Most Chinese students are used to passive education. A characteristic of such pattern is that obeying teachers’ instructions is encouraged and rewarded while cherishing one’s own different ideas is thought to be na?ve. Students are given too much pressure and their entire goal is to get high marks. Educators have pointed out this traditional pattern of education, particularly exam-oriented teaching and learning that focuses on centralized textbooks and exams, has greatly restrained the creativity and potential of students. Young people are therefore often overloaded with homework and have no time to develop their own interests and potential talents. Their talents are limited, so are their creativity and practical skills, and measures should be taken to improve Chinese students’ quality.
A new and fashionable concept has come to dominate the Chinese debate on educational reform since the late 1980s. “Quality education” or “competence education” has been officially promoted throughout the country, which aims to encourage both IQ and EQ of students. Some people hold the view that we must change the exam-oriented education into a quality-oriented education because the latter will cultivate a more colorful life, the looser environment, yet the more creative minds of the future students. We should seek a way out of traditional teaching methods that focus entirely on exams which have been in practice in schools for decades. It's really difficult, mainly because both teaching and learning are evaluated by exam results. We should try to find a good balance: to improve traditional teaching methods and help students pass the exam.
It is easy to identify challenges in education reform, but more difficult to overcome them, because reform conflicts with China’s traditional school system and the unchanged university. The reform of “exam-oriented education” involves not only the entire educational system but also the whole society.