By Jiang Xueqin
Next week, Chinese students take the national college entrance exam. It’s the soul-destroying culmination of years of study. And as good as it gets.
June 7 and 8 are the two days that China’s senior three students (twelfth graders) have lived the first 18 years of their lives for, and whatever anxiety, neurosis, and insanity that has simmered beneath the surface among students, parents, and teachers this past year will now reach its climax.
Everyone’s in agreement: the national college entrance examination (gaokao) robs Chinese students of their curiosity, creativity, and childhood. So as gaokao students, with their thick textbooks and memory pills, sequester themselves in four-star hotels while their parents prowl the neighbourhood for construction noise and rambunctious restaurant patrons, now might be a good time to devise an alternative to the gaokao.
In his book A Theory of Justice, the political philosopher John Rawls conducted a thought experiment in which people, shrouded under a ‘veil of ignorance,’ were asked to devise a new social structure to live under. Unsure of their lot in this new society, people would be risk-averse, John Rawls assumed, and would agree to a society that ‘maximised the minimum,’ which is to say a society that aimed for equality, fairness, and social mobility.
So let us return to John Rawls’ ‘original position’ and ‘veil of ignorance,’ gather 1.3 billion Chinese into a nice conference room, and see if we can all work together to negotiate an alternative to the gaokao.
Because everyone in the room has Chinese cultural values and lives in the not too pleasant realities of modern China, there’ll be certain constraints that this new education system must consider. First, every Chinese can agree that this new education system ought to be a meritocracy and that the most diligent and brightest students ought to reach the top.
Second, every Chinese can agree that China has limited education resources for too many people; while it would be nice to educate everyone to the best ability of the state as is the case in Finland and Singapore, China is too poor to do so. Third, China is a guanxi-based society with little respect for institutions, processes, and laws; whatever new system that everyone agrees to must be able to resist the pull and power of the well-connected and wealthy. Fourth, Chinese can agree that education is first and foremost about social mobility (rather than about national economic development), about the opportunity for anyone who is willing to work hard to rise in society.
So, given all this, we can now begin constructing an alternative to the gaokao.
First, this alternative must be an objective indicator of a student’s academic performance. College admissions committees or admission interviews would be unacceptable because it would offer too much power to individuals and institutions that can’t be trusted. No one would agree to a college lottery whereby qualified students are just randomly assigned a college. And artificial intelligence technology hasn’t yet advanced to the point where computers can replace college admissions officers. Thus, the only alternative seems to be a series of tests.
Photo Credit: Sam / Olai Ose / Skjaervoy
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Andrew
Not everyone agrees that gaokao “robs Chinese students of their curiosity, creativity, and childhood.” Have you spent time with your typical college bound American students? They lack curiosity, creativity, AND fundamentals (necessary for creativity). In the US, most students are so obtuse that they actually think being creative is a social identity, that a “writer” or “artist” is creative (no matter how bad their work), while a mathematician isn’t.
Also, gaokao doesn’t just test knowledge. It tests critical thinking and problem solving skills. One has to be somewhat creative to do well on this test.
Gaokao doesn’t rob childhoods and stifle creativity. It ensures that many students don’t waste their childhood, as many do in the US. It provides the foundation for creativity, whereas US students can graduate from a respectable university without mastery of fundamentals essential to creative work.
Don’t tinker too much with the Chinese school system. And don’t romanticize US education system, as many of its best and brightest (disproportionally 1st or 2nd generation Asian or Jewish) were educated in schools and/or households that followed the Chinese method. The best high schools in the US push their students just as hard as the most competitive schools in China. If you want more creativity and innovation, end corruption and nepotism so that the best rise to the top, and create an environment that encourages risk-taking so people will dare to think differently.
Gaokao doesn’t rob children of their childhood. It prepares them for a future that’s even tougher, more competitive.
Nettie
Big help, big help. And suerpaltive news of course.
Lao Qiao
As a foreign teacher working in China for the last three years, I can agree only slightly with the conclusions of this article. As in the SAT or ACT, one’s gaokao’s scores depend not only on a student’s preparation, but also his or her state of mind, physical health, and psychological health. Unlike the SAT or ACT, if a kid bombs the gaokao, he or she has to wait a whole freaking year to try again — another year of study study study and near constant stress. Many of my university students say their gaokao scores were just a few points away from qualifying for a key uni, but China’s rigid system of allocating students shut that door in their face. Paper-and-pencil exams only test one aspect of a student’s abilities, which is one reason why American universities look at other aspects of an applicant’s background.
Mr Jiang is clearly not thinking very far out of the box by imagining the only alternative to the gaokao is in fact the gaokao. He’s also not too aware of the situation on the ground in some parts of China; I know of at least one university in ZhuHai that has devised its own admissions test and will accept students even without a gaokao score. Meanwhile, a growing number of parents (albeit wealthy ones) are sending their children off to western schools, freeing them of the entire gaokao pressure cooker.
Yes, China has a huge population. A paper-and-pencil test may be the most efficient way of sorting high school students into “appropriate” universities, but it is not the only way, nor is it the fairest way. Every system can be abused by people with money and power, even the gaokao. To say that alternative systems would lead to widespread abuse is sheer folly.
As for Jiang’s remarks about American education, he has no idea what he is talking about. My family was never part of the upper middle class, yet I was able to attend Princeton University with a lot of financial aid. In fact, Princeton and a few other Ivies are now making it possible for middle class kids to avoid taking out education loans, as I had to.