Comment

Worshipping exam winners reinforces an outdated system

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-06-29 10:04

The results of the national college entrance exam are out and the media is narrowing in on the biggest scorers.

Detailed profiles - which also highlight their high schools and families - are being written and printed about the students who nailed the best scores. Even businesses are weighing up the possibility of exploiting the commercial potential of the event.

This fuss is staged every year, despite a ban from education authorities to play up the results.

It is understandable that parents want to share their pride with others, while schools hope to get famous from their high-scoring students, but such enthusiasm has little social value.

Getting the best result in one exam does not prove the true worth of a student. It is quite likely they won't be top in another exam, and following their particular study technique might not help another.

There are also no accurate statistics on how many of these "winners" went on to do well in future careers. The flipside tells a more interesting story though: those who made the biggest contributions to the county were not winners of the national college entrance exam.

Worshipping these people comes as a direct result of employing an exam-orientated educational system. However, high scores are not equivalent to talent and any worship just strengthens the deeply rooted but rigid system.

When scores become the sole standard to gauge a student, innovation and creativity is ignored - these are the true skills for future success. In fact, to achieve high scores, teachers usually force students to passively memorize details and subsequently oppress creativity.

Appeals to reform the outdated educational system might be loud but the current enthusiasm of exam successes shows there is still a long way to go.

Excerpts from a comment in Beijing Times, June 2