Sunday, April 12, 2015

Upfront Essay

Zainah Gadoui   711   ELA                    


         Imagine having to spend all of your senior year in high school studying. No watching TV or video games, no dating, nothing to do but study. It would be terrible, and the only thing that would make it worse would be to have that test be the only thing that matters in your life after high school. Well, that’s what happens to the millions of high school students in China who have to take the gaokao. The gaokao is basically the Chinese version of the SAT’s or ACT’s but with much more riding on it. It’s absolutely not fair that so much is riding on a single test.

         If they don’t do well on the gaokao, that’s it. They wont get to go to college, and they’ll have to go into manual labor. You can see this with the quote “The boys knew that manual labor would be their fate too, if they failed to do well on the gaokao.” This shows that it’s normal to have everything be in the hands of a single test. They cant afford to do anything besides manual labor, and their fathers spent a year away working 12 hour days every day, and now that their fate.


         Spending your entire senior year of high school studying intensely is the norm for the millions of the Chinese high school students that take the gaokao test. Having your entire future lying on a test is utterly unfair to students and teachers.