MCLC: examination examination

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: examination examination
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (6/30/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/world/asia/burden-of-chinas-college-entra
nce-test-sets-off-wide-debate.html

Test That Can Determine the Course of Life in China Gets a Closer
Examination 
By EDWARD WONG 

BEIJING — Millions of high school graduates across China have been
furiously dialing telephone hot lines or gathering with family members
around the home computer in recent days in a nail-biter of a ritual not
unlike that of waiting for a winning lottery number.

The number, in this case, is the score for what is generally considered
the single most important test any Chinese citizen can take — the gaokao,
or college entrance examination. High school seniors took the test over
two to three days in early June. Now, the tests have been graded, the
numbers tabulated and the results released, region by region. In the final
step, college selections are being made in an opaque process that
stretches from late June into July.

“When the result came out on June 23, it happened to be my 18th birthday,”
said Yang Taoyuan, who lives with his parents in Kunming, capital of the
southwest province of Yunnan. “We had a family get-together on that day,
and everybody was there when we called over to a hot line to find out
about my scores.”

In a country where education is so highly prized, the score that a student
earns after the days of testing at the end of high school is believed to
set the course of one’s life. The score determines not just whether a
young person will attend a Chinese university, but also which one — a
selection, many Chinese say, that has a crucial bearing on career
prospects.

But debate appears to have grown more heated lately over the value of the
gaokao (pronounced gow-kow). Critics say the exam promotes the kind of
rote learning that is endemic to education in China and that hobbles
creativity. It leads to enormous psychological strain on students,
especially in their final year of high school. In various ways, the system
favors students from large cities and well-off families, even though it
was designed to create a level playing field among all Chinese youth.

Last month, a 12-minute television segment railing against the exam by
Zhong Shan, a well-known talk show host in Hunan Province, gained
popularity on the Web and became a focal point for fury against the gaokao
in particular and the Chinese educational system in general. Also
widespread on the Internet were photographs taken in a Hubei Province
classroom of students hooked up to intravenous drips
<http://news.ifeng.com/society/2/detail_2012_05/06/14340557_0.shtml> of
amino acids while cramming.

Perhaps most shocking to the public was the story of Liu Qing
<http://news.ifeng.com/society/2/detail_2012_06/09/15163277_0.shtml>, a
student from Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, whose family and teachers hid from
her for two months the fact that her father had died so as not to upset
her before the exam. Ms. Liu, according to reports in the Chinese news
media, did not hear the news about her father until after she had
completed the test.

“We Chinese are indeed the most intelligent people in the world,” Mr.
Zhong said near the end of his widely broadcast screed. “Is there no way
at all we can avoid having the younger generation, the future of our
nation, grow up in such a fearful, desperate and cruel atmosphere?”

Standardized testing is common throughout the world, and students and
parents in nations like the United States, Britain and France also
complain loudly about the weight that admissions committees at
universities place on such tests. But the admissions process in those
countries is still considered much more flexible than that in Asian
nations. The emphasis on entrance exams in China, South Korea and Japan
induces widespread fear and frustration, leading more and more parents
from elite families to look for alternatives, like sending their children
abroad.

Defenders of the gaokao, which has its roots in the imperial exam system,
say the test is a crucial component in a meritocracy, allowing students
from poorer backgrounds or rural areas to compete for spots in top
universities. Nevermind that the odds are heavily against those students,
since a quota system based on residency means it is much easier for
applicants in cities like Beijing and Shanghai to get into universities
there, which are generally considered the best in China. Peking
University, among the most prestigious, does not release admission rates,
but Mr. Zhong said on his television program that a student from Anhui
Province had a one in 7,826 chance of getting into Peking University,
while a student from Beijing had one in 190 odds, or 0.5 percent. (Harvard
had a 5.9 percent acceptance rate this year.)

Even supporters of the gaokao system acknowledge the level of anxiety
involved. It is not uncommon for Chinese to have recurring nightmares
about cramming for and taking the gaokao years after they have graduated
from university. Many schools in China set aside the final year of high
school as a cram year for the test. Mr. Yang, the student in Kunming, said
he spent 13 hours a day in his senior year studying, and his parents even
rented an apartment for him near his school so he would not have to waste
time traveling back and forth to his parents’ home.

“When I was getting close to the test, pretty much all I did besides eat
and sleep was study,” Zhao Xiang, a high school graduate from Zunyi,
Guizhou Province, said in an Internet chat interview.

He said students’ lives before the gaokao were full of suffering:
“Sometimes it was pressure from my family, sometimes it was the
expectations from my teacher, sometimes it was pressure from myself. I was
constantly in a really bad mood in the period before the gaokao. I was
really confused.”

A report by Xinhua, the state news agency, said that of the 9.15 million
students who took the gaokao this year, about 75 percent would be admitted
to universities in mainland China. Once the students get their scores,
they submit to education officials a list of universities, ranking them in
order of choice. Administrators at the universities then look at the
students’ scores and decide whether to admit them for the coming September.

Many universities do set aside a few slots for students admitted on the
basis of special merit, thus allowing leeway for students who do not take
the gaokao or have low scores. Admission in those cases can be based on
factors like musical talent, foreign language skills or athletic prowess,
as in the United States. Ethnic minority students sometimes get an
advantage.

Of course, children of senior Communist Party members, government leaders
and prominent businesspeople have their own back channels to admission, a
phenomenon that exists, too, in the West, though perhaps not to the same
degree.

There has also been a growing trend of students in China applying to
universities outside the mainland. Many Chinese parents — including the
party’s top leaders — not only value a foreign degree over one from a
Chinese university, but also want their children to avoid the stress of
taking the gaokao. An Education Ministry report last year said the number
of high school students from top cities leaving the mainland to pursue
higher education overseas grew at 20 percent each year from 2008 to 2011.

Gao Haicheng, a junior in Kunming, said he planned to apply to
universities abroad rather than ones in China. Though avoiding the gaokao
is not his main aim, Mr. Gao said the exam “is a big problem in China’s
education system.”

“In China, they only use marks to explain something,” he added, referring
to the emphasis on the gaokao score.

Each year, cheating scandals become the talk of China. One common tactic
was for students to give their identification cards to look-alikes hired
to take the test; later, many provinces installed fingerprint scanners at
test centers. In 2008, three girls in Jiangsu Province were caught with
mini-cameras inside their bras; their aim was to transmit images of the
exam to people outside the classroom who would then provide answers. This
year, the big scandal involved students in Huanggang, Hubei Province
<http://www.legaldaily.com.cn/index_article/content/2012-06/13/content_3636
785.htm?node=5955>, famous in the past decade for churning out students
with high scores; several dozen students were caught there last month for
using small monitors
<http://www.legaldaily.com.cn/index_article/content/2012-06/13/content_3636
785.htm?node=5955> costing nearly $2,500 that resembled erasers and that
allowed the students to receive electronic messages with test answers.

Zhang Qianfan, a law professor Peking University who has studied the
education system, said the main problem was the lack of slots at
universities. Despite a boom in university construction in China, there is
still a shortage. This year, there are seven million university slots, two
million short of the number of gaokao test takers. The gap was much wider
in 2006 — there were 5.3 million slots then for 9.5 million test takers.
The drop in the number of students taking the gaokao can be attributed to
demographic trends in China and the rise in the number of students opting
to study abroad.

“Many people are harsh critics of the gaokao, but I think they somewhat
miss the most crucial point, which is that the supply from decent academic
institutions falls short of the demand from the public,” Mr. Zhang said.

Students who have received their gaokao scores and are now submitting
their choices for universities expect to hear results this month. Mr.
Yang, the graduate in Kunming, said by telephone on Saturday that he had
put down the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology as his top
choice. But he said if he had done better than his score of 517, out of a
possible 750, he might have put down the Civil Aviation University of
China in Tianjin.

“I did the best in my class, so I’m pretty happy with the result,” he
said. “So are my parents and most of my friends. But it’s not high enough
to get me into the school I’m longing to attend.”

Christy Khoshaba contributed reporting from Kunming, China, and Jacob
Fromer from Hong Kong. Mia Li and Shi Da contributed research.