- cross-posted to:
- china@lemmygrad.ml
- cross-posted to:
- china@lemmygrad.ml
Notes: Besides the gaokao prep starting from middle school, and taking at least 12-14 hours a hour to prep for it each day and it being mentally strenuous and seemingly decisive to your career,
the narrator talks about how the Gaokao varies per province and apparently
depending on how high your city/province’s GDP is, it may be easier compared to other provinces
Other than that, though, he talks more about societal issues rather than political ones, so I think he’s at worst, a good-faith Chinese lib, even considering his reddit account, which has little political activity…
Also, I’ve heard there are other comparable hard exams which are not necessarily hard as the Gaokao, in the comments, such as Brazil and India, thoughts on that as well
To any libs around here: If you lemmy libs want to wander on here, I’ll politely tell you which instance you’re in and tell you to go back your mother’s skirts…
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高考 is an unfortunate product of a cutthroat meritocracy. It is literally the only criterion to determine your college admissions in China.
There are explicit affirmative action programs like others have pointed out to try to level the playing field across the country. So for example, if you are a Ughyur in Xinjiang or a Tibetan in Tibet, then your score is curved up. This is similar to how the one child policy only really applied to the urban Han Chinese population.
There were cottage industries of tutoring and extracurricular enrichment that afforded wealthier families better chances for their children. There were also districts with extremely inflated housing prices where the best schools were. The government has now abolished both of these things. Now students are just in school all the time as the after-school tutoring programs have become socialized and compulsory. Still, there is a game of cat-and-mouse.
My overall thesis here is that a mostly level playing field for the children of a country with more than a billion people whose families until recently had a single child to carry their lineage results in a level of pressure that is beyond comparison. However, I still believe this system is far superior to other states where the class system is fossilized and the pressure is lower because the results are predetermined.
Hey, I left my other comment on this post, for context you can read it.
I wanna hear your opinion on the matter of making it easier, is there a real way to make GaoKao an exam that doesn’t take away hours and hours of a young persons life, and if it does exist, then how?
As long as they can support a family on a wage without a college education, this is fine.
Unlike tests in other countries like the UK and US, the Gaokao is not designed to promote useful skills in students like creativity, critical thinking, or problem solving.
I think anyone who’s ever taken the SAT and (I presume) the A-levels went “wait, what the fuck?” When they heard the above. No standardized test is capable of increasing your creativity or critical thinking, and the only problem you solve is how to get good marks on the test. The video author clearly has an unjustifiably rosy view of the West which borders on standard lib shit.
The rest of the video raises some okay points like the uneven distribution of education resources, long hours, and social pressure. The first two are things that the government is taking steps to combat by providing better access to schools to rural populations, and China recently cracked down on the after school tutoring industry, practically gutting it, to make it more fair for all students and to ensure that they get time off.
Unfortunately, most of the problems arise out of a limited number of spots at desirable universities and intense competition between millions of students. Even if you create a completely fair and equitable system based on merit, the people who get in are still going to be the smartest people who work the hardest.
I’m actually wondering: have you, yourself, taken it before? Or any other cousins who’ve taken it
Btw, any other Chinese users here in Lemmygrad and Hexbear, maybe even lemmy.ml, familiar with it?
Nah, without going into personal details I haven’t taken it but all my family members did and so have a lot of my friends. The long hours of constant study and pressure are real things, vid maker wasn’t lying about that.
On the other hand, my parents made me do all sorts of extra study for the exam that I was taking anyway, so it’s not even clear that long hours and pressure are halmarks of the Gaokao, but rather of parents who value educational achievement (too much?).
Since you @'d me, just figure I should let you know- I’m (sadly) not a Chinese citizen, nor have I been to the PRC, I come from a Chinese-Singaporean/Canadian family. My family on both sides is probably at least 4~ generations or more removed from living on the mainland…
For my thoughts on the gaokao though- yeah, I hear it’s rough. Hopefully Chinese culture, and eastern in general, can slowly shift away from such draining, painful experiences towards something healthier and more sustainable. I suppose both of my parents must have had their own stressful experiences in the Singaporean system themselves, though likely not quite as bad as described. But this is the result of living in a nation of almost 1.5 billion, and in a world of 8 billion humans, and in a country that had to build itself up from ruins, rather than plunder and extort its wealth and land from other peoples- as you noted, this is the case in most of the world- and while culturally it would be better if a more holistic approach were taken, this is the world system we live in. I do hope China reforms the system though, personally I’d thought they had begun some slow reforms already.
As the other person you @'d said though- I agree with them, this person sounds like they have a absolute nonsense idea of western education and culture in general.
As I guy who lived in China for 9 years as a 老外, I passed elementary school and for unforeseen reasons could not continue my stay in the country. In elementary, at least in my time, it was tougher than that of western schools, I was in a regular Chinese school and there were teachers who hit their students with rulers, but with time it smoothed out and I saw it less and less. Speaking of GaoKao, yeah, it’s fucking insane, last time i have talked to my old classmates I only have been able to do at weekends because only then does she(in her case) have time for that. I think the whole thing starts even before high school, in middle school, where the students start to get prepped. China is not solo in this one though, for example Russian ЕГЭ(and post Soviet countries in general) are also hard and matter a lot for your possibilities to get into a good uni without having to pay with your soul. Chinese case, is in my opinion, just eastern over-achieving, which should be made easier for the sake of poor students. In Russians case, it is the consequences of a broken education system.
