Boy Runs from Homework

✨Pre-Reading Questions 1. What would you do if your homework became too difficult for you to handle? 2. Have you ever considered running away from home? 3. Where did the boy live? This is a true story about a boy who ran away to escape the stress of too much homework.

Xu Zhiqiang (pronounced: shoo ziqyang)10, from Cili town, Hunan province, China, ended up thousands of kilometers away from home. He said he could not cope with the amount of homework he was expected to complete during the one month winter holiday. Xu said: “Each of us has to finish two thick books of homework. Take the mathematics homework as an example, it has 100 pages with all kinds of questions.” To make matters worse, Xu’s mom found a mistake on one question and punished him by getting him to correct the mistake and copy the right answer 100 times. After copying it 50 times, an exhausted Xu ran out of his home and hopped onto a train. “I stayed under the seat a day and a night during which I transferred trains as all people did and finally I didn’t know where I had come to,” he said. Xu had reached Guangzhou (pronounced: goo Ang show) station, thousands of miles from home, where a station policeman found him the next day. He could not remember his telephone number – or even his full address – but eventually the policeman managed to contact his worried parents. The boy’s father, Xu Yueping, said: “We were going desperate. The whole town was out looking for him. Now we finally can breathe normally.” The funny thing is the picture. Look at that kid, he’s smiling and wearing a military hat while the guy who’s next to him (the hat owner?) is smiling broadly as well. They’re treating this kid like some kind of celebrity hero, some child who escaped a horrible fate, wrestled with death, and saved his entire family in the process. This kid is being celebrated for running away from his homework! I avoided homework too! Sure I wasn’t hiding in trains and didn’t wind up thousands of miles away, but the principle was the same. Why can’t I get a parade? Crazy kids.

1. Do you think that kids nowadays have too much pressure to perform well in school? 2. Was this boy’s mother too harsh in giving punishment? 3. In your country, would it be safe for a child to travel alone on a train? 4. What would you do if your son/daughter ran away from home? 5. Describe a situation that was difficult for you to cope with. How did you handle it? 6. Tell a story a time when you were lost. What did you do in that situation? 7. If you were lost in an unfamiliar city, how would you find your way home?