This post has a Chinese version below.
Most Chinese parents and children think the College Entrance Examination is so important that things like hobbies and entertainment can be given up for it.
The educational system in Chinese senior school includes science and liberal arts in most provinces. All students need to learn Chinese, math and English. Students who learn liberal arts need to learn history, geography and politics. Students who learn science need to learn physics, chemistry and biology. The three years of senior school are called “dark years.” We spent nine hours in classes every day, and that doesn’t count time to do your homework. Since the hours were so grueling, you could always find the following scene at 6 o’clock: the teaching building wasn’t open and the cafeteria was busy because many students read English there. We always used noon break to do homework and only left half an hour to rest. After study period at 10:30PM, we brought our books to the dormitory because there we could continue studying. You could see students doing math exercises on the sidewalk because the lights were turned off in the dormitories. Somebody accurately called this life “three dots, one line” (teaching building, canteen and dormitory). At that time, most of us felt it was hard, but when I went to university, I found that students were lucky in the Yunnan provinces because the competition in Yunnan provinces was a little less than most others. We didn’t study as hard as them, and we had real PE class and music class (many schools use PE class and music class to learn other courses). Students like me gave up reading novels and drawing but we could sleep eight hours and we still went to one of 985 universities. We were totally lucky and other students might feel envious.
Although we spent so much time learning, we didn’t spent much time learning Chinese. Chinese is our mother tongue so students didn’t do so bad. What’s more, for the special Chinese test paper if you wanted to have a high score you needed to read a lot of literature, which required much time. Most students preferred to spend their time learning other courses rather than Chinese. The gap between the highest and lowest score in Chinese is just from 30 to 40, but in other subjects it could be over 100. So in order to get a high score at the High College Entrance Examination, most students spent little time and energy on learning Chinese, Chinese was definitely least important.
At that time, my Chinese teacher was an aged man. His family name was Xie, and was clear about what to love or hate. For example, if he liked the article in the textbook, he would spend more time on it，taught it more carefully, and sometimes would get very emotional. I always thought that Mr.Xie didn’t need to have an audiences when he got emotional, for at that time, the world was only for him. Mr.Xie gave his student the choice to decide what to study, and his homework could be finished easily, you just needed to copy three model essays, recite the old poetry, and write down a composition once two week. Because Mr.Xie didn’t have strict requirements to us, so we didn’t work hard to learn Chinese, we even did the homework for other courses during his class.
Like my peers, I did not spend much time learning Chinese. I used the time to do math and physics exercises and learned English, but for Chinese, I felt content with just finishing the homework. I was familiar with most of the articles learned in junior school. However, I was less sure about the articles in senior school before the High College Entrance Examination, My Chinese test score was a total random in my senior school. At that time, although you got the #1 score on a Chinese test, it wasn’t something to be happy or proud about because it was possible that you would be #10 on the next test.
I didn’t care much because I could take the lead in total test score by doing better in other courses. In fact, I reflected on my Chinese learning little and only had a vague impression of it: the testing scale of wrongly written and mispronounced characters was large, you always could find some characters that you never knew, the examination questions were always difficult to understand, it was hard to know which answer would be best, compositions had to be an argument, and it seemed that the level of writing remained junior school level, so I didn’t care much at the time.
It was such an utilitarian choice for us not to learn Chinese well. From young to old, I took many tests, but I never had another examination as important as the High College Entrance Examination. At University somebody in said they missed the fulfilling life in senior school. Do I miss it? No, I don’t miss it because we were put in an environment that separated us from life. The High College Entrance Examination was the only aim, all of us worked hard for it, but we didn’t think much about life after it. We were given a goal without consciousness. We did not own our choice, we didn’t direct our life, yet we worked hard as a slaves. Such fulfillment should be viewed a necessary evil, if that.
高考很重要，诸如兴趣爱好娱乐都可以为了它而放弃，这是大多数中国家长孩子的共识。
在中国，大多数省市的高中学制分为文科和理科，所有的学生都必须学习语文、数学和英语三科，文科生还需要学习历史、地理和政治，而理科生则是物理、化学和生物。高中的三年被称为黑色的岁月。我们每天的上课时间就有九个小时，找空闲时间完成作业。所以，你总能看到这样的情景：早上六点钟，教学楼还没开门，学校食堂最热闹，大家在那读英语；课间休息的十分钟，有同学在做数学练习；午休时间，先做作业，就留半小时睡觉；晚上十点半下晚自习，大家会继续抱着书回到寝室，因为可以加班，这时你会看到一道风景线，走道上，有人在背书，有人在做数学题，因为寝室的灯被强制关了。有人形象地称这是三点一线（教学楼，食堂和寝室）的生活。当时很多人都认为自己学得很辛苦，但我到大学之后，才发现作为云南的考生很幸运，因为云南的高考竞争激烈程度跟其他大多数省份相比是较弱的，因此我们的学习自然也没很多同龄人辛苦，高中还有真正的体育课和音乐课（很多学校虽然开设了体育课和音乐课，但这些课经常用来学习高考课程）。而像我这种在高中虽然放弃了看小说，画画的爱好，但还有八小时睡眠时间，最终还考上了华师大这样的985高校的人则是幸运到让人嫉妒。
虽然我们花了如此之多的时间来学习，但花在语文上的学习时间则不多的。语文是母语的学习，所以每个人的语文成绩都不至于很差，加之因为语文试题的特殊性，想考一个很高的成绩需要涉猎大量的文学作品，但这要很多时间，与其把这些时间花在语文上，还不如花在其他的学习上，这样见效更快，总成绩提高更多，而且，语文成绩的最高分和最低分之间不过相差三四十分，而其他课程的则可以达到一百多分。基于上面的原因，为了高考有一个漂亮的总分，绝大多数的同学花在语文学习上的时间和精力并不多，语文是最不受重视的课程。那时，语文老师是个老头子，姓谢，虽然谢老师脸上已经留下了岁月的沟壑，但他依然是个性情中人，爱憎分明，比如说他讲到钟情的课文，花的时间就多，讲的就精细，时而伴有强烈的感情。我始终相信在谢老师讲到感情迸发的时候是不要听众的，这时候世界是他一个人的。在语文学习方面，谢老师给学生较大的自主空间，作业也很容易完成，每周抄写三篇美文，背诵古诗词，每两个星期写一篇作文，也正因为老师的要求并不严格，我们对语文的学习也更加懈怠，甚至在语文课上偷偷摸摸做其他学科的作业。
我当时花在语文上的学习时间也很少，上面的原因自然也是我的考虑。除了完成老师布置的作业，我会花大量时间做数学和物理的习题，英语也能按计划地进行学习，而语文就仅仅是满足于完成作业，我能熟悉初中所学的绝大多数课文，但很多高中的课文在没高考之前就已经模糊了。这样的结果是，我的语文成绩在高中完全变成了一个随机事件，那时，即便考到班上的语文第一名，也没啥值得开心和骄傲的，因为下一次可能就是班上第十名，但为了有更多时间学习其他课程，对此，早已无所谓了，因为语文成绩的差距很小，我完全可以在其他课程的成绩上把别人甩得远远的。对语文学习的思考非常少，只有一个模糊的印象：错别字和拼音的考查范围太广，不小心就看到一个你完全没注意过的字词；阅读理解的题目总是比较难以琢磨，有时很难知道怎么回答才能得分最高；作文要写议论文，但貌似高中的作文水平相比于初中时没长进的；高中的语文学习方法还沿袭了初中的学习模式，能体会到的就这么多，因为真的对语文在乎得太少。
为了高考，我们没有用心学习自己的母语，如此功利的选择，但在那样的背景下却显得理所当然。从小长大，经历过很多次考试，没有那次考试如高考一样被赋予这么多的意义，或许当任何一种考试作为社会资源分配的初次筛选器的时候，它的魔力都会跟高考一样，被寄托了太多。现在进入大学，有人说怀念高中那些充实的日子，我怀念吗？我想我不怀念那样的充实，因为我们只是被放在有些脱离生活的环境中，高考就是全部的目标，为了它，大家一起拼命向前冲，可是高考后的生活，则思考得很少，这样的目标是无意识下被给予的，而不是自我的选择，我们像奴隶一样辛苦的劳动，却没法像将军一样指挥生活，这样的充实要打很大的折扣吧。