In America, there is a testing system in place that determines if you get accepted into certain schools, and if you don’t, there are always other options. In China, there is testing system in place that determines your future. This is a system that unfairly gives students only one chance, and if they don’t do well, they are fated to work as construction workers or factory workers. This is too much to be determined by a single test that lasts about nine hours.

In China, if you do well on the gaokao, you can go to college. But if you don’t, you become a construction or factory worker. In the article “China’s Cram School” by Brook Larmer, it states that “If they failed to do well on the gaokao, [the students] would join the ranks of China’s 260 million migrant workers who have left their homes . . . in search of construction of factory jobs”. This is a test that determines their future. It is unfair that so much, if they do well in life or not, rides on this single test.

Also, since so much rides on this test, the conditions that these students are forced to study in are horrendous. They come from miles to study at a school that preps them for the gaokao, to find they study day and night with little rest. As told by Brook Larmer, “[In the school, the] first class [was] at 6:20 in the morning, and . . . the end of [the] last class at 10:50 at night.” Thats sixteen and a half hours. That means they get approximately six hours of sleep to function more hours a day than kids in America are allowed to work a week. Also, Larmer states that “Teenage suicide rates tend to rise as the gaokao nears.” Kids are so afraid that they won’t do well, that they prefer death to the gaokao. Also, she talks about a photo that was released two years ago, showing “a classroom full of students all hooked up to intravenous drips to give them strength to keep studying.” These are the conditions these students are forced to study under to try to do well on the gaokao so they won’t end up as construction or factory workers.

Overall, these students are forced to work under terrible conditions such as sixteen and a half hour days and extreme conditions such as intravenous drips to help them study more. The students do all this because if they don’t do well, they are fated to work in factories or as construction workers. This is the pressure they are faced with, and it not fair that they are faced with it because so much is riding on one test.