Rural children have more than one path to success besides the gaokao
The essence of education is to cultivate people; its ultimate purpose is not to teach rigid knowledge, but to help people establish a correct worldview, outlook on life, and sense of values. When a person has a complete and correct understanding of the world and of themselves, they will know what they want, and learning knowledge will become a proactive and natural process. The important value of school education and the gaokao system lies in providing teenagers with a gentle and effective environment for understanding the world and themselves. In school, in the process of striving for the university of our dreams, we experience setbacks and successes, and we grasp the complex relationship between effort and reward. Among classmates, there is both friendship and competition; in getting along with others, we find our own place and learn to survive within a collective. People often say, "After going through the gaokao, I feel I have matured a great deal." Perhaps this is the value of the gaokao.
Outside of school, in the broader society, there are of course countless paths that teach us maturity, and quite a few people like Tiancan Tudou who have achieved success through them. But these paths may be cruel, and may lack fairness; they are a supplement to school education, not a replacement for it. There are thousands upon thousands of roads besides the gaokao, and none of them is a shortcut. Tiancan Tudou had his own accumulation of experience, once spending a whole day and night hunched over typing words. Qiu Qiming failed the gaokao, yet only after countless ups and downs did he stand before the spotlight. Life tolerates no reliance on luck, and criticizing the gaokao cannot become a reason for indulging in ignorance.
Why does the gaokao always attract controversy and criticism? Because its value is often misunderstood. The "IV drip class" had students studying while receiving nutrient infusions; teachers on the podium, red-faced, shouted brainwashing slogans. In all these phenomena, people, in order to urge students to study hard, one-sidedly magnify the irreplaceability of the gaokao and play up the idea of a smooth-sailing life after getting into a good university. In reality, the most important value of the gaokao does not lie in leading to a desired university; getting into a good university is a happy event, but it is not a guarantee of life. Keeping a calm mindset and seeing the big picture may be more beneficial to the growth of teenagers.
The gaokao is not the only way out for rural children, but none of the paths is a shortcut