Eliminating China's Entrance Exams Stirs Debate
From December 1993 East Texas Mensa SpectruM

After the Cultural Revolution, many Chinese cities started Key Middle Schools, with the best teachers possible, in order to prepare the brightest students for college. Entrance exams for these schools were a junior version of college entrance exams, and the schools were often boarding schools to accomodate students across town or from rural areas.

China is not Japan. Elites are frowned upon in China. By 1986 the pendulum began to swing the other way, with emphasis on meeting almost all students' needs in neighborhood schools. In 1990 five schools in Shenyang eliminated the exams and stirred an uproar from parents who thought their children would be attending inferior schools. Weak schools were improved by transferring new teachers from other schools, inviting retired teachers back, and with bright new college graduates. Teachers were encouraged to teach not only the top few students, but all of them. Soon the reforms spread to Shanghai, Tianjin, Wuhan and Urumqi. The capitol, Beijing, followed suit this year. Parents have protested and written to the newspapers to no avail.

Is excellence no longer a goal? Actually, Key Schools still exist, there just aren't as many of them, and only very outstanding students go to them. Selection is by recommendation, and teachers are sometimes pressured for recommendations. Most students will go to school close to home and have more time for hobbies and family activities. Boarding school students at high schools only got to go home for holidays under the old school system. Even kindergarten students spend the night at school four or five nights a week if their city parents' jobs prevent easy transportation at night.

Education and family relations in China should be studied very closely not just by sociologists, but by futurists interested in the effects of sudden drastic changes in family size. The present reforms provide more family time for families who only have one child. The gradual drop in western family size has obscurred many effects in family size. We have vague debates about family values, knowing that things are different, but not able to understand why. Student exchange programs such as promoted by Rotary Clubs and others are very good at helping kids learn about other cultures. China doesn't allow Rotary yet, and doesn't participate in student exchange either, as far as I know.

Some see China as bad partly because of the legacy of the Korean War, but the Chinese provide better conditions for the poor than most other Asian countries. Their schools have had a strong British influence in old lecture styles. American ideas seem to be gaining in influence in education. Let's hope that the idea of Gifted Education can regain some of the ground it seems to be losing at the present time. The present neighborhood school plan has a lot of benefits, but population density is high enough to have a gifted program in every school. Conformist pressure in China is very high; creativity will be unlikely to blossom without special Gifted Children programs.