Ten-year-old Yu Xiaochuan has covered his arms with mathematical formulas. His mother, Lin Wencan, has planned his life through 78 “tiger-parenting groups,” while his father, Yu Yangge, a model teacher from a family of teachers spanning three generations, tears up the principal’s agreement on graduation rates in the dead of night.
“Mom, if I don’t get a perfect score, will you still love me?”
When Chen Min, a top student, falls from the school building, her diary is filled with coded messages about “deliberately getting answers wrong.” When parents expose scandals in a livestream only to be cyberbullied as “crazy moms.” When Yu Xiaochuan’s hacking talent awakens and he breaks into the tutoring system, his father’s bribery records pop up on the screen…
Are we educating children, or manufacturing victims who get perfect scores?
※ Teachers’ story: The “profit-sharing agreement” on a USB drive brings Yu Yangge to the brink of collapse.
※ Parents’ story: Lin Wencan discovers that the exorbitantly priced cram schools are part of a conspiracy involving the entire teaching staff.
※ Students’ story: Yu Xiaochuan’s hacking revenge brings the citywide mock exam system to a standstill.
“They all say it’s for your own good, ”
“But why is the standard of ‘good’ always just a string of numbers?”
(A suspenseful work of realism that exposes the festering sores of exam-oriented education, using three perspectives to lay bare the suffocating truth of education today.)
It is a novel that criticizes reality. So profound.