This past weekend was the entrance tests that determine which high school grade 9 students can attend in the fall. The 1 1/5 days of tests are the result of close to one school year of preparation. The short video above is of all the kids waiting to enter the examination room.

It’s a complicated process, one in which I don’t quite understand, picking which high school you want to go to. The school zone you live in has little relation to the result, you could live across the street from a high school, but due to choice, poor test scores, or enrollment levels a student could end up traveling across the county for 40 minutes each day to attend class.

My daughter didn’t have to write the test, as she will almost assuredly be attending high school in PEI in the fall, but being “mean” and wanting to hedge our bets I pushed her to participate.

Taiwan’s education system at the elementary level is quite good, 7 – 8th grade marginal, and from 9th onward largely a farce. The educational outcomes for these years are largely tests, which produces excellent abilities in rote learning, memorization, following orders, parochial thinking and fixed systematic approaches to doing things. It doesn’t encourage free thinking, creativity, collaboration and a love of learning.

A plus is that there are some vocational opportunities for those kids smart enough to realize that an academic education is not for all. Unfortunately these opportunities are largely frowned upon and framed in a failure to achieve mentality.