by David Safier
Now this is a test driven student culture.
[snip]
Families pull out all the stops to optimize their children’s scores. In Sichuan Province in southwestern China, students studied in a hospital, hooked up to oxygen containers, in hopes of improving their concentration.
Some girls take contraceptives so they will not get their periods during the exam. Some well-off parents dangle the promise of fabulous rewards for offspring whose scores get them into a top-ranked university: parties, 100,000 renminbi in cash, or about $14,600, or better.
“My father even promised me, if I get into a college like Nankai University in Tianjin, ‘I’ll give you a prize, an Audi,’ ” said Chen Qiong, a 17-year-old girl taking the exam in Beijing.
[snip]
Cheating is increasingly sophisticated. One group of parents last year outfitted their children with tiny earpieces, persuaded a teacher to fax them the questions and then transmitted the answers by cellphone. Another father equipped a student with a miniscanner and had nine teachers on standby to provide the answers. In all, 2,645 cheaters were caught last year.
This makes our AIMS, No Child Left Behind and SAT prep seem like, well, child's play by comparison.
The positive news for China is the growth in the college population.
No question, students and parents in China show a fierce dedication to . . . I'm reluctant to call it "education." A better term would be "getting ahead in school." And the increasing number of college grads will propel the country forward, no question about it.
But are these test driven, memorization obsessed students getting a better education than our top students? I'm sure they perform better on international testing. Testing is the mother's milk of their system. But are they better "prepared" — whatever that means — for life and for the professional world that faces them in the future?
I don't know the answer.
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