Two Classrooms, Two Worlds: Rethinking Education in China
Today, I want to talk about the gap between the Chinese education system and those of other countries. As we all know, China adopts the Gaokao (National College Entrance Examination) and Zhongkao (High School Entrance Examination) systems for students to enter colleges at different levels, which only depends on the scores they get in these two exams.
However, for instance, as a Chinese student studying abroad in America like me , I feel a complete difference between these two different education systems. I am a freshman in high school now. Before coming to the US, I had been fully following the Chinese study system, and my school schedule was always like this: we got up at 5:30 am and only had 10 minutes to get ready for school. After that, everyone had to go to the playground and run 2 kilometers before breakfast, but we only had 20 minutes for breakfast. Then we needed to study for 5 hours until lunch, and continued studying until 10 pm.
We repeated this schedule every day, and we were really tired. Sometimes, I always thought: what if we don’t study this hard? Can we still be successful? Why do teachers always tell us that only studying can help us achieve success? If we get a bad score, does that mean we can never be successful? but I’m really a bad score student , am i just going to be this bad forever? I can’t afford these anxiety , so i gave the application to American high schools and going to another life.
After I came to America, everything changed. No teachers force us to study as hard as we did before. Instead, they hope us to develop in a diverse way. A student can be really good at sports but not good at studying, and that is totally okay.
Every night before I go to bed, I keep thinking about this gap: why is there such a huge difference between the two systems? China is not a poor country; on the contrary, it has developed incredibly in recent years. We have so many advanced economies, technologies and so on . But why does our education system still lack what other countries have? On social media platforms like Douyin, I often see videos about how tired students are and how some of them suffer from mental illnesses just because of school pressure.
Therefore, I think the Chinese government needs to reflect on this issue. We must start to care more about students’ mental health.
RUOXI (CICILIA) CAO
