Letters | 1 January 2011

An education

Sir: Quite apart from the pressure the Gaokao exam puts on students (Letters, 18/25 December), the Chinese education system is unsatisfactory in other ways. I taught English to undergraduates in Beijing for two years and it could be a dispiriting experience. Chinese students are taught very intensively, there is a lot of learning by repetition, and they are also drilled so that they do not ever offend against the party line. You could say they are taught not to think, although that would be a bit unfair. Anyway, they are going to rule the world so it’s all academic.

Rebecca Jed, London SW4

Sir: Oliver Lewis made some valid comparisons between the level of difficulty of certain British and Chinese exams (‘The Gaokao challenge’, 11 December). But his astonishment must be put in the light of own unfamiliarity with mathematical knowledge. His first maths question is to do with set theory and not group theory (and the answer is, after a moment’s thought, trivial).