Is There Hope for Chinese Education? None! What Does It Give Us? Nothing!

I write this with no ill will. I only hope for China’s revival!

For years I’ve lived in a daze. Day after day I’ve drifted through life half asleep. I once wanted to fall in love, once wanted to do something big and spectacular, once wondered when I’d get into a Chinese university, once hoped that on the strength of my own grades I could get into high school without my family paying extra, without being a fee-paying “out-of-district” student. I used to dream about a lot of things, but every single one of them got shattered, one by one.

Chinese education, education with Chinese characteristics: not rigid, not flexible, stuck in a state where you’re neither dead nor alive. You don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Quality education” is a product of the post-1990 era, I guess! In my memory, Han Han’s essay “Taking a Bath in a Padded Coat” marks the beginning of the rise of quality education. Han Han, I call him our Lu Xun. He’s slowly been keeping a lower profile lately. My math teacher says he’s used up all his talent, but I don’t think so. Han Han is keeping a low profile because he’s pouring his energy into his racing career. He doesn’t speak out, doesn’t write much, doesn’t publish books. The subtext seems to be that the Communist Party wants to shut him up, and he just needs to lie low.

This kind of education, I don’t know how it’s any different from the old exam-oriented education. Just a different name? Decades of “quality,” and where has the quality gone? Exams are still exams, you still get into college based on grades and scores, everything is still exactly the same as before. So-called quality means filling in scores for your moral character, extracurricular activities and so on, on some crappy form. Those scores, heh, the power is in the teachers’ hands. China is a society that runs on personal connections and face, so all of it is fake, totally fake. As long as you have power, money and face, these little things take care of themselves. Quality education is total bullshit.

In every dynasty and every country, all education has had to cater to politics, to cater to whoever rules. It’s a truth that has never changed in a thousand years, and there’s no changing it. Why are we communist? I don’t know. Whatever the ruling party wants us to study, we have to study. Learning a second way of thinking, promoting a second way of thinking on home soil, seems to lead only to a dead end.

Education is China’s blind spot, the thing it doesn’t take seriously. But do you know? It’s education. How many people in China go through this half-dead education every year? 73 million, going through this half-dead education. Living through it is painful, but dying would be a waste. Chinese students all seem to be torn~

Let me borrow a passage Han Han wrote about education:

Here I have to bring up a topic that has nothing to do with the drought: education. After so many years of Project Hope, the education problems of central and western China still haven’t been fully solved. It’s very sad. Compulsory education, in any country, is a responsibility the go-vern-ment must fulfill, but China is an exception. Germany began implementing universal compulsory education in the 17th century, and Japan’s compulsory education enrollment rate at the end of the Meiji era was higher than China’s in 2000. So when other countries became developed countries long ago while China is still struggling toward “moderate prosperity,” don’t feel it’s unfair. It’s perfectly normal. Don’t tell me China’s national conditions are different. I don’t know how Japan, a country with a huge population, barren land and scarce resources, a country whose “Japanese national conditions” are extremely pronounced, became the world’s second-largest power. They seemed to have no reason to even become a developed country, but they did it. It’s all up to people. To those who “talk national conditions when I talk integration with the world, and talk integration with the world when I talk national conditions,” all I want to say is: your IQ is at best only good enough to help someone count the money after they’ve sold you. Likewise, with the help of Project Hope, our go-vern-ment’s investment in education ranks dead last in the world. The logic is the same: you’ve taken on the responsibility the go-vern-ment should bear, but you can’t do the go-vern-ment’s job, and so you indirectly leave children in the west unable to afford school. So the next time someone in our country tells you “our education has achieved another great success” or something like that, you shouldn’t feel happy. You should feel ashamed.

After reading this passage, you should understand what a load of crap China’s so-called education is!

Now let’s talk about politics. Shameless, fucking shameless, that’s my verdict. In politics, whatever is declared right is right, and even if it isn’t right it will become right. That’s politics, XX politics.

It’s a fact that can’t be changed: China’s unique family culture. It can’t be changed. So my view is that it’s all chaos. I came up with the term “chaotic political theory” myself. Maybe someone has proposed it before, but I’ve thought it through and added my own ideas.

Chaotic politics is politics where you can’t tell who’s right and who’s wrong, where solving the people’s problems is all for show, yet it’s also supposedly politics that listens to the people’s opinions. Everything is chaotic: blurry political boundaries, blurry political dealings, blurry ideology. That’s what I mean by “chaotic political theory.”

“Quality education” will die out someday, swept away by some XX that erupts!

Education tied to politics makes me sad. Why would an upstanding socialist country be like this? The reason is… I won’t say. I’ll stop here. In Han Han’s words: “Say too much and you die, and then they flog your corpse.”

One day in the past, I cried over certain things, but I held back the tears. None of it was worth pitying, because I know that in chaotic politics there’s nothing left to reform, unless it’s thoroughly…

I can’t do it, and I don’t want to make it my goal. I don’t want to reform Chinese education, and I don’t want to reform China’s XX either. None of that is my life goal. I once told a friend that those of us who see clearly, who have opened our eyes to the world, should make the wise choice and get away, and come back to our country when the time is right.

Every day’s classes exist only for the gaokao, the college entrance exam, just like the imperial examination system of the Sui and Tang dynasties, freezing people’s thinking so they can go pass the exams. It’s sad. Where has our nation’s creativity and way of thinking gone? It’s trapped in the spiderweb of so-called “quality education,” and yet we sit in the web, perfectly content, admiring our own handsome faces. Heh, the Qing government’s delusions of grandeur have come back to this land.

Is there hope for Chinese education? My own view: no hope. Maybe only a reform driven by students could do it, but… does it give us anything? No, still my view. Pitiful education. All I can do is sigh…

I hope China can change, and that the Chinese nation can be revived!

I hope my motherland grows prosperous and strong!

Education is the foundation of a nation!

A nation’s tragedy: when education fails, the nation is doomed!

Written by Jianfeng Yiyu on April 10, 2010

I hope someone will pay attention to this post