KidSpirit

Confining Individual Thought and Social Caring

Famous 18th-century author Alexander Pope once criticized reading as fettering individual thinking ability—“Forever reading, never to be read.” I would say, “Forever studying, never to think” to summarize the exam-oriented approach to education in my nation today.

In China, Gaokao is the only standard of measuring students’ academic performance, the prerequisite for applying to Chinese college, and the most important objective in the early stages of everyone’s life.

I am currently in the International Curriculum Center of one of the most competitive high schools in Beijing, and I can clearly sense the difference between us and the main school. Following the Gaokao system, the main school students are forced to attend everyday afterschool tests. If you look over the keys and rubrics of the tests carefully, you will discover that they are not designed reasonably. In the political science test, the rubric for the free-response questions is so restrictive that no points besides those listed in the textbook are acceptable. Students are expected to memorize what’s already said in books, but not to analyze the problem or give their own thoughts. To me, this eliminates the independent thinking abilities of young individuals.

Students are also heavily piled with homework. I always hear my friends in the main school complaining that they never go to bed before midnight. How can these young students possibly explore their talents in other areas or think about the meaning of their lives if facing so much mental and physical stresses, having so little spare time every day? How can they even care about people in need or make contributions to their community if their worlds are narrowed down to only their own scores and rankings in school?

Last summer, I met the vice president of the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation in the YYGS summer program and discussed my concerns and some research on poverty with him. That little “scholarly” discussion inspired me so much, giving me a larger picture and deep reflection on the social issue in my nation, which I would never learn or hear about in my school. At that moment, I came up with the thought of inviting him to my school to enlighten my peers, just like he enlightened me. Through a long emailing process, now, he is finally about to come to deliver a presentation on poverty reduction and rural revitalization in China this week. I hope, through his presentation, we can get my schoolmates out of the “exam trap,” to get them to think about what the real world surrounding them is like. Hopefully, he can widen their horizons beyond exams and scores to the unprivileged people surrounding them, to something larger than themselves. Hopefully, some of my peers will choose to join me in pursuing poverty alleviation in the future.

Botao Ju is a 17-year-old from Beijing, China. He enjoys reading, writing, cycling, rowing, and holding club seminars.

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