The advantages and disadvantages of China's education system?

Looking back at history, it is not difficult to realize that the imperial examination system, which lasted for 1,300 years, once shone brightly. Today, nearly a hundred years after its demise, we can still feel the omnipresence of the traditional culture accumulated during the imperial examination era. After being blindly and fiercely criticized, the imperial examination system has gradually been considered and absorbed by the world. As a large-scale national examination in ancient China, the imperial examination system has had an immeasurable and far-reaching impact on the political, economic, military, social, cultural, and educational aspects of China's history, with the aim of selecting the best people to serve as government officials. From the perspective of education, the purpose of running schools in the feudal era was to "store up talents to cope with the subjects" due to the influence of the concept of "learning and excellence", which is a clear indication of the great influence of the imperial examinations on education. It has been nearly a hundred years since the abolition of the imperial examination system, but its influence on education has pervaded and accumulated as part of the real gene. Discussing the relationship between examination and education under the imperial examination system is conducive to the reform of today's education and examination to learn from the past and avoid harm.

A

China is an ancient civilization, since the Xia and Shang Dynasty, there has been a formal school education, through the Western Zhou Dynasty, Eastern Zhou Dynasty and the Han Dynasty, the scale of school education is constantly expanding, to the Sui Dynasty before the imperial examination, has initially formed a complete set of enrollment, teaching, management (including exams) and employing the education system. The feudal rulers were more and more keen on organizing education and selecting talents to realize the ideal of "ruling the country by the wise and capable", and it seemed that school education had embarked on a smooth road. However, to the rulers' surprise, the establishment of a new examination system for selecting talents, the imperial examination system, suddenly changed the development track of school education, and school education in ancient China embarked on an ill-fated road of no return. The weight of school education and the imperial examination system in each dynasty always followed the general rule of emphasizing the school over the imperial examination, emphasizing both the imperial examination and the school, and emphasizing the imperial examination over the school. In this kind of contradictory interaction, there seemed to be an equal balance between the two, but in fact there was a difference between the two, and the result was that the imperial examination system gained a decisive central position. This situation is clearly visible from the Tang and Song dynasties.

In 618 A.D., the Sui dynasty destroyed the Tang dynasty. At the beginning of the founding of the country, all the waste is waiting to be rebuilt. Tang Gaozu knew that education is the foundation of the country, the imperial edict to restore the decline of the Sui dynasty school, the state son of the school, the Imperial College, the four school and the local state and county schools have resumed enrollment. During the period of Emperor Taizong of Tang, on the one hand, he inherited the tradition of his ancestor and vigorously organized education, which made the central governmental school reach the unprecedented pomp of the whole Tang Dynasty, "more than 8,000 people were enrolled in the national school, and the pomp of the national school had not been seen in the past"; (Note: The General Canon, Volume 53 of the Rites of Passage, Thirteen of the Universities). On the other hand, the introduction of the imperial examination was practiced. Since there was no partiality, both school education and the imperial examinations were greatly developed during the reign of Emperor Tang Taizong. After Wu Zetian came to power, she adopted the policy of emphasizing the imperial examinations; in terms of school education, she changed the cultural and educational policy of respecting Confucianism and Taoism, replacing it with respecting Buddhism and belittling Confucianism, and frequently reformed the education system by appointing people who did not understand Confucianism to be the leaders and teachers of the schools, which led to the "abolition of school senho at that time" (Note: The Old Book of the Tang Dynasty (《旧唐書》-《老唐書》-《老唐書》-《唐太宗》). (Note: Preface to the Old Tang Book - Confucianism.) Due to the abusive reorganization, coupled with the imperial examination without school, more from all over the direct recruitment of scribes to the test in Luoyang, as well as the content of the entrance examination is not Confucianism as the main focus, "emphasis on the township tributes to the light of the students," the social atmosphere has been the first signs.

By the Tianbao period, the social trend of "emphasizing the township tributes over the students" had intensified, and the development of school education was once again in danger of stagnation. In order to reverse this situation, the Tang Xuanzong, on the one hand, the reform of the imperial examination system, made the decision to stop the rural tributes, all the students are into the central and local government schools to be allowed to apply for the decision; on the other hand, the development of school education, the establishment of the school education system from the local to the central government, and allow private schools. This brought a ray of hope to the declining school education. However, the good times did not last long, and the Anshi Rebellion led to the resurgence of the old practice of "emphasizing the township tributes rather than the students", which made it difficult for school education to escape from the fate of decline.

In the Song dynasty, the interaction between the imperial examinations and school education remained the same, but the ideal of unity of examination and education was realized to a certain extent. Unlike the Tang rulers, the Song dynasty paid more attention to the connection between schooling and the imperial examinations. This idea was mainly embodied in three large-scale movements to promote schooling. These three large-scale reorganizations enabled school education in the Song Dynasty to avoid the ups and downs of the Tang Dynasty, but in the midst of its prosperity, it gradually melted into the imperial examination system, and was eventually reduced to its subordinate status.

In the second year of the Xining era (1069 AD), Wang Anshi, who was in charge of the government, practiced the "Three Shelters for Scholarship", dividing all the students into the outer shelters, the inner shelters, and the upper shelters, and upgrading the shelters one by one. According to the result of the examination, "the upper class will be the official, the middle class will be exempted from the examination of the Ministry of Rites, and the lower class will be exempted from the dissolution". (Note: Yumei, vol. 112, Yuanfeng Taixue Sanxhefa). The three-sheer method of obtaining the scholar systematically combined school education with the imperial examinations, which greatly stimulated the school education of that time.

During the reign of Emperor Huizong, Chancellor Cai Jing made even more radical reforms based on the Sanshe Scholarship Law and abolished the imperial examinations for 14 years. During this period, all the five lists of scholars were taken from the Imperial College. This event of striking down the imperial examination for the sake of school development showed that school education had won a temporary victory in the struggle for the survival of the imperial examination, but due to the strong inertia of the imperial examination which had been in operation for 500 years and its many reasonable points such as opening up career paths, fairness and impartiality which had been praised by the world, Cai Jing's method of replacing the imperial examination for the selection of scholars with the Sanshe examination was still ended in failure.

The above argumentation on the interaction between school education and the imperial examination in the Tang and Song dynasties shows that there is an unbalanced interaction between the examination and education. Although the imperial examinations had faced the crisis of decline and even suspension, they were still in the mainstream most of the time in the competition with school education, and had a strong constraining and guiding effect on school education. "One's life is spent in the fields, but one's life is spent in the halls of heaven". The temptation for the vast majority of people to enter the imperial examinations is too great. Therefore, as long as the function of the imperial examinations in obtaining scholars still exists, its powerful constraints and guidance on school education will not die out. Objectively speaking, as long as the imperial examination can update its contents in accordance with the needs of society, it can still fairly select the pillars of society, and turn the ideal of "the rule of the country by the virtuous" into reality. It is saddening to note that, as the content of the imperial examination was consistently limited to Confucian classics for hundreds of years, and the scope of the questions was strictly limited, the only way to open up the distance between the candidates so as to facilitate the differentiation of selection was to take the bull by the horns and come up with strange and eccentric questions, which led to the exhaustion of the students' life's wisdom in the high-level Chinese character game of "eight-legged essays". Development to the end of the Qing Dynasty, the imperial examination has been unable to adapt to the requirements of modern society, became far away from the society of the "aliens", had to be withdrawn from the stage of history in 1905.

Two

The imperial examinations were finally defeated after more than a thousand years of competition with school education. The imperial examination system in the content and form of the examination into a dead end at the same time, but also led the school education deviated from the healthy development of the track. However, as a way of selecting talents, the imperial examination system was highly appreciated, so much so that in the 19th century, after the westernization of Europe and the United States, it became the embryo of the modern civil official system, and a special feature of the Chinese system of government that was "unconditionally praised by the Europeans". Many modern Western scholars also consider the imperial examination to be "the most peculiar and admirable method of selecting public servants ever developed by mankind". (Note: Will Durant, "The Government Praised by Voltaire", A History of World Civilization, vol. 1 (4), Cub Culture Press, Taiwan, 5th edition, 1978, p. 196). All this was due to the basic principle of the imperial examinations - the separation of examination and teaching - and the two most prominent advantages derived from it: fairness and impartiality and the prevention of cheating.

1. Fairness and impartiality

Ancient China was a country based on the social structure of family and patriarchy, and its unique cultural landscape was characterized by the importance of human face and nepotism. In this socio-cultural context of the implementation of the election system, if there is no objective criteria to operate, "any intention of the wonderful election system will be alienated into the planting of the party and cronyism tool", (Note: Liu Haifeng: "Analysis of the reasons for the long-term existence of the imperial examination", "Xiamen University Journal" (Philosophy and Social Sciences), 1997, No. 4). Ultimately, the system was bound to end up in a dead end of talent-seeking. This is exemplified by the fact that the examination system of the Han Dynasty and the nine-piece system of the Wei and Jin dynasties all went from being based on meritocracy to being dominated by the rich and powerful. Unlike the previous system of selecting scholars, the imperial examination system was set up by the feudal dynasty to recruit scholars, and scholars were free to apply for the examination, adopting the principle of selection on the basis of merit that "everything is based on Cheng Wen". Obviously, it is fairer and more equitable than any previous selection system.

First of all, from the point of view of the application conditions, the imperial examination opened the bureaucracy to the whole society. From the Sui and Tang dynasties to the end of the Qing Dynasty, fewer and fewer restrictions on enrollment, the Qing Dynasty, in addition to the advocate of excellence, soaps and lakes family and living in the parents bereavement, in principle, everyone can be enrolled in the examination, and do not need to be recommended by the local officials, can be "ultimatums since the entry". The freedom to apply for the examination gave the common intellectuals a chance to become members of the bureaucracy through "fair competition", putting an end to the situation in the Wei and Jin dynasties when "there was no humble family at the top, and no powerful family at the bottom". According to statistics, an average of 42.9% of the top students in the Ming and Qing dynasties were born into families that had never had a meritorious career. (Note: Liu Hong, A History of the Chinese Scholarship System, Hunan Educational Press, 1992 edition, p. 444). Secondly, from the point of view of the implementation of the examination, the rulers took various measures, including the establishment of complicated and strict regulations of the Tribute Academy, the procedure of proposing and evaluating questions and the punishment for cheating, etc., so that the examination results could truly reflect the level of the candidates and ensure the fairness of the examination; in order to prevent the intervention of the powerful and the rich and ensure that commoners' children had a fairer competition environment, most dynasties also put some restrictions on the chief examiners and children of the court officials, for example, in the Tang and Song dynasties, the family members of the minister of etiquette to-be-langs were not required to be a family member of the examiners. Again, from the point of view of the admission process, the principle of acceptance, which is not to ask about family history and valves, and which is "to stay or go according to the degree", has obvious impartiality. In addition, because the opportunity to enter the civil service and to receive education was not completely equal among the regions, so beyond the technical fairness and justice of the examination, the establishment of the quota allocation system to realize the regional fairness should not be ignored, even though it hides a more far-reaching geopolitical considerations of the rulers.