The news is everywhere: https://www.google.com/search?q=%E5%88%9D%E5%8D%87%E9%AB%98+..., for a long time.

About calculus: https://www.gaokzx.com/c/201901/33164.html

Using the elite students from private schools who you know as a counter argument is really not that strong. Only 14% of the high school students are in private schools.

Also consider that Chinese people who study abroad are paying the full sticker price of a US university, so it's really not any sort of representative sample of Chinese education. Hell, paying full sticker price for a US education is a tough lift for most Americans, who have higher standard of living.

A lot of Chinese students paying for full priced universities abroad is a long term strategic move by the family and/or family owned business backing them. That's why you can often see families paying for $50,000 USD/year high school abroad even. The plan is 1. start to develop a foothold overseas, 2. then move money over, 3. then get one family member with a foreign passport and 4. keep building a stronger base for emigration and large scale eventual shift of wealth. It's not equivalent to US private middle-class citizens paying for the same institutions.

> The news is everywhere: https://www.google.com/search?q=%E5%88%9D%E5%8D%87%E9%AB%98+... , for a long time.

The top results (for me) all say that it's not literally correct that only 50% of middle school students make it to high school, but most (suspiciously) only mention numbers for Beijing. https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/368135272 has a table covering every province, showing that the rate goes from 53.11% in Henan to 70.49% in Heilongjiang.

First of all, not everything is an "argument." How about a discussion? I'm not interested in an argument.

It's interesting that there's no calculus on the gaokao. It's an elective in high school (same as the US). I wouldn't have guessed that. However, some very basic linear algebra does seem to be in the compulsory high school math curriculum(1). More than I learned in high school in the US, anyways.

Also, generally the private schools are considered worse options. The elite students with the highest middle school test scores mostly go to public high schools. Maybe students at the private high schools are more likely to go overseas, and so they are more likely to take the calculus electives. But even among the private school students, only a small percentage will go overseas.

For the vocational school thing, I had no idea it was so extensive. Very interesting. I knew about sports high schools, where most of the graduates go on to teacher colleges and become PE teachers. What other kinds of vocational high schools are there? How does it work for smaller cities - how many special types of vocational school can they really support?

(1) https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E9%AB%98%E4%B8%AD%E6%95%B0%E5%...

My bad. By argument I meant “ a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong.”, as in you have a point, and offers a number of arguments to support the point

I knew what you meant. A better way for me to put it would have been: "I wasn't making a counter argument, just telling you my current understanding and the reasons for it." To me there's a big difference in attitude. I'm not sitting here coming up with a perfect counter-argument, both because I don't want to put that much effort in and because I don't think it's an effective way to learn.

High school isn’t compulsory in China. Many students don’t even sit for the exams, they are already going to start work or go to a vocational school depending on their means.

My wife took the art/liberal arts track in high school and most definitely didn’t learn calculus (she still got into one of the best arts academies, though). So at least on that track, you won’t learn calculus (you generally take the same classes together, unlike the USA). I’m not sure about the STEM track, but my bet is first tier Shanghai and Beijing would be way different from a tier 88 like Chenzhou. I also can’t imagine kids at a school like renmin zhongxue not learning calculus, and that’s just a middle school.

So is the arts track an example of the vocational schools hintymad is talking about? Or is it just a different track at the same high school? Another thing I don't understand - he's saying 50% of kids go to vocational schools, and also 50% of students go to college. But there are also vocational colleges, right? Teacher's college, hospitality college, sports college, etc.

No. The liberal arts high school kids still go to university (think lawyers, political scientists, literature majors, and designers). The vocational student kids aren’t going to high school at all usually. Like I said, high school isn’t compulsory in China, I think they are at about 40% or so kids attending high school at the moment, up to 50% already would be surprising.

Teacher schools (normal universities) require high school. I’m not sure about tourist or sports schools. But the tourist college I visited (in Zhangjiajie) seemed more like a college than the vocational schools I’ve seen. I didn’t ask, though. I assume Beijing Sports university is a real university, but I’m not sure about the other more provincial ones.

A data point: I was raised up in a tier 2/3 city in northern China, finished high school at about 2013. I'm not exposed to calculus or linear algebra at all while in high school.

OTOH, friends of same age who were in Shanghai did get exposed to linear algebra.

"Ailun" is right.

I'm not sure where the original commenter is at in China where 50% are not going to high school. "Ailun" is also right about the private school thing. It's big in China. Finally, the idea that Chinese students are not learning calculus is patent nonsense.

This was 20 years ago, but my wife went to a public school in China and never learned calculus or linear algebra (and had only the faintest grasp of trigonometry).

Are the majority of public students, in the year the commenter specified, not accurate...?