5. My High School in China

The high school that I have attended when I was in China is said to be one of the best high schools in our country. Some of you, especially those who come from the Northwestern part of China may have already heard of it since every time I tell somebody that I graduated from the NPU High School they give me all kinds of admiration. Here I want to make a statement that I was not a good student at all when I was in that high school. I do not know whether it has done good things to me but I care more about the harm it did to me as well as the other students in that school. Personally, I do not like the NPU High School at all.

Somebody may scold me for not respecting the school that has taught me so many things, but I have my own reasons. My three-year high school life was almost ravaged by that school since the teachers were always trying to control students’ personal lives. In Senior One, one of our teachers had tried to destroy our dreams by saying that we were only learning-machines and could do nothing else in the future. Words like “learning is the most important thing in your life” and “you should do nothing but learn” commonly came out from our teachers’ mouths. Every time I heard those things I felt bad even though I knew that what they had said was not right. I tried my best to obey all kinds of ridiculous rules. The only time I was scolded by my teacher was when I brought a novel into the classroom in order to lend it to one of my classmates. That was the only time I brought a book that was not filled with all kinds tests into the classroom; the teacher actually managed to know it and criticized my classmate in front of all the other students. The whole thing is ridiculous enough for us to see how ridiculous our school is.

I believe that the golden characters which say that “we do everything for our students” are still on one of the walls in our school. But the truth is that the school officials only care about their own profits. After the college entrance examination, some of the top students in our school wanted to go to the universities in Hong Kong since in recent years those universities are becoming more and more admitted by the world. But the stereotype which Tsinghua University and Peking University are the top universities in China is just too rigid to be changed in Chinese people’s mind. In order to make their school famous by producing as many “Tsinghua students” and “Peking students” as possible, the officials in this so-called good high school tried their best to prevent those top students from getting into the universities in Hong Kong. One of those students was badly scolded by the headmaster in our school, but she ignored the headmaster and made her own choice. She must have done the right thing since another student who is a friend of mine was cheated by the school officials. The school officials made a promise to him that he would be able to choose his major without any restrictions if he entered Tsinghua University when they heard that he was going to attend one of the best universities in Hong Kong. That student took the officials’ advice. It was when he reached Beijing that he found out that his major had been settled and it was not what he wanted at all. He was so angry that he even lied on the ground as soon as he got the news.

Another student who came here with us was actually my classmate when we were both in the NPU High School. After being admitted by NUS she refused to visit the school and say good-bye to the teachers. She told us that the school has left a really bad impression on her. I could understand her. Maybe the situation in the NPU High School is just a reflection of the education system in China, which is far more ridiculous than we can imagine.