The Girl with the Highest Score
Jasmine Liu
Sept 2021
I do not know her. But I know her face well.
“Do you remember Wang? The girl who got the highest score on Zhongkao among all students in the city?” I did not expect my mother to mention her name four years after I graduated from middle school, but, yes, I do remember her.
I’ve never met her in person, but I know her face well. I was a rising eighth-grade student that summer, the summer she took the high school entrance exam and became famous. My home is near my middle school, so I was able to see the huge red banner hanging above the school fence throughout the hottest summertime and foggy autumn days. It was the most conspicuous decoration, congratulating her success to the whole world. The school took great pride in her — so did I, though I did not know her existence until the red banner appeared.
Her story became more real to me when I saw her on a glass-fronted bulletin board. There were several bulletin boards outside the school fence, which were used to introduce our school to the passersby and to keep me from being bored on my way home after school. She was there, smiling at me, her name bolded, her story quoted. She thanked the school, her teachers, and her parents; she said how happy her middle school life was; her teacher praised her as a diligent, curious student; she’s Wang, the girl who scored the highest among all the test-takers on Zhongkao, the most important exam to every middle school student, the exam that determines a future at an elite high school or the end of secondary education.
Wang was the pride of the school and our role model. My physics teacher used her to motivate the class: “Work harder, and you shall be the next Wang.” She was there, up on the billboard, for two years, holding a microphone in her right hand and smiling in a beautiful white dress, not in the regular school uniform that we all had to wear each and every day. And even after her picture was finally taken off the bulletin board, she’s still the legend that people talk about with admiration.
I used to look at her face and read her story every day on my way home, so, yes, “I remember her,” I replied to my mother. “Well,” my mother said, “her success was not that simple.”
“Once during the parents-teacher meeting, your physics teacher told us that Wang received a lot of extra care from the teachers. They also formed a small group to discuss her grades and made plans accordingly. It’s very uncommon, right? I just thought that probably Wang was an extraordinarily brilliant student, so her teachers devoted more time and energy into her, hoping she could be extraordinarily successful. But I recently learned from another parent that Wang’s mother is a close friend of the vice principal. That explains a lot.”
Having experienced the exam preparation myself, I know how busy everyone can be, both the students and the teachers. The convenience provided to Wang could not come at no sacrifice, which would be the help and resources other students could have received.
It is disappointing for me to realize that the middle-school role model I took pride in is not as admirable as I was led to believe. It is more disappointing to see the power behind her success. Although the exam-oriented educational system is always criticized for its rigid pure focus on exam scores and its ignorance of personality, I’ve always believed that it can provide a fair environment for students from different backgrounds, where they have the equal opportunity to study at school and take the same exam.
But when social hierarchy exists, power exists; when power exists, unfairness exists, even in a public middle school that should treat each student equally. Regardless of whether the extra help from the teachers improved her academic performance, when the school chooses to celebrate her extraordinary exam score but leaves out crucial parts of the process from the whole story, educational inequality is allowed and using power improperly to gain extra benefits is justified.
But does she really benefit? In the short-term, maybe yes. A good score is great; being the first place is legendary. Wang moved on to one of the top high schools and received a scholarship for one year. And yet, living is much, much more than having fancy titles. I could not stop wondering about her feelings. Did she feel confused and embarrassed when she was singled out? Was she nervous when she was surrounded by five or six teachers? How does she feel when she sees her face on the bulletin board? Would there be a night that she lies on the bed, wondering whether she could attribute her achievement to her own efforts, whether things would change without the extra advantage of power? And ultimately, would she question her ability to take control of her future progress on her own?
Her glory is glistening, and what next? Wang may feel anxious and struggle when she has to rely on herself in high school, just like everyone else. Or she may get a chance to be an intern at her mother’s company to make her résumé look better. Power is dazzling yet dangerous. There is a Chinese idiom “pull up the seedlings to help them grow,” saying that the seedlings cannot grow healthily when the farmer pulls them up to “make them grow faster.” The seedlings seem to be taller, but it is not real growth.
The story starts with the exam and the scores. It is normal and understandable that the school congratulates and takes pride in students’ academic success under the exam-oriented educational system. But the story is always more than one single outcome, and life is more than exam scores.
Jasmine Liu is from Beijing, China and studies in the College of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.