Yimin Wang is a doctoral student in the department of educational leadership and policy studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Heidi Ross is the director of the East Asian Studies Center and professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.
Chinese Education and Society, vol. 43, no. 4, July–August 2010, pp. 75–93. © 2010 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.
7 Yimin Wang and Heidi Ross Experiencing the Change and Continuity of the College Entrance Examination. A Case Study of Gaokao County, 1996–2010 Abstract: Employing data from three encounters, during 1996, 2001, and 2010, with students and teachers in Huining, Gansu, China’s “Gaokao county,” known for its striking contrast between poverty and the remarkable achievements of its College Entrance Examination (CEE)candidates, we explore the lived experiences of Huining students and teachers who embody Huining’s “Gaokao miracle.” These experiences, examined in the context of rapid educational transformation and more gradual implementation of CEE reform policies, give expression to continuities and changes in students’ and teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and values associated with the CEE. These include the values of hard work and persistence and beliefs about state-granted fairness in educational opportunities. Two 2010 case studies, reflecting controversies associated
with the peak of CEE reform, shed light on the creation of CEE “winners”and “losers” and enrich our understanding of the usefulness and limits of social reproduction theories for understanding the impact and outcomes of the CEE on Chinese rural students and families.
76 CHINESE EDUCATION AND SOCIETY
During the summer holidays, many students from high schools in big cities, organized by their schools and tour agencies, come to our county to live and study with us, because we study hard, and because we are willing to “eat bitterness” (Chi Ku). The Ministry of Education named us “Gaokao county!” (A student in the best high school in Huining county, Gansu province, July 19, 1996) Please only help those students who are most promising. How to identify them? Some of them have repeated their senior year more than three times, and they are becoming very hopeful about getting into a college. “Maybe just this year, or maybe next year!” And there are also those who are willing to “eat bitterness” (Chi Ku). The ones who get up at 4 a.m. to study are obviously different from the ones who get up at 8 a.m. Do you know how to motivate those lazy ones? (A teacher of a third-year high school class talking to a university student who was volunteering to tutor students in his class, Huining county, July 24, 2001)
Although we cannot make our way to college through many of the new
paths that have opened up over the years, we can still make it through
examinations. My teacher said that as long as the entrance examination
[CEE] exists and that the CEE is something that nobody in China can really
get rid of, we rural students would have a way to make it into college. We
are good at examinations, although we are not very good at those ability
tests. So it is still fair: we just need to work even harder, because the path
got even narrower. (A student in the best high school in Huining county,
commenting on college admission reforms such as the ones allowing admission
by recommendation of high school principals, June 11, 2010)
The three quotations above represent three types of encounters with
teachers and students at high schools in Huining county, Gansu province,
at different times over the past fifteen years. Both change and continuity
in beliefs about the College Entrance Examination (CEE), together with
associated values like Chi Ku (eating bitterness) and perceived fairness of
the exam, along with CEE reforms, have been apparent on the ground in
Gansu, influencing individual student choices, life paths, and inspiration
at the critical moment of Gaokao.
Huining county was once famous for being recognized as China’s
Gaokao county. Despite the fact that it is one of the poorest counties in
Gansu, already the third poorest province in China, it has “produced”
several Gaokao Zhuangyuan.1
Journalists working for the official Chinese
media picked up on and “legitimized” the county’s narrative of
hard work and success, which were then featured prominently on CCTV
july–august 2010 77
(Chinese Central Television) and in China Youth and other influential
outlets. Huining’s “unusual” achievements were further recognized and
honored by prominent government officials. Premier Wen Jiabao noted
in his speech at the 2003 National Rural Education Conference that “the
achievements and contributions of education in rural areas cannot be
underestimated. For example, Huining county in Gansu is a very poor
place, but in terms of the college admission rate, it achieves much more
than some surrounding ‘rich’ places” (Yuan 2005). CCTV immediately
included excerpts from Wen Jiabao’s speech in a report, “The Gaokao
Miracle of Huining.” During the National People’s Congress of 2004,
when Premier Wen Jiabao met with representatives from Gansu, he emphasized
again that “Gansu has the famous Gaokao county, something
even I have heard of . . . It exemplifies the achievement of promoting
education in rural areas” (Yuan 2005).
The term “Gaokao county” can be traced back to the early 1990s, when
Huining began to produce many of Gansu’s top CEE students, who in
turn challenged people’s assumptions that the most successful Gaokao
candidates are always students educated in the best city schools. This
assumption was (and remains) a taken for granted “fact” in Gansu, where
rural-urban disparity is marked by stark contrasts in material living and
basic educational conditions.2
In 1994, a representative from the Bureau
of Education in Huining reported to the Provincial Annual Working
Conference that the county’s “Gaokao spirit” was the result of extremely
hardworking Huining students, the “commitment” of families of Gaokao
candidates to help their children repeat their senior year of high school
for as many years as necessary for successful college enrollment, and
the financial commitment made by the local government, which waived
tuition for Gaokao candidates who were repeating their senior years.
The study upon which this article is based used qualitative methods to
explore the lived experiences of Huining students and teachers who are
seen to embody the “Gaokao miracle.” The questions that motivated the
study include the following: What does it mean for teachers to cultivate
and support hardworking rural students who in turn surprise everyone
with their success? What does it mean for students to be represented by
the government and media as extremely hardworking boys and girls who
persist through even several repetitions of their senior year to enroll in
college, even while living in extremely poor conditions that require great
sacrifices by their families? What are the inspirations and aspirations of
such students, and how do they relate to the “Gaokao miracle” they have
78 CHINESE EDUCATION AND SOCIETY
helped to create? How have student and family inspiration and aspiration
changed or stayed the same during the years of CEE policy reform,
especially as some of those reforms create routes to college admission
that disadvantage rural students?
We begin this article with a brief recollection of three personal encounters
with students and teachers in Huining county in the years 1996,
2001, and 2010. These encounters give expression to the continuities
and changes in students’ and teachers’ beliefs and attitudes toward the
CEE. We then explore in more depth two cases in which Yimin Wang
had relatively intense interactions with students and teachers during the
summer of 2010. Students tell stories of Gaokao failure and success during
a time when several related CEE reform policies were enacted, with
more reform policies proposed and available for public discussion.3
Each
case presents a new piece of the “Gaokao miracle” puzzle.
Three Encounters with Gaokao County: 1996 to 2010
First Encounter: A Study Tour Called “Achieving Your Dreams”
My first encounter with Gaokao county occurred in the summer of 1996,
when I was a second-year high school student.4
I attended the best high
school in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu, where it was very common to
begin preparations for the CEE at least one year before the examination.
As the summer holiday between my second and third years of high school
approached, two different sources recommended to my parents that I take
a trip to Huining county to immerse myself in the values and student
lifestyle of Gaokao county. There I would live and study with Huining’s
“famous” students and experience firsthand the exceedingly hardworking
spirit that enliven their Gaokao spirit. The first source was my school,
which routinely organized student groups to Huining to “inspire students
to try harder, regardless of personal circumstances, in Gaokao preparation.”
The second source was a local tour agency that targeted students
and their parents with advertising slogans such as “No pain no gain5
—
Learn from Huining to achieve your dreams in the Gaokao.” In fact,
several major tour agencies organized this type of special “experiential
tour package” for college examination candidates to travel to Huining
to experience and learn from Huining’s Gaokao spirit.
I joined the two-week study tour to Huining organized by my high
school in July 1996 to live, eat, and study with local students. Like the
july–august 2010 79
majority of my classmates, I chose to make the Huining trip, but I was also
highly encouraged by my teachers and strongly supported by my parents
to do so, in the belief that the values of persistence and hard work were
the most important aspects of CEE preparation and, therefore, crucial for
gaining admission to a desired or elite university. This expectation was
the deciding factor for many of my peers, as well as for me, to travel to
“Gaokao county.”
My first glimpse of Huining county was almost exactly as it had
been portrayed in the media. “Poor, bleak, remote, and dry” accurately
describe my first reaction; yet the county also had some very distinctive
little buildings set among a large number of very shabby, muddy houses.
I soon learned that each of these buildings told a unique story about how
some former student achieved great success in the CEE, entered an elite
university, and was now serving as a government official at the provincial
or national level.6
These former students now had money to “reward”
their families back home with decent dwellings in a barren place. The
stories of these buildings were told to us by locals as well as by Huining
students. Such narratives of success were also included in our tour
group’s welcome speech delivered by the principal of Huining’s best
high school. The speech emphasized the value of and pride in hard work;
the principal highlighted examples of students getting up at 4:00 a.m. to
study, apparently the usual practice at the school. The principal offered
us examples of persistence through portraits of students who repeated
their senior year three or even four times, finally getting into China’s best
universities. The principal also described the financial commitment the
local government had made to educational success by waiving tuition
for repeating seniors. We were then told that the “theme” of our study
tour was “Achieving Your Dreams,” with the “dream” obviously being
admission to a good university through success on the CEE. This theme
was actually very different from what I had assumed it would be. I had
anticipated that it would be something that aimed a little lower, perhaps
involving the cultivation of the habits of hard work and persistence.
The principal’s optimism was also mixed with a sense of pride in the
identity of Gaokao county, which was expressed not only by the teachers
and school principals but also by students in our daily interactions.
The quote from the student at the beginning of this article is an example.
Similarly, in many of our conversations, students spoke with pride about
Huining’s recognition by the Ministry of Education as China’s “Gaokao
county.” One student proudly asked us if we were inspired by their hard
80 CHINESE EDUCATION AND SOCIETY
work when we got up with them at 4:00 a.m and studied with them until
11:00 p.m. In fact, this grueling daily schedule was compulsory in the
boarding school where we stayed; homeroom teachers would go to each
senior student dormitory at 4:30 a.m to make sure no laggard remained in
bed. At the time I wondered about the story behind the naming of Gaokao
county and whether its “miracle” might be a myth. Everyone repeated the
Ministry of Education story, yet no one knew its exact origins—and we still
have not uncovered it. In addition, I learned on the trip that the glowing
media reports about Huining had omitted the fact that over the years, all
Huining’s Zhuangyuan were students who had repeated their third year
of high school several times. In marked contrast to the high school I attended
in Lanzhou, repeating the third year was encouraged by teachers
in Huining and honored among students. The process was perceived as
a way to demonstrate commitment to and “necessary sacrifice” for one’s
Gaokao dreams. This first encounter left me with two somewhat contradictory
impressions. First, Huining’s Gaokao miracle no doubt involved hard
work and persistence that were lauded by the media and in the discourse
of my own Lanzhou teachers. Second, the extreme devotion to study and
even sacrifice that were honored by local schools and communities felt
somehow paradoxical and left me unsettled. Nevertheless, I ended my
study tour generally agreeing that the feeling of regional pride, fueled by
media coverage and the many study tours of high school students traveling
to Huining to learn from the students of Gaokao county, had become a
hallmark of Huining’s discourse about educational success, even among
students who had failed the CEE several times.
Second Encounter: “Help Only Those Who Are Most
Promising”
My second encounter with Huining county was in 2001, when I served
as a volunteer teacher as a sophomore student at Lanzhou University. I
was part of a volunteer team that helped tutor and teach during summer
vacation in poor rural areas that were dubbed “educationally promising.”
Huining was on the top of that list. The second quote cited at the
beginning of this article is excerpted from one of the conversations I had
during my visit.
Many things had changed in Huining since my first visit five years
before, including the building of additional two-story buildings among
the shabby, muddy houses. Stories about the donors of these new build-
july–august 2010 81
ings now included tales of successful business entrepreneurs as well as
governmental officials, but they still began with student success on the
CEE and admission to an elite university. After graduation, these much
honored donors became successful either as “civil servants” or in the
business sector; the addition of business success marked a new chapter
in the narratives of the hardworking children of Huining. Another
obvious change was the newly renovated local government building,
improvements for which had been funded by a student who was a
Zhuangyuan and now the senior manager of a big company. The names
of the Zhuangyuan over the past few years were engraved on a stone
plaque erected in front of the building, surrounded by award medals
won in various academic competitions with the names of the winners
and those of their teachers.
By the time I joined the volunteer team to Huining, I had had some
training in education. With more mature and experienced eyes, I first
noticed the relatively large student-teacher ratio (40–50:1) at the high
school I had visited as a student in 1996. This meant that seventy to ninety
students were squeezed into one classroom not just during instructional
time but also during individual study time, which altogether made up
sixteen hours of a student’s daily life. Our volunteer team included a
total of twenty-eight university students, a very small number relative
to the large number of seniors with whom we thought we were to work.
During individual study time, we went to the senior classrooms to offer
individual tutoring and to answer students’ questions about their CEE
preparations. Almost every student raised his or her hand to request help
or ask us a question. Their teachers told us, “Help those students who
are most promising. That’s what we teachers do. You simply cannot give
attention to everyone. We have to choose whom to help!” Through the
course of many other conversations, we learned that only the top five
to ten students in each class could be given individual attention by their
teachers and that most of these students had already repeated the senior
year at least two or three times. Most students recognized these rules of
classroom interaction, and competition for attention became a motivating
factor, a fact made plain by some students during our discussions.
Because I was critical about the “necessity” to help only the “most
promising” students, on several occasions I intentionally broke the “rule”
and assisted students who were at the bottom of their class’s examination
ranking. Ranking information was easy to find; students’ previous
examination scores were posted in a conspicuous location on the wall of
82 CHINESE EDUCATION AND SOCIETY
each senior classroom. Students were surprised when they saw me help
a low-ranking peer. After devoting my entire evening to answering one
such student’s questions and helping him with his homework, he opened
up to me. I asked him how he felt about receiving much less attention
and help from his teachers and my team of volunteers. He answered, “It
is fair in a sense, because many of these top students who get attention
have repeated [senior year] several times, so in previous years, they
have also experienced days like mine. And for the few who are ‘fresh’
seniors7
and are also top students in my class, they are bestowed with
gifts—they are smart and they are also working exceedingly hard. . . .
I feel frustrated sometimes, but I actually don’t have much to complain
about. My day will come eventually IF I study hard enough. . . . It is my
own fault actually. I am lazy, and many times I haven’t studied when I
should have.”
Teachers confronted my gentle challenges to what I saw as their rigid
stricture that we “help only the most promising students” with an almost
“unquestionable” logic of favoring the “most promising” students. This
logic was driven by the school’s and the entire county’s expectations of
producing “successful candidates” or even Zhuangyuan. The teachers’
production of educational successes gives the area regional pride and
identity and something that the area has come to rely on economically.
One of the teachers remarked, “Just think of those small buildings in the
county and those awards won by the distinctive achievements of being
‘Gaokao county.’” What touched my heart was the above-quoted student’s
“fairness” narrative of top students getting much more attention and
help from teachers because they had either repeated their senior year or
because they were simply smart, not to mention his narrative of having
“little to complain about”—not receiving the teacher’s attention was his
“fault” for having been lazy. Having internalized the idea that “studying
less hard than others equals laziness,” and therefore internalizing the idea
that one who is “lazy” deserves much less or even no attention or help
from teachers, he concluded that the educational practice of identifying
and focusing on those most likely to succeed and excluding the rest was
“fair.” Moreover, he still held hope of achieving equality (of resources
and outcomes) with top students by studying even harder.
Scholars of educational sociology and anthropology, particularly those
writing from critical theorist perspectives, have produced well over three
decades of scholarship that explains how values and actions within and
mediated by and through schools are social values and activities with
july–august 2010 83
social consequences. Among other consequences, formal school systems,
as agents of social and cultural (re)production, interact with students,
teachers, families, other institutions, and policies to produce “winners”
and “losers” (Apple 1995; Giroux 1981; Lareau 2000, 2003; Willis
1977). They do this in complex ways, in part by translating state policies
and widely held social beliefs and goals into practices, discourses,
and values that become embedded in school curricula, whether explicit
or hidden, which students in turn internalize—or do not. The unintentionally
discriminatory process of the reproductive role of schooling is
met by educators in diverse ways. Some do not recognize the process;
some do not want to face up to the process; some do not believe they can
or should do anything about the process; and some devote their entire
careers to countering the process. In the case of systems for which high
stakes examinations serve the role of sorting students and deciding who
is eligible for accessing the next level of education, teachers normally
respond by dealing the best they feel they can (that is, to ensure incentivized
success) with the policy hand they are dealt (e.g., Gould 1981; Noah
and Eckstein 1989). Thus, Huining’s best high school, whose primary
goal was to educate students who would score high on the CEE, not only
fully endorsed the activities of categorizing and defining a most likely
group of students for success but also explicitly differentiated likely
“winners and losers” as early as one year before the examination. There
was nothing subtle about the division. That students not highly ranked
in a clearly ranked system experienced a lack of attention and help,
extremely long school days, poor economic conditions, and crowded
classrooms still remained hopeful and blamed themselves for being lazy
contrasts with many ethnographic accounts of schools. This includes
many examples referred to above, in which students create values and
actions in opposition to those associated with school success (Levinson
2001; Willis 1977). The path of persistent study, eating bitterness, and the
intentionally inequitable distribution of educational resources honored in
Gaokao county was an extreme response to its geographical, economic,
and material deprivation. Education was considered the only means of
creating social and human capital, especially in the long term. In this
sense, “promising CEE candidates” were perceived as potential “capital
makers” and therefore “legitimately” deserved their school’s special
“investment in human capital.” As volunteer teachers, we were asked to
align our actions with this logic.
Several CEE reforms had been initiated by 2001, including ones that
84 CHINESE EDUCATION AND SOCIETY
lowered the cutoff scores for candidates who demonstrated exemplary
artistic or musical talents.8
Only a relatively small percentage of CEE
candidates would be affected by these polices nationwide, and it is not
surprising that CEE candidates in Huining in the early 2000s treated the
CEE as the only way of getting into college. This belief, however, had
changed by my next visit in 2010.
Third Encounter: “We Can Still Make It Through Exams,
Can’t We?”
My third encounter with Huining was in the summer of 2010, when I
traveled there with the intention of conducting educational research in
Gaokao county. The Ministry of Education officially unveiled the National
Educational Reform and Development Plan (2010–2020) in 2010
after a year of unprecedented public discussion and opinion solicitation.
Among other things, the plan places emphasis on eliminating inequality
in basic education, as well as significant emphasis on ensuring fair
competition in the CEE. Also, alternative admission policies became very
controversial in 2010, after having been in place for up to two years. Policies
considered controversial have included the policy on “high school
principal recommendation,” through which a few designated high schools
have had the authority to recommend their exceptional students to elite
universities without going through the examination process. These designated
high schools are mostly located in metropolitan areas like Beijing
and Shanghai, and there has been little indication that the policy will be
expanded to more high schools, including those in rural areas. The year
2010 was also the second in a row that the number of CEE candidates
had dramatically dropped. Many journalist accounts, scholarly articles,
and voices of educators and scholars have posited demographic and
economic reasons for this phenomenon, including the decreasing unand
underemployment rates of university graduates, which are partially
a result of the rapid expansion of higher education. Other reasons given
include alternative and exclusive college admission avenues that have
made ineligible students lose confidence in the CEE process as well as
their own hopes for getting into college, growing rural-urban disparity,
and increasing tuition, which makes higher education even harder to
afford for the rural poor (Liu 2010).
Students and teachers in Huining were very aware of these controversies
and debates. During my third day in Huining, two third-year high
july–august 2010 85
school students took me to a very shabby house, which leaked on rainy
days. Pointing to a seeping wall, one of the students told me that this
was the very place that a journalist had taken a photo for a recent Gansu
Daily report, “Gaokao County Losing Its Advantage.” Standing where
the photo had been taken reminded me I had read the article, which had
been reprinted in several other major newspapers. The story explained
that alternative admission avenues and increasing unemployment rates
had decreased incentives for investing heavily in the CEE. The news story
featured a family that had spent the majority of its income and also taken
out significant loans to support their children’s pursuit of admission to
college by continually repeating (for up to three years) their third year of
high school. However, the children did not find good jobs after graduation
and could not pay back, much less “reward,” their family.
This sensationalized story emphasized that Huining no longer produced
Zhuangyuan, primarily due to new extra point policies rewarding
special talents (in the arts, for example) that are difficult for students in
Huining and many other poor rural areas to obtain due to a lack of relevant
opportunities and resources. The news report in fact echoed public
controversy over CEE reforms, underscoring how alternative enrollment
avenues have put rural students at a further disadvantage and how low
employment rates are contributing to Gaokao county’s loss of identity,
privilege, and potential economic well-being.
The two students who guided me to the little house asked me as an educational
researcher, “Do you think that [the report’s conclusion about the
declining worth of a college degree to Huining residents] is true or not?”
Although I was considering my response, one of the students continued,
I can tell that the story is absolutely true. We all know that this family has
spent an arm and a leg in raising their two college graduates, but it seems
that it has not paid off. And that photo was real. It was taken here.
The other student, more skeptical, did not agree and argued,
But that’s because they [the children in this family] didn’t go to a good
university. Going to a good university still pays off, and we can still make
it through examinations, although there are so many urban kids now who
get extra points or even admission to universities without going through
the exam. It just means our paths are narrower, but for many years we
have proven to be good at entrance examinations, although maybe not at
those ability tests that lead to “special admissions.” Our teacher said no
one can really get rid of the CEE practice.
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