Page 67 - EducationWorld October 2020

This is on top of an earlier scheme that dishes out loans
of €650 (Rs.55,939) per month, raising worries of rising
student indebtedness. None of these emergency measures
is enough, argues Grob. The pandemic has merely exposed
the idea of adequate state support for students as a “fic-
tion”. But there is still no “visionary strategy about student
financing in Germany”, he warns.
CHINA
Liberalisation winds

FOR CHILDREN FROM BOTTOM-OF-PYRAMID
households, China’s infamous gaokao, a punish-
ingly hard university-entrance exam taken by over
10 million students every year, offers the only chance to
escape a life toiling on farms and factories. As a result, Higher secondary students preparing for gaokao
Chinese education has long involved little more than rote
learning, aimed purely at the gaokao. Pupils attend late- importance to building character as much as knowledge. It
night cram sessions and shoulder twice as much homework guides most of Nanjing’s more liberal teaching. The author,
as the global average. Huang Quanyu, became a household name in the middle
But the People’s Republic’s deep reverence for tests is class, writes Teresa Kuan, an American academic, in Love’s
not shared by reformist educators and some head teachers, Uncertainty: The Politics and Ethics of Child Rearing in
who somewhat belatedly have started to downplay them. Contemporary China (2015). In 2010, China published a
They have a radical vision — of reducing study loads, ex- ten-year education plan which admits that the country’s
pand the curriculum and encouraging students to take up teaching is “relatively outdated”, and that people have
hobbies. Nanjing, a former imperial capital, is the centre of “strong yearnings” for suzhi jiaoyu.
their experiments. From next year, a tweaked gaokao will give students
In 2016, Nanjing Number One Secondary School, the leeway to pick and choose some subjects, beyond the com-
city’s oldest and most competitive, began to let students pulsory ones. But China is reluctant to overhaul a test that
borrow points from a “marks bank” to boost low grades. remains remarkably meritocratic. “By sticking with the
These are repaid by deducting points scored in a later test, exam, we waste students with other talents. By moving too
or earned from good classwork. The aim is to take a bit of far away from it, we disadvantage poor kids,” says Wang
pressure off exams. At the school, teachers and students Tao of East China Normal University. It is not that loving
are encouraged to be “on an equal footing”, an appreciative parents don’t want their children to have fun. Rather, as one
former pupil wrote in an online forum. Nanjing Number mother in Nanjing puts it, relaxed classrooms are “just no
One has a vibrant students union, a literary society and use” if they don’t get a pupil into a good university.
other clubs. Its university-acceptance rate this year was 95 So quasi-military cram schools —“gaokao factories”, as
percent, a record for the school. they are known — still thrive. One such is Hengshui Sec-
Yet the scene outside Nanjing Number One in late July, ondary School in the northern province of Hebei. It has 18
soon after the gaokao results were released, was not of ju- branches across China, some of which reward students who
bilation. Dozens of angry parents brandished placards de- get into top universities with tens of thousands of dollars.
manding the head teacher step down. They blamed their In 2018, one of them bought two decommissioned army
children’s lower-than-expected scores on what they saw as tanks to flank its entrance, apparently to instil a sense of
his attempts to make light of tests. More traditional schools toughness among its students.
in Nanjing, they noted, churned out top-scorers. Nanjing Wang says he’s glad to see “so much negotiation” un-
Number One mollified the protesters by extending compul- der way, with educators pushing forward and policymak-
sory revision sessions to 10 pm for final-year students. On ers following cautiously, even if parents are still resisting.
social media, theories circulated that officials who advocat- Observant children at the museum in Nanjing will find, in
ed a less demanding curriculum really just wanted to make addition to statues of prominent men who aced the keju,
it harder for students from humbler families to get ahead. a bronze one of a person who failed it repeatedly: Wu
Many in China once supported what schools such as Cheng’en, who was educated in Nanjing in the 16th century.
Nanjing Number One are trying to do. In the early 2000s, a Wu went on to write Journey to the West, one of China’s
bestseller about raising children in the West, Education for most celebrated novels.
Quality in America, popularised the idea of suzhi jiaoyu. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist & Times
The term refers to a well-rounded education that attaches Higher Education)

OCTOBER 2020 EDUCATIONWORLD 67