It’s high school season again, and I saw David Tang Shangjun’s story again.
The first time I read his story, I felt very shocked. Tang Shangjun is a native of Guangxi, the family is poor, belong to the typical can only rely on the college entrance examination “to change the fate” of the situation.
Unfortunately, his initial academic performance is not good. 2010, the first time to take the college entrance examination, the results are only enough to go to a specialist technical school. Many farming children like him may have resigned themselves to their fate.
His parents have also resigned themselves to their fate, and have raised the tuition fees to let him go to a technical school. But Tang Shangjun made a very bold choice, hidden from his family, began the senior year repeating. At that age, that family, you can imagine the pressure he endured.
The second year, Tang Shangjun score has improved, but only enough to three private colleges. The high tuition fees of private colleges and universities are well known and not affordable for a family like his. So he gritted his teeth and continued to prepare for the third college entrance exam.
This year he passed the second level, but because he didn’t fill in the volunteer, he gave up again and prepared for the fourth college entrance exam.
If anything, the first four years of his sleepy, solitary struggle were admirable. By the fifth year, I began to look at the incomprehensible.
The fifth year he got into the Southwest University of Political Science and Law, but just because it was not the ideal University of Science and Technology of China, he gave up and went home to continue preparing for the sixth year of college entrance exam.
Then, in the sixth year, he got into Jilin University and gave up.
In the seventh year, he got into China University of Political Science and Law and gave up. This time, of course, there is a special background. Because of my father’s illness, some high schools offered a bonus of 20,000 yuan for high scoring repeaters. In order to get the bonus for his father’s treatment, he dropped out of China University of Political Science and Law and went to that high school as a candidate.
The eighth and ninth exams failed. The tenth time he got into Chongqing University and gave up. The eleventh time he failed the exam.
This year is his 12th college entrance exam, and he is already 33 years old.
I don’t know what kind of feeling you have after reading his history of struggling in the college entrance exam. This is the persistence for the dream, or the paranoia that has gone off the rails?
Weibo has an account called “Tang Shangjun”, I don’t know if it’s him, the profile reads. “Not at the right age to do the right thing, not deliberately, just hindsight. “
If it is his feeling, this sentence is very apt reflection – not doing the right thing at the right age.
The few colleges he had given up on were better than the ones I went to myself. By definition, I’m not even qualified to express sympathy, but I really think it’s too bad that he wasted more than a decade of his life on one college entrance exam after another.
Never give up for the dream, sounds like a moving allure. However, a good dream is supposed to make people move forward and make them become a better version of themselves.
When the dream becomes only the University of Science and Technology of China, the other four universities can be discarded as nothing, what did Tang Shangjun harvest? Is a decade of spinning in place, is the life course that could have been infinitely rich, consumed in the senior classroom.
Life is short, time awareness is particularly valuable. This is not a chicken soup, is any mature person, should be able to realize.
College, as an important stop in life, is indeed important, but it is not that important. It has to be admitted that in the real context of China, there is a qualitative difference between undergraduate institutions and technical schools. But is there such a big difference between the University of Political Science and Law of China and the University of Science and Technology of China that it is worth spending six or seven years of repeated impact?
02
But this is not only Tang Shangjun’s personal choice.
In his experience, there is a particular phenomenon worth reflecting on. It is those high schools that give preferential treatment to repeaters. These schools give subsidies according to the results of repeaters, the higher the previous year’s score, the higher the subsidy given.
In other words, Tang Shangjun is actually “paid entrance exams”. This is an important reason why he can persist for more than ten years.
From the school’s point of view, naturally, there are very utilitarian considerations. The college entrance examination rate increases, especially if there are students to get into a prestigious school, for the school’s “political performance” has important significance. That’s why many high schools are willing to spend a lot of money to attract students to repeat the entrance exams.
Not to mention that this arrangement is not a shock to the fairness of the college entrance examination, which is really good for repeaters?
The high school that spent 20,000 yuan to recruit Tang Shangjun back from China University of Political Science and Law, in my opinion, is extremely unethical, and in fact affected the trajectory of Tang’s life. And Tang’s subsequent college entrance examination, but also did not bring “win-win” results.
Tang’s example is a bit extreme, but it is clear that there are not a few people who repeat their studies for a so-called “ideal university” like this.
Some data show that last year, the country’s college entrance exams repeat students up to 2.4 million, accounting for 22% of the total number of college entrance exams that year. How many of them, who already had college, had to go further to get a “good college”?
This is the real harm to the internal volume. The “good university” resources are always limited, high score candidates repeatedly repeat, squeeze resources plus demonstration effect, will force more candidates to join the army of repeaters. This may also be an important reason for the increase in the number of students repeating the college entrance examination year after year.
When this kind of repetition inspirational story less, our education is considered normal point.
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