Hi Gang!
Today was the first day of the National Higher Education Entrance Examination, commonly referred to as the gaokao(1st tone, 3rd tone).
We hear a lot about the Chinese version of the SAT in the U.S., and I decided to test the rumor that anxious parents will wait outside the gates of the testing centers in solidarity with their children taking the examination.
Cannie (my translator), Amanda, and I chose two high schools located in the Haidian district: Beidafuzhong (High school connected to Peking University) and Renminfuzhong (High school connected to Renmin University) to visit. We arrived at Renminfuzhong about half an hour before the morning session of the exam let out, and did indeed find dozens of parents congregating outside the gates. We also found several ambulances, security guards, volunteers providing free water to parents, and several people with fliers sent to advertise their wares to nervous mothers and fathers.
We managed to interview representatives of all of these groups, though we focused on the parents.
This delightful photo has nothing to do with the Gaokao
Our first interview of the day was with a father leaning on a fence by the gate. We introduced ourselves and asked some questions in Chinese about his daughter’s education. We then felt slightly foolish when he provided a lengthy answer to a question in perfect English; he had lived in Canada for many years, and his daughter had spent much of her life there. When the interview moved on to his hopes and anxiety for his daughter, we were surprised to learn that she had already been admitted to the University of British Columbia! Clearly, this man was a far cry from the stereotypical super-stressed Chinese parent; he went so far as to imply that he did not care how his daughter did on the test, and asked her to take it “just to see”.
Our second interview was closer to what we had expected. We approached a mother standing on the sidewalk in the shade of a tree (we stalk our prey very carefully: good candidates for street interviews are alone, not outwardly preoccupied, and do not appear to be urgently needed somewhere else). She had high hopes for her daughter, who would certainly be going to school in China. She did not appear too concerned, and had only positive things to say about her daughter’s preparation for the gaokao.
“Positive” is the one word that best summarizes the responses we received during every interview, at both schools, with all groups. Even a woman at Beidafuzhong, who felt that her son was of mediocre academic ability and had no real talents, believed that her son would still gain admission to a university.
Of course, this is both good and bad. The good part is that the growth in China’s higher education system has provided much more opportunity, greatly reduced the stress levels, for students in today’s Beijing. The bad is that there is a great deal of data that shows that not only is this progress not affecting central and western China at nearly as significant a level, but that much progress in Beijing and Shanghai comes at the expense of that of the central and western provinces. The mediocre son in Beijing will be able to go to university, but he is arguably taking the place of a brighter student in Hebei that will have no choice but to study at an inferior university (or not even that), due to admissions policies that highly favor the people of the eastern cities.
Nor does this photo
I feel that I have learned what I came to learn about education in Beijing; now it is time to learn more about the central and western provinces. Hopefully I can meet with students at universities in Beijing who come from these provinces and are willing to discuss their experiences. Cannie and I actually did meet such a student several days ago when we walked around the Beida campus conducting intervies.
All right, that is it for now. Sorry I don’t have photos of the gaokao sites, I didn’t want to jeopardize our chances of finding parents willing to speak with us.
Best of the day:
(In Chinese)
“Every student is unique, and may have abilities or skills in addition to those measured by the gaokao. Do you think that there are additional measurements that could be taken into account in college admissions that would help your son?”
“No.”
-An amused mother informs us that her son is untalented and does not put much effort into his studies.