Recently I saw an article in Southern Weekend, “Do Poor Children Have No Spring? — Why Are Students from Humble Families Increasingly Farther Away from First-Rate Universities?” In the past few days, while eating with my family and relatives, this kind of topic has also come up often. Today someone mentioned that Fudan University may completely abolish admissions through straight Gaokao scores next year—that is, you would have to get in through independent admissions or other such routes. Such a move will of course further increase the difficulty for students from impoverished regions to enter top universities. Just the round-trip transportation and lodging costs for making a special trip to take the written exam and interview for independent admissions are already beyond the means of many rural families, not to mention that because the questions in independent admissions are more open-ended, rural students with limited access to information are at a natural disadvantage. Bonus points for competitions, special admissions in arts or sports, and the like are even more out of reach for students from poor regions.
But on the other hand, the children of the rich in the city do not have it easy either. From kindergarten on they have to struggle like mad; being able to recognize one or two thousand characters before school age is no longer anything to brag about. From primary school onward, they must contend with both exam-oriented education and “quality education.” And after more than ten years of hard study, what then? Even if they do well academically, they still have to keep on being supported by their parents; otherwise, can you afford to buy a house? If you don’t rely on connections and don’t do anything crooked, can you afford to buy a house?
So my father has also seen it: the “theory that reading is useless” is bound to rise again. But even worse is this: on the one hand, studying is useless—knowledge cannot change your fate; those who are meant to work will still have to work, and those who are meant to live off their parents will still have to live off their parents. On the other hand, you still can’t not study; diplomas are still tied to treatment and待遇, and although diplomas are not worth much, you still can’t do without them.
What is called the “theory that reading is useless” is, in a certain sense, completely correct. The so-called “knowledge changes fate” sounds as if it were a creed valid across time and place, but in fact it is probably a domestically made knockoff: a blend of China’s ancient imperial civil service examination culture and the Western Enlightenment-era notion that “knowledge is power.” In ancient Western societies, people’s social class, their rank and worth, were determined by their birth and achievements; they were not changed by reading. In modern Western society, by contrast, the Enlightenment emphasized “equality.” In principle, people should not be divided into ranks of noble and base, superior and inferior. Therefore Enlightenment thinkers, however much they extolled knowledge and emphasized learning, would not talk about things like “knowledge changes fate.”
In the context of modern the West, education can roughly be divided into several kinds. First is Enlightenment education, or universal education, basic education—roughly what we call the compulsory education stage. Education at this stage provides the boundary between civilization and barbarism; it is a basic process of shaping a civilized “modern person.” One can hardly talk about whether it is useful or useless, and one can hardly talk about it changing anyone’s fate. Second is higher education, which is not only about reaching the minimum level of knowledge required as a civilized person, but also about expanding the frontiers of human knowledge, delving into scholarship, and benefiting humanity. Higher education cultivates scholars or intellectuals; if this kind of education is said to be “useful,” then it is useful to humanity, not necessarily in the sense of changing an individual’s fate. Third is education in various professional skills for making a living; this kind of education is the only one that can truly be called “useful.”
But in China, people’s understanding of “knowledge” is completely undifferentiated. People simply have no awareness of distinguishing these three kinds of knowledge—knowledge as cultural attainment, knowledge as scholarly inquiry, and knowledge as a skill for making a living—but instead take all of these as the same process of “studying.” Most parents and their children are simply not aware of the difference between studying in middle school and studying in university. Moreover, forms of study that can truly be called “useful,” such as vocational and technical schools, are regarded as the lowest and most contemptible tier. The problem is that the reason we look down on junior colleges and similar institutions is not because, like the ancient Greeks, we proudly esteem pure learning detached from utility; on the contrary, it is precisely because of utilitarian calculations of “usefulness.” A mode of study devoted specifically to learning useful knowledge is despised by a value system that worships usefulness, while study devoted to general cultivation and scholarly inquiry is instead enshrined as the highest. This paradoxical logic has intensified the predicament of Chinese education.
Modern China has imported the form of the Western educational system, but in essence still understands it through the logic of the imperial examination. The imperial examination system itself was a great invention; through it, the bureaucratic class in ancient China was relatively mobile, and before the Enlightenment no Western country’s system for selecting officials could compare with China’s imperial examinations. But what has survived in today’s “knowledge changes fate” is precisely not the aspects of the traditional imperial examination system that promoted fairness and vitality. Rather, what has been preserved is the distinction between high and low, noble and base. The subtext of “knowledge changes fate” is that some people’s fates are miserable or lowly. We do not look to the improvement of social institutions to eliminate this unequal fate; instead, we require those whose fates are worse to climb upward only through reading and examinations,
Why do Chinese parents place such importance on their children’s “studies”? Why must they do everything possible to keep their children from losing at the starting line? What is the endpoint of this starting line? Parents are not trying to cultivate their children’s basic civilizational qualities so that they may leave barbarism and ignorance behind; nor do they hope their children will in the future delve into pure scholarship and add glory to humankind. It is nothing more than for their children to “make something of themselves” in the future. As for what it means to make something of oneself, modern Chinese people and ancient Chinese people differ not at all: it is nothing more than “getting promoted and making money.”
Although the goal is the same, the road toward it has become far more complicated. The ancient Four Books and Five Classics, and the selection of officials through the eight-legged essay, were rigid and formulaic, but at least their positioning was clear after all—not everyone had to study these things as a duty, nor did everyone have to write books and expound doctrines on their own, and no one expected to use those things to acquire property and make a living. Hard study in a cold window was simply for the sake of having one’s name placed on the golden list; it was straightforward. Modernity is different. “Knowledge” in all its senses has been fused together in China—on the one hand, this knowledge is something everyone is obliged to learn; on the other hand, one is also supposed to scale the peaks and study all the way to the highest and most cutting-edge fields; and on yet another hand, people hope to learn professional skills for making a living through reading… This inevitably leaves students overburdened.
Today’s Chinese people often never carefully reflect on the meaning of “knowledge,” nor do they categorize different ways of seeking knowledge. So-called “institutions of higher learning” are merely an extension of primary schools, merely a linear distinction between “small,” “middle,” and “big.” Whether one is becoming an official, making money, or pursuing scholarship, one must all travel the same route of small—middle—big. Even more, this route has been endowed with a moral obligation, as though rural children absolutely should not “know Heaven and take joy in fate,” but must instead change their fate to count as striving, to count as having promise. Those dutiful people who stay at home to serve their parents and carry on the family line seem to have become ignorant and backward elements; they must certainly abandon the rural way of life, head for the city, head for the highest institutions, and go study the most profound learning before that will do.
“Students from humble families are increasingly farther away from first-rate universities”—is this a bad situation? What is truly bad is the following series of dogmas: first, rural children ought to change their own fate; second, changing one’s fate means pursuing the rise of power and status; third, only by attending first-rate universities can one better seek power and status. The way out of the problem is not how to increase the enrollment rate of students from humble families at elite universities, but to fundamentally transform the creed that “knowledge determines fate” and the paradoxical logic hidden behind it. First, distinguish between the pursuit of knowledge as a cultural obligation and the pursuit of knowledge as a quest for excellence. Every child should go to school and receive Enlightenment education, but not every child should go to university or explore the most cutting-edge fields of knowledge. Second, distinguish the pursuit of knowledge as a quest for excellence from the pursuit of knowledge as the learning of skills. The highest institutions of learning should be where the deepest knowledge is sought, but the deepest knowledge does not mean one will necessarily earn the most money or produce the highest officials.
“Knowledge” can enlighten the ignorant and dispel superstition, but the pressing task now is, rather, to dispel superstition about “knowledge.”
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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