Education

This past Saturday was the day of the Gaokao exam, the Chinese college entrance exam which, from what I understand, basically determines your educational future. So I thought I'd share my own thoughts on what I've learned from being on a college campus here.

I've been eating more at the student dining hall and trying to strike up conversations with Chinese students. One thing that's struck me since getting here is how pre-professional the majors here feel. Last weekend on our trip to mount Qingcheng, I asked the tour guide what her major was in college and her answer was simple: tourism. Tourism and history, to be fair, but still. Several of the students who I've met here are English majors, a major which tends to focus on interpreting. Moreover, students only take classes pertaining to their major, and also live and hang out with the other students in their major for the most part. (In fact, the freshmen and sophomore math majors, along with some other majors, live on a different campus 40 minutes away.) And while I haven't actually interacted with enough students to know, I don't feel that there's the same cross-pollination of ideas and random lunchtime conversations about philosophy or religion or the Black Mass that there is at Harvard.

To strike up conversation, I often ask what someone's major is. And then the natural follow-up question for me is: do you like it? And that's where it gets interesting. The main responses I've gotten are:

1. It's okay, but I chose it in high school and am no longer crazy about it
2. It's okay, but I didn't choose my major my older sister chose it for me
3. It's okay, but I didn't choose it the “system” chose it for me

At response #3, I think that the Gaokao admits people to certain majors at different schools, and so this girl chose her major because Sichuan University admitted her for that. So students aren't in love with what they're studying. Of course, not everyone at Harvard loves what they're studying either, and definitely take classes and do extracurriculars with their future careers in mind. And maybe at Harvard since we choose our own majors, we don't admit it if we're not in love with what we're studying. But I still think that the typical liberal arts pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge is less prevalent here.

Not only that, but college is supposed to be the least stressful time in a student's life in China. High school is extremely focused on the Gaokao, and then college is a bit less stressful. Kind of like American high schools I guess, but with the added pressure of everything being based on one test. (And I think my high school was a bit exceptional; I know plenty of kids who breezed through high school.) One professor here concluded that Chinese students don't have enough time during their schooling to reflect on their lives. She feels that students are very motivated to do well in school, to get good jobs, to move to a big city, and then haven't thought about it beyond that. (Again, also true in America.) But I think that this problem is even more extreme here due to the way that the system is laid out.

There is one thing in particular that I love about the Chinese education system: the focus on foreign languages from an early age. Chinese students learn English starting in kindergarden nowadays, and so every student here speaks English. (At varying levels.) One of our guest lecturers remarked that he thinks that cross-cultural exchange among young people is crucial, and that language is the key to culture. If every American spoke Chinese and understood Chinese culture as well as the Chinese here understand American culture and speak English, I think that we would have a much more inclusive and understanding society.