China's Cram Schools

The article " China's Cram Schools" by Brook Lamer tells us about China's harsh ways of getting into college and how students are desperate to pass China's college entrance exam. This test is called "Gaokao" and is somewhat like the SAT or ACT.  It is different in that it is twice as long and the stakes in China are much higher than the SAT or ACT in the United States. The most important difference is the Gaokao test is the only thing that matters for admission to Chinese universities. I find this to be very unfair that one exam can decide if you are able to go to college and get a good job or if you have to work at factories or in the fields.

            This exam causes so much stress. Students are studying around the clock to decide their future. The article talks a student named Xu and what he does and how he prepares for the test. " [he] fills every spare moment with studying, testing himself between classes, on the toilet, in the cafeteria. After the lights went out at 11:30, he sometimes used a battery-powered lamp to keep going." This shows that this way of studying is very unhealthy. Instead of having a normal high school experience the students in China are spending all their time studying for the Gaokao. The article also says "it stifles creativity and puts excessive pressure on students. Teenage suicide rate tend to rise as the Gaokao nears." This shows that this test must be making students so depressed and unhappy or they just cannot deal with the pressure anymore that some of them kill themselves.

            China puts so much pressure on their students. Many of them spend their whole childhood studying and preparing for exams. One school mentioned in the articles does not even allow dating or electronics. In the article it says "the school prides itself on eliminating the distractions of modern life. Cellphones and laptops are forbidden. The dorms, where about half the students live, have no electrical outlets. Dating is banned. In town, where the rest of the students live, mostly with their mothers in tiny partitioned rooms, the local government has shut down all forms of entertainment. This may be the only town in china with no video arcade, billiards hall, or internet café.” This quote proves that schools and parents in China are making it their goal for students to pass this exam. Every type of amusement is removed to not distract students.

            On the other hand there are around 1.357 billion people in China, which means a great number of students are trying to get into a college. This test is a good way for colleges in China to screen and reduce the number of applicants. The article compares China to the U.S. saying that the number of students taking college entrance tests annually is 3.5 million students taking the SAT and/or the ACT. For China the number of students taking a college Gaokao is 9 million. This shows that there way more students taking a college test in China that in the U.S. Maybe the Gaokao is a good tool that can help weed out the students that are not good enough.

            In conclusion, I still think that the Chinese testing style is a terrible way and students should not have to spend their whole childhood studying for a test and then have that one test decide their future. It does not seem fair that because of one test you either are going make it big or become a worker on a farm or at a factory. I think that it is unfair for China to base students’ future on one test that they spent most of their childhood studying for.