HBA Field Study Week

So for the past few days of this week, I have not been stuck in my room memorizing Chinese or in class because it's field study week!! three cheers for that!

Anyways, for my field study topic, I chose to focus on the education system in China, because 1) I am interested in education in general, esp. that of the high school and college and 2) I think it would be interesting to compare the education system of the States and China. So far I have interviewed two high school graduates who had just taken GaoKao, which is Chinese version of the SAT, except it's much harder and meaningful. This is a test that you take when you are a senior in high school and it's takes place in the middle of June for three days. It's an extremely rigorous process in that it kind of determines what your life is going to be, and you only have one chance per year to take it. Students in China start to prepare for GaoKao starting in elementary school since from the day they entered school all their parents and teachers start to drill in their heads about the importance of GaoKao and how much does their score on GaoKao matter for their chance of getting in a good college, which translates into a good job, which then determines a good life. And this is true to some extent as there is no college application process as we know it in the States, in China, the determinant factor for whether a college will accept you or not is your GaoKao score. Different schools have different score requirement, so for example, QingHua or Beida, which are like the Harvard and Yale of China, obviously will have really high score requirement. But anyways, to show how important GaoKao is to the Chinese population, when I was in Beijing during the time of GaoKao, one of the taxi I took had to go around some streets because GaoKao was taking place at that location, and the government has this regulation that there cannot be cars near the place of GaoKao to provide the best testing environment for students. And taxi drivers have to take students to their testing places anytime during the time of GaoKao as long those students have a testing ticket, ensuring that all students will have the transportation tool to get to the place of GaoKao. There are these red banners encouraging students to study hard and perform well, and of course, there are these count down things that are along the lines of counting down for the Olympics. The two students I interviewed viewed GaoKao as something not the most ideal college application tool but a necessary one. Their views are shared by many of the college students and professors/teachers I have interviewed.