Why is that the only metric? Why not average learning level? Or the average interest in science? Or the number of grad school applicants?
I ask this because i have trouble seeing extra time spent in education as zero sum wastage.
The subjects are highschool level - it's half rote memorization and half trick math and physic questions that using calculus are going to make 1000% more easy but are not allowed because calculus are not a highschool subject.
It's a huge waste of resource and time.
if those studying made the intelligence of said person higher, then it's not a waste. It might be inefficient (because there may be faster ways to raise intelligence than these sorts of studying), but it's strictly better than not studying.
Otherwise, by the same argument, people going to the gym and "wasting" their time doing body building or training when they're not professional athletes are wasting their time.
Everyone can cram the test and that's not going to create more college admissions. Nor does it 'raise intelligence', it just flat out don't.
going to the gym for exercise vs bodybuilding is different. I'm specifically talking about people doing bodybuilding or training for specific purpose without being a professional athlete, rather than regular exercise.
You're just asserting that one thing has benefits, while denying another thing has any benefits. All i'm saying is that your cultural bias is clouding your judgement because studying for tests is the same as bodybuilding - the person chose to do it, therefore it has benefits for themselves. And how do you know studying for tests don't raise intelligence? you at least get more knowledge.
It's like to learn how to describe the same thing with many different methods.
Sure, it's not entirely a waste time that the tutoring can teach some interesting aspects. But at the end of the day, it does not teach anything that was not already covered in the school teaching.
And we all know that Chinese students in US tend to limit their thinking in narrow scope. Then why not let the students to absorb non curriculum staff outside of the class, therefore eliminating most of the tutoring.
The cram school is being evaluated by one metric and one metric only: how much boost can it offer to the kids' test score.
The admission numbers are not changing because of tutoring, so all of it was zero sum game waste. And a huge burden on parents and children themselves.