20 A Year of Great Significance. The story was poignant in that childhood pass Bella by and she is torn between being a teenager free of entrance exams light years away,(in a teen’s world) I felt her parents were also in the frenetic sprint to be relevant in their community. The notion that teaching to the test is inherent to US school systems is misguided. Surprisingly is at the global scale in China, “Some schools link teacher pay to student test performance, and the pressure on teachers is intense.” As a result the pressure to produce beyond reasonable human stamina defeats the purpose of any child’s educational journey. Despite the intense preparation, enrichment and tutoring in any given subject the educational outcomes erodes the sense of purpose and self- worth, for example Bella knows she places somewhere in the middle and to be ranked publically, in from of the other classmates that may rank in a higher intellectual level can be demoralizing. The question I have is where did Bella’s Childhood go? The best answer is to the relentless Chinese Middle Class race to place at the top with so few places to be had. Social mobility takes a tall and comes at a price, from Bella’s perspective she states, “I sit in my middle school classroom, and the teacher wants us to say good-bye to childhood. I feel at a loss. Happiness is like the twinkling starts suffusing the night sky of childhood.” I teach middle school and I feel Zhou Jiaying’s plight since she was four years old she most sprit to the present-15, or else. Her anxiety and stress levels are probably overwhelming.
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