My Son's Last Week of High School

Today my son’s head teacher announced that, starting tomorrow, these third-year (grade-12) students no longer need evening self-study. This is to make final preparations for the national college entrance exam (gaokao), which takes place in a week; the school wants the seniors to get adequate rest so they can face the gaokao at their best.

I feel ashamed to say that, in my son’s three years of high school, I have visited his school only three times. Once to meet his head teacher, once to attend a parents’ meeting, and once for the children’s coming-of-age ceremony. Although, because of the pandemic over these three years, it was not easy for parents to enter the school, I think that even without the pandemic my visits would have been limited.

As a father, I am hardly a model one. From kindergarten through the end of high school, I have never tutored his schoolwork; I even opposed enrolling him in cram schools or hiring a private tutor. I have always encouraged him to be self-reliant, at least in his studies. Parents in Beijing’s Haidian District are, in fact, intensely competitive; many parents do a great deal for their children, while we have essentially done nothing for ours.

Along the way, many people told me my approach was not quite right — that today’s social environment differs from when I was young, and I should do more for my child. But I was unmoved. The reason is a conviction I have long held: I cannot manage my child’s whole life, and he must learn to manage himself as early as possible. Long work with cancer patients has made me realize how much uncertainty life holds. If a child does not become self-reliant early, when a major upheaval arrives in future life he will be at a loss.

So as a father, I value cultivating his independence above all. The score he gets on the gaokao or the university he enters is not the most important thing in his life. If he wants to be happy, he must have the ability to steer his own life. And there is no way to gain that ability except by cultivating it from childhood. It is too late once the child is an adult, because the habits formed early in life persist throughout a person’s lifetime.

I am glad that my son is not doing too badly: his grades have consistently been upper-middle, and in high school he entered the “strong foundation” class. Judging by his usual performance, he can probably get into a decent 985/211 university; with luck and a good gaokao performance, entering one of the very best universities is not impossible. Because he was raised to be self-reliant, he now forbids us from interfering in many things; sometimes we are a little annoyed. But I often remind my wife to think in reverse: suppose our child were not like this, but instead needed us to arrange and decide everything for him — would we not then be far more anxious about his future? Thinking that way, my mood quickly improves.

I do not know what counts as a successful education, much less dare arrogantly claim that we understand education better than other parents. Perhaps other parents do more that is right, and my own methods and guiding principles are flawed. But I would say that all of this is determined by my view of life and the world; even if I could go back and start over, I could not choose otherwise.

Among Beijing’s students of the same graduating class, my son is not among the very top, but at the very least he can be in the top 20%, and often in the top 10%. I often urge my wife not to set the bar too high for him. A child who, relying entirely on his own effort, can easily rank in the top 10% is already doing well; there is no need to demand more. Being at the very head of the class is exhausting. My brother and I both used to be at the top, but we lived strenuously in those years, under great psychological pressure, with little happiness. More importantly, even with all that grinding, we did not achieve much — our present state really wastes the talent our parents gave us.

I have always hoped my son’s life would be his own to steer, hoping that after graduation he can handle his life with ease and composure. I am very glad that, up to now, my son is basically healthy in body and mind. When he went through adolescent rebellion, I took him to see a well-known psychological counselor at Peking University Hospital. After talking with my son alone once, the counselor told us that my son was psychologically very healthy, had a clear plan for his life and his own ideals, and told us not to worry. She advised us to adjust the way we interacted with him; we did, and after a little over a month, the rebellion was gone.

Over these years he has grown more and more sensible. As his gaokao approaches, my reluctance to let him go grows stronger. I know that, from the moment he sets foot on a university campus, he will move ever farther from us. He will strive for his own future, leave us, and become fully independent. Our family of three will gradually become a family of two. I am someone who loves children; these years with him have given me great happiness. He is about to go far, and I feel, inevitably, a little lost.

But I cannot block his forward step. The child has his own life plan; I can only fulfill a father’s duty, provide the financial support he needs, and help him complete the education he wants. In keeping with our family’s consistent style, the cause he loves has little to do with money; what he most wants is to spend his whole life in pure mathematics research, without too much disturbance to his life. This was once my dream too; at one stage in my own high school, I too deeply loved mathematics and hoped to become a mathematician. It was simply fate that led me to medicine.

I am also adjusting my own state of mind, preparing to accept the day the child truly becomes independent of this home. Perhaps he will become a mathematician and I will become a physician; we can both have little entanglement with this worldly world, immersing ourselves in our own research and taking our own delight. We will find more happiness in our new states of life. If we can spend our lives this way, it will surely be very beautiful.

These days I have been earnestly looking up all sorts of information about where my son might go after the gaokao, comparing the pros and cons of the schools he might attend and discussing various contingency plans with him. With ample plans in place, he is much calmer, and his pre-exam pressure is not great. This may be the best and most I have ever done for him. I encourage him to be a long-termist, to realize his aspirations through untiring effort, and not to take the gaokao too seriously. A young person whose grades rank in the top 10% has a promising future; most of the world’s best scholars come from this group. Since he loves research, we need not care overmuch about worldly life and worldly opinion for the rest of our lives.

Children are the continuation of our lives and our greatest psychological comfort. With a child, death is not so frightening for us, because we know that parts of our lives will not vanish entirely when our bodies are gone.

By the way, until my son’s gaokao is over, my focus will be on making the various preparations for it; I cannot, as before, devote myself wholeheartedly to my own work these days. At the same time, to avoid adding unnecessary risk factors to his gaokao, I will not be accepting any meetings or visitors for now.