Having exams and selection from primary school sounds nice to get the best elements on best schools, which usually gives very good students and nice window for China when they study aborad.
Same as allowing many people to study; giving opportunity to many and not letting studies to rich kids only is usually very nice.
That's for the pros. Now for the cons:
Too much pressure.
Very focused on some topics (reading, natural sciences, maths) and, hence, lacking culture in other topics
Preventing from independent thinking (too much involvement from the state, which is not necessarily as bad as teaching kids to hate their own place).µ
From the very few I've seen, it's also too dense regarding the schedule, with is like a slave training and I expect it to be damaging for children, like leading to depression.
Although selection is nice, social disparity probably plays a role and poorer students most likely have to work twice as much as the others just like in many other places.
I don't think that the Chinese system provides the best basic education in the world, but it is incomparable to the one in France at the moment.
Well, the post is not well organized and a bit messy, so I hope it's still readable.
I have a question though; if a student fucks up at a moment during their cursus. Can be it be fixed and still end up with a good degree in the end?
Example: drop out at highschool and not oging to pass your gaokao; are you doomed or are there some stuff fromt he government to allow a kid or an adult to study back and go to, let's say, Tsinghua university?
