Shade Under the Chinese School—A Bureaucratic Epitome

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I went back to China for a very short period due to the passing away of my grandmother. This is also my first return ever since I went aboard four years ago. I believe everyone had sensed the drastic change in the world during these four years, especially in China, where the pandemic had a huge impact. I experienced a lot of things during the return this time, which also evoked some of my adolescent memories during my high school life. The lifestyle I had adapted to a long time ago now I see was more than ridiculous. I am not complaining about how much I had suffered, however, I believe during the years far away from my hometown I had developed a perceptiveness of unreasonableness, like the pea under the mattresses, which I used to force myself to ignore, where now the sharpness I had grown stands no tolerance.

Sometimes when I browse YouTube, there will be some Chinses student-related videos like “One Day Life of a Chinese High School Student”. Not the same as mine but never less typical. The school system is like an enormous web that drags every involved person in. The most emblematic feature of the school system is “mandatory regulation over everything”, I cannot help but relate to 1984 by George Orwell.  When I was in school, the thing I hated the most was the schedule. High schools force their schedule mandatory, they usually set their get-up time at 6:30 am, where the last mandatory study period ends at 9:30 pm. According to my own experience, after I got dismissed at 9:30, it would usually take 1.5 hours to finish washing up and get ready to sleep, which means I normally sleep at 11:00 pm. Some people may think 7.5 hours’ sleep is more than enough but not for me. Every day I woke in dizziness and this had cycled during the whole high school period.

The schedule was just one part of the story, when I say mandatory regulating over everything, it means everything. First, appearance. As a high school student, you are forced to wear a uniform on campus. It is not allowed to either dye or curl your hair, Boys are not allowed to have long hair, they even have a detailed rule for this: your hair cannot touch your eyebrows, ears, or collar. Girls are not allowed to put on make-up and are recommended to tie their hair up. Personal items are also regulated. Any electronics like phones are not permitted on campus.  Some rules can be even more bizarre, like “no rubbish in the trash bin” or “fold the comforter after getting up”. [Honestly, I don’t want to spend too many words explaining those regulations so I will stop here.]

An intriguing phenomenon of collectivism I observed is that it tends to use a lot of slogans. When I got off the plane on my trip to China, my eyes couldn’t stop but noticed varieties of slogans on the street. And so does it on campus. Normally even before you enter the gate, you’ll notice some huge slogans on top of it. The slogans usually use some certain rhetoric and convey the only message: get better grades. Ironically, the slogans use all the rhetoric they could think of, but are rather vague and incompetent, because they never tell how to achieve the goal in practice. As we discussed above, it is the abomination of the false incentive under the bureaucracy. It is too obvious to relate this to the big screen in Orwell’s 1984, I don’t even want to waste words citing here, I think readers will get it though.

In my opinion, one’s internal spontaneity always outplays the external mandatory control. When people discuss the topic of Chinese students, control over video games has always been popular. Electronics, mainly video games have always become the untouchable taboo for those younger adolescents under the regulation of their parents and schools.  I don’t think video games are detrimental to someone’s student career, on the other hand, video games may be the only effective entertainment for those students under high pressure. Life is a substantial game with considerable ways to play, but there will not be too many options if you were grounded and entangled by heavy study.

I consider myself as rebellious, and I admire those who the rebellious spirits. However, this can be very situational. There is a saying in Chinese called “近朱者赤近墨者黑”. The spirit always comes with a cost, and under the great picture of collectivism, not every individual enjoys the privilege. The great machine can sometimes be devastating to some individuals, physically and mentally. I have seen some extreme cases where students went suicidal or even matricidal. Imagine putting someone into a study-only prison. It will leave some sequelae nevertheless, and I see through them, crystal clear, which had become my biggest hate, not towards the individual, but the great machine.  

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The school system in China has become the perfect epitome of the Chinese bureaucracy of the society, moreover, it is a concentrated essence. If the governmental bureaucracy were the espresso, the campus bureaucracy would be the powder. The most typical feature of this school system would be the Collectivist Over-regulation. It is the over-regulation conducted by the upper hierarchy of a vertically structured system, on top of every possible detail of the lower-level individuals, rendering them collectively unified. The main purpose of over-regulation is to reduce cost, as over-regulation serves the purpose of collectivizing, and collectivizing serves the purpose of low-cost high-efficiency management.

Compare to the civil residents, High school students are mostly underaged and financially dependent, which makes them way less powerful. More than that, due to the lack of an independent regulating system and the union of parental guardians with schools, the school power had grown much stronger. This is one reason for schools’ over-regulation.

Another reason why the schools are putting so much pressure is because they are solely pursuing an only purpose, which is the college enrollment rate. Just like the government, the whole country has a dream, schools also have dreams. Every involved person consisting of the huge machine was driven under this big dream, which in other words, can be described as collectivism. The mandatory regulation serves the purpose of deindividualizing. The incentive mechanism is simple yet practical: You go to a better university; Students get brighter futures and teachers get raises. They were seemly having the same goals but it was the opposite. The demands of the students were never satisfied because the hierarchy determined that the students and the upper structure were never on the same side. If you consider the school as a service industry(which it should be), the situation will be different, since in that case the students played the roles of the customers, and the teachers on the other hand were the service providers. The market competition and feedback will reverse the incentive mechanism and force the upper level to come to the same side as the students. This also happens in other educational institutions like driving schools. We will not be discussing too much detail about this since it is another story of upper-sized over-regulating.

The lack of scientific management is also the cause of over-regulation. It manifests more in rural schools. With the inability of proper management, teachers tend to use intimidation, ridicule, or corporal punishment as effective ways of student management. Also, due to the heavy school bureaucracy and the incompetent education of faculty staff, the school courses will be less focused on effective study methods and more on personnel education, which will eventually decrease the overall enrollment rate. Over-regulation, on the other hand, reduced the difficulty of personnel management, with a relatively small investment compared with building a scientific management system, which had become largely popular, rendering the scientific methods even less feasible.

Collectivism-Oriented Over-regulation may seem very effective in raising the enrollment rate in the short run, however, some negative long-term consequences are inevitable, and even weigh over the positive effects. The first issue comes with the problem of deindividualizing, it sacrifices the diversity of human nature. A good way of education should encourage every individual to follow his or her nature. An interesting phenomenon I have observed is that, in the U.S., a lot of the people I know use their left hand to write, while none of the people I know in China write with their left hand. It is quite common sense that approximately 50% of humans were born sinistral I was also born sinistral. However, left-handedness is considered wrong under the Chinese educational system. Like all the other sinistral children, I was forced to use my right hand. Collectivism is apt to be rigid to achieve unity. The textbook I used to have even regulated the function of each hand; the right hand is used for writing and the left hand is used for lifting, etc. It is more than absurd that the human hands can be “functioned” by these textbook writers. Over-regulation obliterates creativity. This is more significant in art schools, where creativity played an essential part. Yet institutions set up unified rubrics for artworks. It is not unusual that under the great picture of collectivism, even art aesthetics can be defined under the same rule.

The second issue comes with over-regulating. Students who are under strict regulation tend to have low self-discipline, additionally, students may lose the ability to make decisions independently.  There is a saying among these high schools: you can indulge yourself after finishing the college entrance exam. This seems to be a sweet placebo for those students who are under intense competition but is a false promise and the irresponsibility of these high schools. As we discussed above, the students and schools are sharing a very subtle benefit relationship, where the contract ends exactly at the graduation date, which indicates schools take absolutely no responsibility for any graduated student. The very short-termed grade boost strategy has brought immense benefits to the schools but also buried disturbing seeds in the future life of those students. Strict regulations are often forced by verbal or physical abuse, which may cause a series of psychological problems like low self-esteem, this will also intensify the conflict between students and teachers; children and parents.

I hate to use this metaphor but I have to say: Public Chinese schools are the most inhuman grade boost assembly lines. However, as I mentioned above, the system is like a web, every involved person was dragged, and they don’t have any other options, even the school itself. I am not claiming the innocence of anyone, but trying to demonstrate how deep and vast the web was. Not a singular individual is powerful enough against the web. And that’s part of the reason for this article: If you cannot face it, at least stay away from it.

Rebellion is precious.