Perhaps it's just like physics: To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Since the lifting of martial law in Taiwan, the once-taboo subject of politics has become omnipresent. Every day it is the main feature in newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio, and it is an inescapable topic at dinner tables, coffee shops, and teahouses.
But are our political passions and views really independent? Or are we just repeating what the media tells us? In the recently completed presidential election, how did we cast our votes? Did we assess the platforms, accomplishments, and records of the candidates and their political parties, or did we just look at the personal charisma of the candidate? Were our choices based on reason, or on narrow provincialism?
Perhaps it is just that in Taiwan, politics is our great focal point, so elections have become the apogee of our exercise of freedom of choice. But in life, do our choices stop at politics? In fact every day, perhaps every moment, we must make certain choices. But in the environment in which many of us grew up, we did not have so many choices, especially in terms of our schooling.
Don't you agree? From nursery school to university, how many choices were our own? Even today, how many after-school study activities are things the children themselves prefer?
We want to put aside politics for a moment, so on this eve of the transition of the presidency from one party to another, the main focus in this issue of Sinorama will be on education. We want to remind everyone to consider why we have been through ten years of education reform-the high school and university entrance exam system is going to be scrapped and a new system fully implemented.
In the interviews for this cover story we discovered that many parents and even many educators still feel that the old exam system was the fairest way. Some point to incoming president Chen Shui-bian and ask whether, in the absence of the objective exam system, someone from such a poor household could have become president. Will the evaluation of "artistic talent" that will have greater importance in the new multi-track entrance system be an unfair standard for children from low-income families? In our society, which places so much emphasis on personal connections, will closing the exam door result in opening the back door?
For most of us in the older generation, life was simpler, the objective was very clear, and our material disadvantages made it easier for us to concentrate on our studies. We knew that if we did well on the exams and tested into a good university, this would be enough to win plaudits from family and society, and that the ball was already rolling to secure our futures. As for the distribution of students, the best schools were decided through the exams. We only had to worry about studying, and we left the rest up to social mechanisms.
In the past, we accepted the belief that we would go from primary school to university or perhaps graduate school, then graduate, get married, have children, and then lead our children along the same path in hopes that they would be as fortunate as us.
But was the exam system really so fair? Perhaps it didn't distinguish between rich and poor, but did it favor some kinds of students over others? For example, don't children with good memories have the advantage in exam-based systems? How could creativity, reasoning ability, artistic inclination, or athleticism be shown in exams?
Perhaps these are mere technical problems. Even more important however, is that, in this model in which one exam decided a person's entire life, the instinct for choice was lost. The prerequisite of choice is thinking, and in an environment where we accepted everything as given, we unwittingly abandoned our ability to think!
Careful thought in every choice in life, and thereafter taking responsibility for our choices, is the least we can ask of ourselves. In setting aside the shackles of the exam system, inevitably we will lose the convenience and broad fairness of that system. But perhaps we can begin instilling autonomy and the ability to think in this formative period of life.
Perhaps we may not, as a result, get another president from such a disadvantaged background. But perhaps we will have thinkers, artists, writers, and athletes, from all kinds of social backgrounds. Or perhaps we needn't become any particular thing; maybe each individual can find stability and satisfaction in his or her own space, no matter what they are doing and where. Perhaps, like Zhu Xi, the Song dynasty thinker whose life we also examine in this issue, we can just feel the pure joy of learning. Wouldn't that be the best choice of all?
