exam-oriented education
There is a hot topic this summer in China about college entrance examinations which are generally deemed stiff and over-stressed. There were two controversial news happened during the examination in June. A mother of a student who was late 2 minutes for the college entrance examination and not allowed to take a sit for the examination went down her knees and begging before the officers for a chance to take part in in front of everybody. And there was also a mother of a student badly-wounded in a traffic accident on the way to examination place with her daughter, but her daughter was persuaded to leave her and take the examination instead of stay with her in that desperate situation. All of these is because of the college entrance examination which is hold only once a year and the only factor decided college for senior school graduate students to enter. Public opinion was in a very disturbed state about the importance of this exam which seems stand in a much more important place than the live and dignity. Obviously, this kind of exam-oriented education has had a bad impact of students and society. Scores are the only standard of studying in exam-oriented education. It has disadvantage impact of value concept of children. In my high school, students are divided in different classes which are ranked by scores. Top students go to S class, middling students go to E class and the other students go to A class. And students’ classes are changing every term by the scores of last final exam. Even the orders of seats in classrooms are decided by the scores and it really affected students’ self-esteem and made them become reticent. It was a vicious circle actually. Students who failed once would be afraid and conflict of study easily and get worse on study. I feel highly motivated and enjoyable on learning when I get approved and encouraged and I guess most people feel the same. When I was on the seventh grade, my math teacher was very severe with scores and treated students harshly. Every time when I was on her class I felt nervous and afraid of her letting me answer the questions. I was too nervous to say out any word every time she asked me questions, although I can figure out the answer by myself. Then she usually criticized my math scores roughly in front of all my classmates. I was shamed by my scores and scared of mathematics in that period of time. But I got a nearly perfect math score when I graduated from junior school. Obviously,it’s undue to using scores to judge students.
In this kind of education, there is only one regular standard of grading and there is only one answer that is correct. It limits children’s individual character and active of thoughts. Students must follow the strict rule of test. There was an ridiculous news about a primary student’s homework in China. A girl did fill in the blanks test in Chinese and she used “heavy” to describe “clouds” but her teacher gave her a wrong mark because it was “white clouds” in textbook. This limits a student because she can not use her imagination and creation that are important skill of using a language. And this also is a limitation because it teach students think that there’s only one correct things and all the others are wrong. People who judge things in right and wrong rashly and simply are not wise and open-minded.
Because student are judged by scores and they only pay attention on the test skills and remember the knowledges on textbooks to heighten the sores, few students have strong ability of practice. Most Chinese student who graduated from senior high school are hard to communicate normally with English native speakers, although English education is very popular in China and it usually starts at the third grade in primary school. Teachers only pay the attention on vocabulary, grammar and reading that are the points of test. We did little listening and speaking practice during class because they are just not important for scores. We did very well at the English test in China but when I talk with a native speaker I feel hard to say a complete sentence.
In a word, exam-oriented education in China is absolutely disbenefit to the development of society. It has negative influence to the value concepts of children and limits children’s mind and thoughts. It is also ineffective and impractical to this society. Students have been tired of being tortured by continuous meaningless and useless exams and looking forward to humanistic education for many years.
