Gli esami di maturità sono già passati e l’estate è ormai alle porte: gli studenti di tutto il mondo si preparano a godersi le ben meritate vacanze. In Cina, l’equivalente della nostra maturità è Il Gaokao (高考) o conosciuto come Esame di Ammissione Nazionale, che decide il futuro accademico degli alunni cinesi. In questo articolo vi parleremo della sua storia, da quando è stato introdotto fino ad ad oggi.
Gaokao (National Higher Education Entrance Examination NCEE), is an academic examination held every year in June in People’s Republic of China (excluded Hong Kong and Macau)
Since 2001, there is no age restriction, which means people in different ages, not only those in the last year of high school, could attend this national exam.
Gaokao was created in 1952, however after 10 years criticisms on Gaokao had raised mainly because it has hurt the benefits of the working class in China.
In 1966 Gaokao was officially canceled and substituted by a new admission policy of recommending workers, farmers and soldiers to college, and this cancellation has lasted until 1977.
Thanks to Deng Xiaoping, Gaokao has officially resumed and it has continued to the present day.
Back in today, 9.75 million students have attended Gaokao on June 7th and 8th 2018.
Criticisms have been reported by many mainstream media in China, saying the theme of final compositions, which occupies a large proportion of the final grade, is very complicate and difficult for 17/18 year old high school students.
For example, the composition argumentation in Tianjin city is about the “Device” (Qi): “There are different Qi in life.
The Qi can hold everything, the beauty of the shape and the good content complement each other; the Qi can help people to become successful; the Qi also means to carry the glory and fulfilling the dreams…” If a student could not understand well about the Chinese philosophy, writing an 800-word article regarding the above mentioned theme is definitely not easy.
Another main dispute of Gaokao is about the Regional discrimination.
A university usually sets a fixed admission quota for each province, with a higher number of students coming from its home province.
As the advanced educational resources (number and quality of universities) are distributed unevenly across Chin, it is argued that people are being discriminated against during the admission process based on their geographic region.
For example, compared to Beijing, Shandong province has fewer universities per capita.
Therefore, Shandong usually receives fewer admission quotas compared with Beijing, which makes a significantly higher position among applicants necessary for a Shandong candidate to be admitted by the same university than his Beijing counterpart.
Beijing University planned to admit 1800 science students from Beijing (with 80,000 candidates in total), but only 38 from Shandong (with 660,000 candidates in total).
In recent years, varied admission standards have led some families to relocate for the sole purpose of advancing their children’s chances of entering university.
The most discussed question on Gaokao is the psychological pressure in fact, not only Chinese media but also the foreign ones have widely criticized and discussed on such issue.
Because Gaokao is one of the most influential examinations in China and the fact that students can only take the test once a year, both teachers and students undergo tremendous pressure in preparing for and taking the exam.
Teachers would give students more and more practice for exams.
This teaching methodology, colloquially referred to as “cramming“, involves students memorizing large volumes of information fed to them by teachers and undertaking many practice exercises to optimize exam writing ability.
Many examinees suffer from severe nervousness during the exam.
Extreme example as doctors in Tianjin purportedly prescribing birth control pills to female students whose parents wanted to ensure the girls were not menstruating at the time of examination.
Besides the different criticisms and voices, one has to admit that Gaokao probably is the most suitable test method in China, under the overall societal environment of China: the large population base and the national environment diversity.
From the Gaokao’s point of view, any issue or problem shall be analyzed in the light of the actual situation.
