself doesn’t record the reasons. The Ministry of Education’s 2016 notice specifically said that eligibility must be determined based on a family’s financial situation, without bringing in other factors. On paper, everything is right. What happens in the classroom is another matter.
On-chain systems deal with the same kind of problem. Who gets an airdrop and who doesn’t: the criteria are written in the announcement, wallet histories are public, and anyone can use the same data to run the numbers again. If a decision is wrong, at least you can point to a rule and ask, “Why?” This system isn’t clean either. People farming interactions or running batches of accounts are putting on an act too—performing for the scripts. It’s the same impulse as buying a couple of secondhand clothes to pass a review. Technology can lay the books open. Whether you trust it is another matter.
I thought about it all night, and came to a pretty down-to-earth conclusion. Spending 3,000 yuan to fix a tooth isn’t a luxury; it’s damage control. If you let it go until it becomes an apical abscess and you need to be hospitalized, you’ll spend enough to pay for ten root canals. A poor student can do that math just fine. When the pain really hits, who’s thinking about appearances?
The Ministry of Education’s document doesn’t set a specific spending threshold. Each school decides for itself, and there’s no clear answer on whether the detailed rules have to be made public. I couldn’t find out whether Wuhan’s 6.2-yuan threshold was ever withdrawn.
That tooth, at least, got fixed. The review form probably still says: “Financially disadvantaged family.”
#助学金 #贫困生认定 #Spending records
$BTC $ENS $USDC