A Casual Recollection of My Growing-Up Years: Donggezhi Middle School

24,641 characters2006.07.26

——————————————（continued from previous）——————————

Dong Gezhi Middle School had its predecessor in Puming Normal School. We were the second cohort of students admitted by Dong Gezhi. When we were in school, there were still a few cohorts of the original Puming Normal School students, and several of the teachers had even done their practicum at our place. Principal Fu of Dong Gezhi had been the vice principal of the original Gezhi Middle School; after leaving Gezhi he wanted to strike out on his own and build something of his own, and thus Dong Gezhi Middle School came into being.

At that time we happened to catch the first round of abolishing key middle schools. Aside from four schools such as Huaer, which were still allowed to retain a key middle school program for one more year, the junior middle school divisions of all the other famous high schools were forced to shut down. All public junior middle schools were to “admit students nearby,” which is one of the “leveling policies” of educational reform that I deeply loathe. Fortunately, private middle schools began to rise at just the right moment, because private middle schools could break through the principle of proximity and recruit students flexibly. This flexibility was reflected not only in their ability to provide convenience for the children of powerful and influential people who could afford sponsorship fees, but even more in their ability to attract excellent students through top classes and all kinds of incentives. Many famous high schools that had had their junior divisions abolished also hastened to “cultivate” corresponding private middle schools, providing teachers and other support, changing their appearance and continuing to recruit students, thereby providing a stable source of students for their high school divisions. The names of these special junior middle schools were often self-explanatory, such as “Dong Yan’an Middle School,” and so on. But Dong Gezhi was different from Dong Yan’an: having “Gezhi” in the name was merely a way to borrow some fame; in terms of teachers and institutional structure it had absolutely nothing to do with Gezhi Middle School.

We were in Class 3; at Cao Guangbiao Primary School we had been in Class 2. The schools all deliberately avoided “Class 1,” in order to keep things discreet. The official explanation would never say that we were a “top student class”; numbering us as Class 3 was meant to signal that our class was “no different” from ordinary classes. Only later, in high school, could the officially recognized “all-science class” be openly numbered as Class 1…

This “special class” at Dong Gezhi consisted of boys and girls… That is not a pointless sentence, because in fact almost all the students “recruited” on the basis of competition results were boys, while the girls were deliberately “allocated” by the school in order to avoid excessive imbalance between the sexes. The whole class had 41 boys and 15 girls. The girls were mostly selected from among the students with the best non-competition academic results; I did not pay close attention to the details at the time.

Still, it is hard to say whether mixing those girls in with us did more good than harm. I remember that early on there was a math quiz; for those of us doing competitions, it was only of ordinary difficulty, and many people scored around a hundred points. Yet it seemed that one girl only got a single-digit score, probably having guessed only a few multiple-choice questions correctly, and was driven to tears. Fortunately, although the whole class was always divided into competition and non-competition camps, it was ultimately fairly harmonious, and everyone’s eventual prospects were generally quite good—one should note that after all we were a top-student class, and there were no “poor students.”

In the field of science competitions, the overall gap between boys and girls was such a clear fact that anyone who was not blind had to admit that boys were more suited to Olympiad mathematics than girls. Of course, many girls did Olympiad math very well, and not all boys were necessarily suited to it. Why are so many people unwilling to face the fact that people are born with diverse potentials? The very best education system should by no means seek to flatten human diversity, but rather, as far as possible, provide a suitable environment so that each person’s potential has the opportunity to reveal itself early, thereby allowing instruction to be tailored to the individual.

Later, among the classmates who performed excellently in junior middle school competitions, the vast majority had already shown promise in primary school; those who “changed tracks halfway” and entered competitions later while still achieving top results were extremely rare—in Shanghai’s environment, there were almost none. Perhaps this was precisely because Shanghai’s educational environment at the time was relatively good: students with outstanding potential often had the opportunity to reveal themselves and thus received special attention at an early stage. Some people who changed tracks halfway and ended up with outstanding achievements were often not late bloomers who caught up by working hard, but rather people who, as children, simply never thought of or never had the opportunity to do competitions. Why, then, is the entire primary-school Olympiad system now being abolished? For “quality education,” ha, quality education, ha, reducing burdens, haha—such pleasant-sounding words…

From the time I first entered junior middle school, it was exactly the period when the so-called “quality education” reform was beginning to make a huge stir. At that time, “reducing burdens” had not yet been brought up; just “quality education” alone was already enough of a commotion. Looking back now, though, this uproar was actually a good thing; it was of important significance for the formation of my critical thinking!

From prep class or maybe first year of junior middle school onward, in the diaries, weekly reflections, and essays assigned in Chinese class I would often, either directly or by satirical implication, criticize the education policies of the education commission and the school. At the time I mainly criticized the school, but I was already quite dissatisfied with the entire education reform. What was the school showing students too early on? It was utilitarianism and hypocrisy: a surface performance on one side and a different act behind the scenes, all for the sake of competing for fame and gain and pleasing superiors. At the time my arrows were more often aimed at the school’s hypocrisy, which in retrospect of course was somewhat immature. The school had to be utilitarian and hypocritical; this was caused by the larger environment of the education system. There is reason in the saying that the law does not punish the multitude. The trend of the age was impatient and restless; the people were utilitarian, parents were utilitarian, schools were utilitarian—all of this was the tide and current of the times. Yet the education authorities should have been self-disciplined—because only the policy makers themselves had the possibility of self-discipline, only they had a little possibility of escaping fashion. It is impossible to demand self-discipline from the broad masses. Ordinary people may perhaps shirk responsibility by saying that the trend is like this; schools may perhaps shirk responsibility by saying that they are in the jianghu and cannot help themselves. But those in power cannot shirk responsibility. Even if there are all kinds of helplessness and all kinds of difficulties in making policy, this is still the only possible “active” action—greater power means greater responsibility; whoever holds power is responsible! The education authorities should be ashamed of their daily policy reversals, lack of conviction, blind following of trends, and unrealistic measures, and so on!

Of course, I also cannot place my hopes in how those in power might improve. The readers of academic writing are always the so-called intellectuals. The malaise of this age is something each and every one of us is worth reflecting upon and examining ourselves over.

Starting from junior middle school, in Chinese class I began to lean entirely toward writing argumentative essays; I wrote fewer and fewer lyrical or narrative pieces. My principle was: anything that can be written as an argumentative essay must be written as an argumentative essay! I remember once turning an essay titled “A Gift” into an argumentative essay called something like “On Friends and Gifts,” which left the Chinese teacher both exasperated and amused.

My Chinese teacher in junior middle school had the surname Guo, and was from Shanxi. Shanghainese people do indeed have a deeply rooted tendency toward exclusion; “outsider” = “country bumpkin” = “bumpkin,” and toward this Chinese teacher we too at first looked askance. Because of the special nature of our class, parents had an extremely high degree of say, and in the first year many parents even banded together to try to “fire” Teacher Guo. Fortunately, that did not succeed. As our contact deepened, our prejudice gradually faded away as well; Teacher Guo was truly a lovely teacher. Shanghainese xenophobia is not something to fear, and Shanghainese superiority does have its reasons. In fact, Shanghai is a city that embraces all rivers and all seas; almost all people now called “Shanghainese” trace three or five generations back to migrants from elsewhere. The true local Shanghainese, such as “Pudong people,” are instead often treated like country folk. Shanghainese people are not unfriendly, and certainly not unable to tolerate others. As long as outsiders can properly understand Shanghainese superiority and flatter Shanghainese pride a little, they are actually very easy to get along with.

Our homeroom teacher, Teacher Zhang, had the image of a stern middle-aged woman—strict, nagging, and often overbearing. Many classmates did not like her and were even resistant to her, which of course is normal. But for some reason I seemed from the very beginning to be able to understand teachers. Although my personality had long since become open and I was able to communicate well with classmates, I always retained a personality that was solitary and special. I did not merely think from the viewpoint of a classmate; from the very beginning I was also able to stand in the teacher’s shoes, to understand teachers’ difficulties, especially those of the “grandmother-like” teachers. I have also occasionally joked recently that I am an “old person,” precisely because I have always been most able to accept the ways in which “old” people do things.

Of course, although Teacher Zhang was an excellent teacher, there were indeed some aspects of her educational methods that I could not be satisfied with. For example, her attitude toward those “unruly” “poor students” seemed tinged with aversion. I, on the other hand, held that with all students one should emphasize praise and value their strengths; criticism and blame are always inappropriate. Moreover, for some classmates with particularly unusual personalities, the more you criticize them the more wildly they behave, even eventually developing the habit of taking pleasure in challenging the teacher. At that point criticism becomes even less meaningful.

Of course, Math Teacher Gu was the teacher closest to us. He was a Pudong native, had once been a swimming lifeguard, and was warm toward people and serious in teaching. To tell the truth, it was really not easy to teach mathematics to a class like ours, because the class’s overall math level was extremely uneven. There were students who could not even keep up with ordinary junior middle school mathematics, and there were also top Olympiad students. As a math teacher, one had to devise targeted teaching methods for at least these four kinds of people: poor students in mathematics, excellent students in ordinary mathematics, competition students, and top Olympiad competitors. One had to take care of the top students, could not abandon the poor students, had to ensure competitions, and also pay attention to the entrance exam; for one person to handle all of this was truly not easy. Facts proved that Teacher Gu was one of the very best teachers. A teacher’s excellence lies mainly in warmth of heart; without seriousness, responsibility, warmth, and friendliness, one cannot be a good teacher no matter how strong one’s math ability is. Teacher Gu was a thousand, ten thousand times better than the math teachers at the Second Affiliated Middle School.

In prep class I once broke a bone, and nearly a semester of PE classes was wasted. I was not good at sports to begin with, and after such a waste of time I never caught up again. My weight also kept shooting up. In middle school I was always a rather fat, sturdy figure, and only in senior year of high school did I suddenly, unintentionally, achieve great success in losing weight; that will be mentioned later.

A senior student of ours had an article in this issue of *Communist Youth Garden* saying that one important “power” fat people lack is “melancholy.” Wherever they are, fat people are always a comic figure, and indeed not suited to being a melancholy youth; that is indeed a pity. Fortunately, I myself do not really need melancholy that much, though it is indeed an obstacle to “playing the deep and profound”…

In junior middle school I took part in many math competitions. The Hua Cup competition brought first prize, but unfortunately I did not make it to the finals; several “Hope Cup” competitions were all third prize, including later in high school. Every time I took part in the Hope Cup—whether it was skipping a grade to take part in the first-year junior middle division while in prep class, skipping a grade to take part in the second-year division while in first year, or taking the regular-level competition while in second year—I always got third prize. I already have about four or five Hope Cup third prizes, which is kind of amusing when I think about it… I once took part in the Shanghai–Queensland Mathematics Friendship Competition; it seemed to have been a skip-grade entry. First I got 90 points in the correspondence round, and together with another student in the class who also got 90 points, I tossed a coin to win the qualification to take part in the final friendship match together with the student who had full marks. Shanghai had a total of 10 people (?) and we competed together with 10 students from Queensland, Australia, at Jincai Middle School in Shanghai. In this competition I got to see the gap between Western students’ junior middle school math level and that of Chinese students. The competition was team-based, with two Shanghai students and two Queensland students forming a group; our group happened to include a Chinese exchange student, and the problems were so simple they were basically child’s play. In the end our group won, and because in the first-round mental calculation contest I beat my partner by being able to shout the answer two seconds earlier, I received the title of best individual. The other best individual on the Queensland side was of course, with no suspense whatsoever, won by that Chinese exchange student. This competition did not have much substantive significance; it was just fun. A pity, though, that this friendship competition was held alternately in Shanghai and Queensland every other year. If I had been offset by a year, perhaps I might have had a chance to go to Australia and have some fun…

There was also a national junior middle school mathematics summer camp. Our school had three places, and again it was the three of us; only this time there was no need to toss a coin. We went to Hainan Island for a few days, and my results were first prize in both the first and second rounds as well as in the overall score, though that too had no real substantive significance. The breakfast in Hainan Island was unbelievably sweet! Unfortunately, at that time Teacher Gu did not arrange for us to play a few more days in addition to the competition, so we only wandered around Haikou and did not even see the sea…

My time at Dong Gezhi was considered quite good, and I even won the first “Star of Dong Gezhi” just for fun. A total of six people were selected, and I was the only one chosen on the basis of Olympiad competition. In terms of ability, I did not really deserve it; at minimum we were all about the same, and the only extra thing I had was that Queensland friendship competition best individual, which was really just good luck.

Of course, all the competitions above were just for fun. For us, the truly important competition was only one: the Shanghai Mathematics League. This was the competition that decided one’s fate, held in December of junior year of middle school. The roughly top 50 in this competition could be said to be able to choose high school at will. Ever since primary school my luck had always been extraordinarily good, and at critical moments I performed normally; I came in tied for 14th place, just barely squeezing into first prize. That gave me absolute initiative in choosing a high school.

Then in March of the following year? In any case, a few months later there was a junior middle school physics competition. Those of us who had taken the math competition and ranked near the top had no worries about further education and nothing much to do, so we went to do the physics competition too; the classmates who had failed in the math competition and wanted direct admission to a prestigious school could only stake everything on the physics competition. The usefulness of the physics competition was second only to the Mathematics League: if one won first prize—there were thirty or forty such prizes—then admission to a prestigious school was also guaranteed. For those who were good at math, studying physics was easy and convenient. Dong Gezhi’s physics teacher was not outstanding; studying physics was mainly a matter of self-study. I gnawed through physics books for several months, and as a result, by sheer luck, also won a first prize. I say “sheer luck” because Zhabei District, in a futile attempt to restrain the outflow of talent, actually did not provide competition eligibility for many students. Had the formidable Shibei Middle School been allowed to have all its students compete, I probably would not even have had the chance to take part in the final experimental round.

Our third-year junior middle school life was extremely abnormal. After the last summer vacation before third year, we entered the sprint phase for competitions. At first, we competition students were arranged in the back rows of the classroom, and we had the right to ignore all classes and self-study by doing problems. But even so, because there were a lot of both competition and non-competition students, there was inevitably much interference between the two groups. In the end, our parents stepped forward and reached an agreement with the school: we students who were firmly doing competitions could completely avoid normal teaching, and if we failed in the competitions and could not secure direct admission, we would bear the responsibility ourselves. So we spent our days in the library studying on our own. In fact this was quite normal. At Shibei Middle School in Zhabei District it was probably even more extreme. Dong Gezhi had no full-time competition teachers, so we relied even more on self-study.

Before Labor Day we had never taken part in the regular curriculum. By the time the competitions were over and the overall outcome had already been decided, we were even more carefree; in the end we did not even need to go to school.

Dong Gezhi knew perfectly well that it could not keep us; even Gezhi could not keep us, so they hardly made any effort to persuade us to stay. In the year above us, one classmate had been retained by Gezhi, and the conditions were said to be extremely favorable—tuition-free was a certainty, and it seemed they even provided a separate office… But after all, people always move upward, and we would only choose among the “Four Great Famous Schools.” The so-called “Four Great Famous Schools” are the Second Affiliated Middle School of East China Normal University, Shanghai High School, Fudan University Affiliated High School, and the High School Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University. These four schools are the only ones that the municipal education commission allows to openly and boldly set up “science top student classes.” The admissions method is to hold a “four-school joint exam” during Labor Day. Students who had won first, second, or third prizes in the municipal junior middle school competitions in math, physics, and chemistry were eligible to register. Each person would choose one of the schools to apply to, and if admitted could skip the entrance exam and gain direct admission. In fact, though, this exam was not very useful, because the admissions work was flexibly controlled by each school. So generally, those students with higher rankings could obtain a “promise” in advance: as long as they chose that school, they would definitely be admitted.

Once we had the competition results in hand as our capital, we formed a group and went together to visit the major prestigious schools, which naturally had dedicated staff to receive and introduce us. Since the High School Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University was merely there to make up the numbers among the Four Great Famous Schools and its strength was not on the same level as the other three schools, it was never considered. Fudan University Affiliated High School had some strength, but there was a clear gap between it and the other two (though the gap was not large, it could indeed only rank third), so the very top students rarely considered it. More importantly, when we made such a grand show of going to “visit” Fudan University Affiliated High School, they only sent a middle-aged woman in charge of admissions to receive us. She spoke with her eyes rolled upward, with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude. At that time, what was more attractive was Shanghai High School: when we went to visit, we were received by the vice principal and by the famous full-time mathematics competition teacher Teacher Feng, whom we knew and who knew us. He was very warm and friendly…

Shanghai High School had many advantages. First of all, it had a long history, and it had never had a junior middle school division. When we visited, the principal specifically pointed this out, which was actually a tactful jab at the shortcomings of the Second Affiliated Middle School. This was because schools like the Second Affiliated, which originally had both junior and senior divisions, had only recently abolished the junior division, leaving certain lingering problems in teaching staff, resources, and institutional structure. In addition, Shanghai High School’s beautiful 150-mu campus also gave us a very good first impression. More crucially: Shanghai High School’s math competition strength was second to none. Among the major famous schools, only Shanghai High School had an indisputably capable full-time Olympiad teacher. We had already seen Teacher Feng’s prowess when we studied Olympiad math at an amateur math school before; the Olympiad textbooks he helped write were also known to us. Added to that was his full-time status: he never needed to worry about ordinary mathematics teaching, so of course he had an incomparable advantage.

The Second Affiliated Middle School was certainly not bad either. It had the best physics teacher and chemistry teacher in the country here (to be continued), but its strength in mathematics was much weaker. For me, however, the Second Affiliated had one critically important advantage—the “national science class”! This class admitted no more than 100 students nationwide; there were three classes in Beijing, and in Shanghai it stood alone. Once you entered the national science class, you automatically obtained direct-admission eligibility to prestigious universities. Although there were seven top universities nationwide to choose from, including East China Normal University, in practice one generally chose only Peking University, Tsinghua, Fudan, and Jiaotong University. At worst, at the very worst, one would end up in Jiaotong University, and even the last-place student could choose any major there. The condition was that one first had to win first prize in a provincial-level or above math, physics, or chemistry competition in order to be eligible to register. After gaining registration eligibility, one still had to take the national unified exam in July. There were no prior promises for this exam at all; it depended entirely on ability, and if you could not squeeze into the top hundred, you could not get in! So there was a certain risk involved.

In other words, the Second Affiliated Middle School had two science classes: one was the “Shanghai science class” selected through the four-school joint exam, and the other was the “national science class,” which was only decided in July.

According to an unwritten agreement, if one chose Fudan or Shanghai High School in the four-school joint exam, then even if one won first prize, one could no longer take the national science class exam. To enter the national science class, one first had to get into the Shanghai science class. The situation now was: the national science class was undoubtedly more attractive than Shanghai High School, but Shanghai High School was far better than the Second Affiliated Middle School’s Shanghai science class.

After much deliberation, I still chose the Second Affiliated High School. This decision had nothing to do with my parents; it was entirely my own will. It was probably the first decision in my life that I made completely on my own, with clear consciousness and thought. From that point on, all the major decisions in my life would be entirely in my own hands.

In short, entering the science-track class at the Second Affiliated was a foregone conclusion. The science-track class at the Second Affiliated recruited sixty or seventy students, clearly overbooking by more than twenty people for the full science class. The science class began not long after enrollment ended in May, with math, English, and other classes, because they didn’t want to let us waste away for a full four more months. In any case, my high school life had begun.

Although in middle school I often wrote diary entries satirizing the school, after leaving I never again felt the slightest resentment. Donggezhi was also the loveliest school. Sadly, Donggezhi is about to cease to exist! It is said that this year all of Shanghai’s “publicly run, privately supported” schools must be restructured: either become fully public, or become private, or be taken over by another school, or break up altogether! Donggezhi was precisely such a “publicly run, privately supported” school. In fact, schools of this kind enjoy the advantages of both public and private schooling: the benefits of public schools are reflected in government support and teacher待遇, while the advantages of private schools lie in flexibility in admissions. But if it is restructured into a public school now, it will not be able to keep its teachers; if it is restructured into a private school, it will not be able to recruit students. It is truly a dilemma. Yet the final outcome was even more unfortunate than a dilemma—Donggezhi was actually taken over by a tourism vocational school! Donggezhi stopped enrolling students, and after the current students are sent away, all the teachers will be “banished”… It is said that the problems here are not simple, that there are certain “conspiracies” involved. The real reason is that Donggezhi Middle School is located in Pudong’s prime Lujiazui district, but its educational affiliation belongs to Huangpu District; and in this forced restructuring, Donggezhi also had another option, namely remaining under Huangpu District or transferring to Pudong New Area. Land in Shanghai is precious, especially in the increasingly prosperous prime area of Pudong. If Donggezhi decided to transfer to Pudong New Area, then the Huangpu District education authorities would not merely be losing a middle school of somewhat uncertain excellence, but would be losing a good piece of “land”! Thus the Huangpu District education authorities simply cut the Gordian knot and pulled off a merger-and-integration maneuver: losing a somewhat well-known middle school was a minor matter; losing a priceless piece of land was the real loss! Poor Donggezhi, which just last winter vacation was still busy preparing for its tenth anniversary celebration and even asked us for photos from Peking University. Everyone was happily excited, and before summer vacation even arrived it had changed to busily planning a farewell banquet. Sad! Pitiful! The grievances and debts I have with “educational reform” are probably lifelong and impossible to settle, haha…

——————————————（未完待续）——————————2006年7月26日