Long Blog 1 — <The Education Nightmare>
“Chinese educators struggle to change it, and Chinese students struggle to survive it.”(Xu Zhao, Robert L. Selman &Helen Haste, 1)
Last night, I went on a walk with my father and my fourth-grade brother. It was around 9 o’clock in the night, we happened to go into a grocery store. Surprisingly, we saw one of my brother’s classmates who was waiting for his dad after taking a tutoring class. I still remember it was freezing cold at the night. This little 10 years old boy just finished his tutoring class. In his handful of free time, he still has to go to tutoring classes until late at night and then go home to continue his homework. The more terrifying thing is that the school my brother and him went to is an international school. This international school is not towards GaoKao(the mandatory test to get into university in China), but in purpose to send students abroad. Those public school which at the end towards GaoKao is much more stressful in academic and has much more workload. This stress is not only amount small group of children but the students among the whole country. As one grows up it tends to get harder.
And although there were now other avenues for Chinese students to pursue further study, the exam remained “a make-or-break challenge” for many high school students, particularly those from poor families. For some families, this test could be their life-changing point. Most of the Chinese believe that if one goes to a good university their life would be safe and sound afterwards. Therefore the parents and teachers trying to pull everything out of the students, which makes the students stressed a lot.
Here is a piece of news from CNBC talks about the stressfulness of the National College Entrance Examinations that dictate what Chinese universities would attend.
Students’ mental health is super important for society and for students themselves. Therefore, in recent years the Chinese government has been actively reforming the system trying to reduce this stress on students. However, it seems that it does not work effectively. What makes the system so hard to change and reduce students’ stress? “parental anxiety over academic and job competition, teachers’ resistance to curriculum reform, and the difficulty of reforming the gaokao system.”(Zhao, 2015,) With these deep-rooted ideas, it is difficult for the system, including every family, to change.
References
Xu Zhao, Robert L. Selman &Helen HasteAcademic stress in Chinese schools and a proposed preventive intervention program
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2331186X.2014.1000477?scroll=top&needAccess=true
CNBC, Almost 10M young Chinese just took an exam that will change their lives,2016
