A Deeper Look at the Chinese Educational System

By Jiaru Xia / Winter 2020

Education, all along the long river of human history, serves as the indispensable part of human livings, which promotes positive humanity interaction in the society and boosts the level of civilization pushing through a modern world. In imperial China, the imperial examination (605~1950) was the dominant educational assessment at an early age of the development of educational systems that purposed to recruit the best candidates for the national bureaucracy.

The imperial examination was a breakthrough of the patriarchal system that improved the social mobility by selecting the talented and capable person to the offices of the government of the Chinese empire. The contemporary vision of imperial examination is the gaokao. Just like the SAT in the United States, the national college entrance examination plays an important role of the state’s educational system and society, and most students and families would go through this selection in order to enter a good college. The educational systems provide everyone an equal chance to take the competitive examinations, but it does not imply that all students will benefit equally from the exam since the better-performed students in the exam would better excel, like taking a cut to success. However, the overemphasis on the successful of the examinations will restrict student’s creativity and even turn the dreams they owned into despair.

As most of the Chinese students, I experienced the gaokao. The gaokao is held annually and lasts nine hours in two days mostly in early June, and around 10 million students in China have to take the exam. However, the top universities could just admit less than one percent of them, which renders the gaokao as he hardest and most competitive exam in the schooling

The gaokao examination leaves no room for us to be ourselves. Through all my three years high school life I was dedicated to preparing for the gaokao exam, and teachers largely emphasized on the important of the gaokao every day. Under such a stressful situation, I started to feel stressful very much that I had to give up a lot of my free time and daily activities to focus on studying. For example, I gave up my painting hobbits that I have learned for eight more years.  I took my favorites extracurricular books away since they are useless for examination. I spent all the weekends on extra tutoring to get some leads in the preparation of the examination.

Yes, it turns out that we could not be ourselves. We were like the “cogs in the machine” with the only goal that got a good grade in the gaokao rather than anything, thus in disregard of the fact that cultivating humanity, arts and sciences were also needed for the development of students same as the original purpose of education. However, the educational system robbed student’s passions and talents because of that uselessness and even negative effect of getting a good grade. In order to reach good grades to succeed in the sole assessment gaokao, schools were not trying to respect individualism but teach students of different kinds to be adapted to the standardized test. In this way, students are subordinate to a formatted education that does not generate their creativity, which is reflected in Howard Zinn’s reading, A People’s History, that people’s roles for receiving their education are predetermined and never would they escape from the restriction of the system that just serves the needs of the minorities.

It seems that the goal of all my twelve years schooling is the gaokao. Besides, I need to carefully concern every choice in my student life, a private school or a public school, a costly foreign language school or a nearby general school, since a right school could help me approach closer to the goal of gaokao. Then, a question comes whether or not the huge cost of the gaokao is worthy? Any action from human beings are no more than investment and rewards, a principle that is what the market fundamentalism of neoliberalism proclaims. For example, if people make an investment in a stock, there would be three results. First, people could gain profit if the stock price raise. Second, the stock price does not change, and people would have no gain and lost. Third, people have to suffer from the loss if the stock price rapidly falls. The twelve years schooling study and prepare for the standardizes examination and the huge amount cost for extra resources could be treated as an investment on the education, from both students and parents, which resembles buying the stock with different case availability. If the student goes to the top universities, the investment is rewardable. Contraversely, If the student goes to a mediocrely universities, the investment is not that bad and still rewardable. However, if a student is not admitted by universities, the investment is a totally failure. One of my friends showed an advance talent in the computer skills and coding, but his parents stopped his passions because those skills were not helpful to the gaokao. Unfortunately, he had less interest in the school subjects and the gaokao stopped him from continuing the university study. Investing so much time for the gaokao was not worthy for him. Had he continuedly worked with his talents, he would have got a very high achievement during those years.

The gaokao, more like a long-term investment determines the result of students’ performance, which decides the quality of the university they would go, and also serves as a measurement of success they are defined. It is also what the neoliberal ideologies shape Chinese educational system in determining success. The reason is that the top universities show more similarities with the elite class of the social hierarchy, adopting the most outstanding students who are preferable by the job market, government offices, and society, which renders them higher salary, better job, and better future. Students who are more competent come into a good university are more marketable, which also in turn reflects to their success through their life. Under this dominated ideology, in order to be successful, students have to give up their dreams, relationship, creativity to be immersed in the competitive standardized test.

The gaokao not only robs student’s passion, talents and time, but also it steals from student’s life. Since the gaokao is an extremely competitive examination, students need to be strong in suffering the ongoing stress. When I was in the first-year middle school, I heard one student who could not hold such stress chose to jump from the eighth floor in order to commit suicide. The educational system should promote the positive interaction in youth, not to add despair and pain to their life. Students bear the pressure in their schooling and cannot normally and correctly distract their emotional problems, thus committing suicide to avoid anxiety and disappoint could be their thinkable though extreme choice. Student-suicide becomes a social problem. According to a health ministry journal, about 500 primary and middle school students kill themselves every year, and the main reason is that the schoolchild could not bear the heavy pressure of the test-orient education system (South China Morning Post). Society and the educational system have to pay more attention to the youth’s mental health and take some more action to prevent the increasing cases of suicide. According to Phillips, in his article, “Chinese school installs ‘anti-suicide’ barriers before the dreaded exam,” showing that a brilliant high school in Hebei province has installed cage-like barriers to prevent students from jumping to their deaths. The Hengshui No.2, one of the best high schools in China, is also seen with a raising student suicide rate, and installing the barriers seems ridiculous but is helpful to mitigate the possible of suicide.

Why does the student feel heavily stressful in the gaokao? The gaokao is a life-changing exam and a relative fair competition, and the competition seen as a Neoliberalism way is to defining characteristic of human relations (Monbiot). In other words, the gaokao could be a fair selection system to classify people, a tool to improve the social mobility, and the best and only opportunity for lower class people to jump upward to a higher social stratum. The gaokao serves as the best chance for rural areas students to go to an urban city, and it is easier to find that rural areas students work harder and have more pressures since they may be the only hope of their family and themselves to achieve upward mobility. In the 1990’s, my father and his brother worked hard and successfully got into a college in the urban city Shenzhen, the southern China, from their rural hometown. They used to be poor, but education helped them get higher payment jobs and settle down in the city. More importantly, the educational system pushed them upward to a middle-class stratum. During that time, the gaokao did help many student’s upward mobility to a higher class.

The Neoliberalism in the other way shaping the educational system that the success or failure, rich or poor, is depending on the individual, making effort that could change people’s life. That is to say, the reason the wealthy people are rich is that they make great effort through their life so that they may get a good grade and success in the gaokao. The poor people’s failures are because of themselves not making too much effort. Under the neoliberalism ideology, students know that their future, no matter success and failure, is all their own responsibility. Even although some students accidentally feel unwell like stomached or flus during the exam and thus cannot perform well, they would ascribe it to their bad luck or condemn themselves for not being well-prepared for the exam. The failures just blame themselves for their failures but will not think about the “fair” is not that fair which means they will not think the failures come from outside of themselves.

Nevertheless, the gaokao is not that fair at all. The exam does achieve mobility for the poorest strata of Chinese society, but it seems not to affect the elite’s class. My father and his brother worked really hard to catch the educational opportunity with the heavy stress, such as the limit recourses and terrible living and studying situation. How about the elite class? They are scarcely possible to downward by the social mobility because of they already have the wealth and recourse what lower class struggles for, and the gaokao is not seemingly to take an important part in their life. They could study abroad to get their college degree to avoid the dread gaokao; drop of school but still have a good job because of the strong social network; even their family could support them to live carefree in their whole life.

Education used to be a driver of class mobility. However, right now, it may become an accomplice of class solidification. The mobility of social hierarchy is in decline (South China Morning Post). In other words, the rich stay rich while the poor stay poor. The recourse inequity appears in many different ways. The upper-class students enjoy private education, advance teaching equipment, and professional teachers. Meanwhile, the lower-class students do not have these kinds of advantages and worry about the affordable of the tuitions as well as extra study resources. Remember, all of them would be in the same competition. The huge gap results in a more different perform for them in the gaokao, and they will stay at the same class strata.

Another way to see the society hierarchy is school. The school is a mirror of the society, since prejudices never vanish through the judgements of good students and bad students. Students who go to a better high school or a better class at the same school may attract more attention and care from the teachers, while the bad students, also known as fall-behind students, are somehow underestimated or even abandoned by their teachers. Like the hierarchy in the society, the group from elite class level would have access to more resources and gain respect from a lot of others, while the lower class are somewhat isolated and stay helpless, without anyone giving extra care to them. It seems determined that students with better academic performance would stay good and be expected to have a brighter future, while the fall-behind students would even not be able to catch up the normal pace of school life, which throws them further behind from the normal line and the vicious thus never ends. The result is that while the students at a better school or a better class are qualified for higher-class interactions, the rest would more possibly stay in a lower-class and serve the need of the higher-class in the future. Such reflection is really pathetic since students do not even have their own choice through their youth and shows the inequity on such a system be considered as providing equal opportunities for students to achieve success.

The inequity of education also could be shown as a part of the social network. One of my middle school’s classmates was not good at Mathematic, and the mathematic grade always held her overall grade back. However, she went to the best high school because of her mother, who was the faculty of that school. Many of students that work really hard still could not admitted by the best high school, but she could. The better social network could create a direct path that facilitates success for students. Apparently, the upper-class family always enjoys better social network, which could give a strong support for their children. Contrarily, the rest students should work hard to pursue the better education to achieve success.

We see that social hierarchy is one of the main reasons that result in the unfairness of the educational system. The classification of students into different classes is no more than labeling them with a tag that showcases their capability. Therefore, those who cannot perform well would possibly suffer from potential public shaming and disrespect from others. To solve such a problem, we would propose that no school establish the classification so that good students and fall-behind students could stay in the same class and help each other. In this way, it can efficiently reduce students’ stress and eliminate their anxiety about being divided into a bad class. All students should enjoy the equal share of resources from the school so that no one is discarded and ignored. In this way, the fall-behind students may respawn their hopes that they could do well and catch up or even perform as well as the top students. Also, the government could provide additional helping for the students who are in poverty, like cheaper housing and financial aids. Besides, it is necessary for the government assigns more professional teachers to the rural areas, not only in the urban cities. If everything becomes more equity, the division of the hierarchy would, in turn, be mitigated.         

Work Cited

“School Pressure to Blame for Chinese Youth Suicides, Official Study Finds.” South China Morning Post, 14 May 2014, www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1512032/school-pressure-blame-chinese-youth-suicides-official-study-finds.

Monbiot, George. “Neoliberalism – the Ideology at the Root of All Our Problems.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 Apr. 2016, www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot.

Zinn, Howard. A Peoples History of the United States.

Phillips, Tom. “Chinese School Installs 'Anti-Suicide' Barriers before Dreaded Exam.” The   Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 21 Apr. 2015, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11551660/Chinese-school-installs-anti-suicide-barriers-before-dreaded-exam.html.

“The Lie of Equal Opportunity in a Fast-Growing China.” South China Morning Post, 20 July 2018, www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2101654/china-grows-equal-opportunity-and-social-mobility-are-fast.