If one were to describe how Taiwan's children grow up, it would certainly be difficult not to touch upon the impact of the joint entrance examination. Chiang Hsun, a lecturer in Tunghai University's art department, says that when he talks about experiencing art, he sometimes feels that the young people have a hard time grasping what he means. "What the students seem to always be thinking about is what the correct answer is. They always ask me, 'Teacher, will this be on the test?'"

The joint entrance examination has only been the system in Taiwan for a mere 40 years. In 1954, four academic institutions-National Taiwan University (NTU), Taiwan Provincial Teacher's College, the Provincial Taichung Agricultural Academy, and Tai-nan Technical College-began admitting students through a standardized system. Before this time, all of Taiwan's academic institutions admitted students independently. As it evolved over time, the number of people taking the university joint entrance examination, and the number of programs they could apply for, became greater and greater. Today, 53 colleges and universities all over Taiwan admit new students on the basis of the joint entrance exam, for which more than 100,000 young people sit every year. The history of the high school joint entrance examination is very similar. It first began to take shape during the 1950s and 1960s. In Taipei, for example, standardized admission testing began in 1958. To date, 23 schools take part every year, with around 60,000 youngsters sitting for the exam.

In the last few decades, the structure of the joint entrance examination has been generally very fair. Just like the civil service examination system of ancient times, it is not based upon one's personal background; everyone is given an equal opportunity. This has had a certain benefit for mobility between social classes. Because students need not rush all over the place retaking tests, society has been saved considerable expense as well. Yet it cannot be denied that today an obsession with testing into the next higher level of schools reigns supreme in Taiwan, and this has an absolutely inextricable relationship to the joint entrance examination, which entirely focuses people's attention on the passing of tests.

What exactly is wrong with the joint entrance examination? The "First Consultation Report" issued by the Executive Yuan's Council on Education Reform asserts that the current standardized admissions system "only uses a small number of subjects to evaluate the tested students' abilities. This restricts the evaluation of students to a partial scope of knowledge.... Assigning students to schools through the joint entrance examination lends weight to scholastic status and places aspiration and interest in a secondary position. Choosing one's school (or school department) by its ranking serves to narrow the students' interests and aspirations, creating a vicious circle." The Council on Education Reform believes that these are the two most serious drawbacks of the joint entrance examination. In other words, the exam system, in which "a single test seals one's fate for life," makes today's students "emphasize intellectual studies, to the neglect of ethics, physical education, social skills and art." This causes students to disregard the question of what interests them, and only care about external values, such as the prestige of a school. They have "lost the principle of individual freedom."

The annual joint entrance exam "pilgrimage" every July is the human high way that every student in Taiwan must travel.

Will reform work?

Whether today's testing system is rooted in the ancient culture of the civil service examination would be difficult to determine conclusively. Nevertheless, many people tend to compare the faults of the civil service exams of the past with the problems of today's joint entrance examination system.

History scholar Huang Jen-yu points out that the civil service exam system was invented during the Sui dynasty and institutionalized during the Tang. Early on, it featured such topics as classical literature and law. During the Song dynasty, civil service candidates wrote original essays in which they presented their own opinions, and quotations from the classics were selected as the subject matter. But after the middle of the Ming dynasty, the single focus of examinations were the highly rigid and formalized bagu (or "eight part") essays, which "became increasingly simplified in subject matter and increasingly complex in style." Education scholar Chang Chien-jen observes, "Studying bagu composition was the key to entering officialdom, but it was not beneficial to the well-being of the nation, and it did not encourage a spirit of individual freedom." In Chang's eyes, the pitiable students under the bagu system "were in a predicament similar to the Taiwanese students of today, who kill themselves memorizing English grammar rules and repetitively practicing the solutions to math problems. Nonetheless, this is the key to getting into high school and college. It has no benefit in raising practical English ability, and it doesn't help anyone learn to think. It's only beneficial in wearing away students' wills and destroying students' interest."

Some experts feel that the negative aspects of the joint entrance examination start with test contents and the style of questions. The fact that the examination is the exclusive form of testing only serves to intensify these shortcomings, and further shrinks the scope of students' intellectual pursuits. But up to now the focus of the Ministry of Education's reforms has always been the examination itself.

Minister of Education Wu Ching has commented that our education lays too great a stress on academic studies, and the development of intellectual education is not sufficiently well-rounded. Based on this, he has begun to perform surgery on the standard joint entrance examination system. As soon as he took office, he started several projects: firstly, eliminating examinations for vocational school enrollment; secondly, basing high school enrollment on students' residence; and thirdly, simplifying the questions for the joint university entrance exam. Furthermore, he hopes to establish more universities (one university at every county seat), to expand the acceptance quotas for students at universities, and to increase the quotas in universities for both students accepted through the joint entrance exams and those who are exempt from the examination. He also hopes to promote selecting a major as the most important factor, and selecting a school as secondary. He hopes that aiming at the target from a number of different directions will rectify the deficiencies of today's joint entrance examinations.

Schools at both the college and high school level have a 40-year history of admissions through standardized exams. Surprisingly, the reform measures proposed by the Ministry of Education dare to overhaul this historical system. "What they want to do is nothing other than to abolish the joint entrance exam in order to 'rectify' the present teaching method which is motivated by the need to pass tests," avers one educational reform activist. This is what the Ministry of Education believes to be the source of today's falling quality in education. Nevertheless, if the joint entrance examination is done away with, will all the social problems it was originally supposed to solve be swept away along with it? Or will these problems reappear once the joint entrance exam is gone? Perhaps this is the cause for all the current arguments concerning the examination system.

Chou Li-yu, a member of the Council on Education Reform and principal of Taipei City's Chungshan Middle School, states that the present-day afflictions of education do not lie in the joint entrance examination, but rather in the unequal distribution of curricula, teachers and resources at all levels of education. Because of these problems, which are linked together and mutually reinforcing, there are more problems now with corporal punishment, harsh "cramming" practices, student suicides and so forth than during the era when children had to test into junior high. For this reason, she says, "reforming the joint entrance examination is not the only thing needed to solve the problems in education."

The picture shows a Qing-era shirt covered with densely written crib notes quoting the "Four Great Books" and the "Five Classics." （photo by Cheng Yuan-ching.）

Equal, but unfair?

What are the concrete details of the proposal to eliminate examinations for vocational school enrollment? In Wu Ching's words, "the conditions are already ripe" for exam-free vocational school enrollment. The most important reason is because "the controversy surrounding vocational schools is smaller. They can serve as a laboratory experiment for 'exam-free high schools' [residence-based high school enrollment ]," says Wu.

After the idea of 'exam-free vocational high schools' was proposed, the public response was tumultuous. "It's going in the right direction, but in technical terms, there is still much to be considered," comments one educator. How is it to be done? How is it to be decided who will study at which vocational school? Everyone is full of doubts.

First consider the practical problems of implementation. Originally, the Ministry of Education proposed to implement this project by September of next year. After this date, vocational school enrollment would no longer be determined by test scores, but according to a "school-district system." Students residing within the district would come to apply themselves. The standard for appraisal would be based on students' academic records. Its methodology is based upon today's Voluntary High School Admissions Program, which adopts a five-level grade scoring system. (This program, implemented in an experimental phase in 1990, allows participating junior high students to advance to high school based on written application forms and school grades, rather than performance on the joint entrance exam.)

Those who aim to revolutionize the educational system began to strenuously attack the project as soon as it was revealed. The Educational Reform Committee of the Executive Yuan, which has been consulted by the Ministry of Education, even plans to issue a statement to express their stance of opposition to "using five-level scoring as the basis of entering schools."

"Ever since the Voluntary High School Admissions Program was implemented, the issue of using school grades has been widely attacked," committee member Chou Li-yu says. Is the exam-free vocational school plan ignoring a lesson from past experience, and heading for a similar fiasco?

The crux of the problem lies in the method of using school grades. "The teacher controls the students' teaching and their school placement too," says Ting Chih-jen, director of the Educational Reform Group Institute. In this way, the teacher instructs and at the same time evaluates the students. This increases the considerable pressure to pass judgment that teachers already have. For instance, "originally, the tests aimed at understanding students' learning progress. Now because they are going to be utilized as a way of appraising them, teachers might hold tests one to three times a week," says Chou Li-yu. This may add many unnecessary evaluations and waste teaching resources.

In terms of the basic nature of education, the one who is grading is the teacher; the one who is being graded is the student. "All people have extensive complex relationships with other people, and of course, these relationships will have an effect on a person's future," one education reformer states. Chou Li-yu even believes that the spirit of advancing students based on their grades seriously countervails educational quality.

Chou Li-yu comments that the judgements that teachers give students in school "are educational exercises." That is to say, educators can use tests to diagnose and assess academic progress, or apply them as psychological motivation or remedial study. "Right now, because of the goal of academic advancement, this professional educational exercise has been turned into a tool for 'determining' whether students are qualified to move up to the next academic level," says Chou Li-yu.

Furthermore, every student's "starting point" is different. "You have good parents, who can afford to pay for more supplementary classes, or you may even have stumbled across a teacher who has a better idea of what education is, but I did not," she says. "As far as it affects the students, this kind of 'equality,' is not fair.... Our present-day educational problem is that the fundamental nature of education is being twisted. Now, in order to straighten out the nature of education, we've twisted its nature again," she says in a fervent tone.

During last year's joint entrance examinations, there occurred a case of "electronic cheating." The technology of cheating on the joint entrance examination is advancing with the times. The picture shows a transmitter used for cheating. （Sinorama file photo）

Taipei first to reform exams

Under this strong wave of opposition, the Ministry of Education finally gave in. A revised plan quickly followed, suggesting that perhaps in the third year of middle school, a standardized "general exam" could be added, in order to evaluate students' educational accomplishments.

Nonetheless, as soon as the news of the Ministry of Education's "general exam" was revealed, people again expressed doubts, saying that insofar as they affected the students, "general exams" and joint entrance exams were both in reality just "tests." It seems difficult indeed to shed the shackles of the joint entrance examination system. The Ministry of Education contends that, on the contrary, unlike joint entrance exams, the general exam would not determine school enrollment. General exam grades would serve as "data for reference." Their actual purpose would be to "serve as 'verification' of the grades that teachers give within each school, and as a reference for reducing discrepancies of achievement among all the schools," says Ministry of Education political vice minister Kirby Yang. What the Ministry of Education genuinely hopes is that such "multiple evaluations" as school grades and general exams can replace the "universal testing method" of the joint entrance examination.

The various reforms that have been proposed perhaps differ in many ways, but the direction they are heading is the same. The attempt to rectify the maladies brought about by the joint entrance examination unexpectedly caused everyone to anxiously fix their attention on "fairness." The Ministry of Education is advancing step by step, hoping that improvements in the design and methodology of the system will alleviate the public's doubts, but the results do not genuinely live up to people's wishes.

In fact, whether or not Wu Ching had stood out in favor of reform, Taipei City has already taken the lead. Not only has it advanced a proposal, measures related to replacing the joint entrance examination have already been set into motion, at a decidedly faster pace than the Ministry of Education's examination-free vocational school program.

In October of this year, the Taipei City Education Bureau released results of a preliminary investigation for the "High School Selection-by-Recommendation Plan." Furthermore, they are embarking upon the program full speed ahead, planning for every middle school to start receiving recommendations in March of next year. The list of names will account for as much as ten to twenty percent of every school's new students. (At Taipei First Girls' High School, for example, 1000 new students are accepted every year; between 100 and 200 students will in the future be accepted by virtue of recommendation.) Put another way, next year, a large proportion of the new students in Taipei City's public high schools will have gotten there by being recommended, and not by being "filtered out" through standardized testing.

Some people believe that the emphasis in Confucian culture on education is one of the causes of the competitive struggle to advance academically, and lack of resources and intense competition have in turn strengthened the obsession with academic advancement.

True to what education is really all about

The Taipei City Education Bureau is also currently researching other ways to recommend students for enrollment based on their "qualifications," including substantive achievements such as having grades above a certain level over the course of five semesters, participating in group competitions or serving as a class leader, or by being recommended by the teacher. Chienkuo High School, generally recognized as a "star school," has already determined that its outstanding selected students will not be judged exclusively by the standard of academic grades. Particular emphasis will also be placed on performance in activity groups, in order to "lend balance" to their current student population, whose on-campus activities lean heavily in favor of scholastic pursuits.

The Taipei City Education Bureau has vigorously promoted the "Selection-by-Recommendation Plan," inviting parents and students from all over to attend its fourth public meeting. The Taipei City Education Bureau passed out more than 10,000 questionnaires in September, and nearly 80 percent of respondents praised the implementation of this policy. Nevertheless, the voices raised in opposition were not few either.

Yen Mei-chuan, chairwoman of the Union of Housewives' education committee and also the mother of a junior-high student, remarks that it will be difficult to be objective when applying the selection plan proposed by the Taipei Education Bureau. In many group competitions, such as science fairs, "everyone knows that many of the entries are actually made by the teachers," she says. If the objects representing the students' achievements become a precondition for selection, then it will be hard to guarantee that even such things as teachers' recommendation letters have not been distorted by the pressure of personal relationships. It is not very fair to children whose social standing is low or who are less able to cultivate good relations with teachers. "This is foisting the values of adult society on immature students at too early a stage. It will increase peer pressure among children." Yen Mei-chuan even believes that "enacting the Selection-by-Recommendation Plan will in the future greatly increase the hardship for parents teaching their kids."

People from various fields who oppose selection by recommendation often use the present-day flaws in implementing the Voluntary Admissions Program as an example. Yen Mei-chuan states that regardless of whether the Voluntary Admissions Program is fair, this plan, which originally aimed to eliminate the excesses of the joint entrance examination, has failed to achieve the admirable goal anticipated by educational agencies-strengthening the quality of junior high school education.

"In some junior high schools," says Yen Mei-chuan, "corporal punishment is even more frequent in Voluntary Admissions Program classes, and although they don't advance into high school through standardized tests, the pressure they receive from tests has increased. The teachers become ever more harsh. If you ask the teachers why they act this way, their response will be, so that after the students get into high school, they won't be unable to compete with their fellow schoolmates who have worked their way up through the joint entrance examinations." Because of this, she believes that such reforms as the Voluntary Admissions Program, exam-free vocational school entrance, and selection by recommendation are merely changes to the system at the surface level which cannot completely rectify the obsession with higher school enrollment. The crucial point is still the attitude of teachers and parents. "It's important whether or not a person remains true to what education is really all about."

NTU mathematics professor Huang Wu-hsiung, a long-time advocate of education reform, once pointed out that one very important reason the many educational reform projects are not readily accepted is that people have different values and experiences. The designs of various educational reform systems and the responses to them represent "a partial reality, but definitely not the whole picture." For example, those who are opposed to exam-free vocational school entrance, high school selection by recommendation, or the Voluntary Admissions Program which has been running for nearly five years, enumerate their evidence and reasons out of their own experience, but the design and implementation of this public policy has a foundation in necessity. Just as the old proverb goes, "a tree can grow in ten years, but it takes a hundred years to grow a person." The policies' effects may very well only be discerned with time.

Although there are still many debates about every reform plan, reforming the joint entrance examination system seems to be the direction which will inevitably be taken. Some education reformers, citing the experiences of other countries, suggest that if using school grades as the basis for academic advancement is difficult in Taiwan because of differences in "national spirit," then perhaps Taiwan could create a structure for evaluating academic prowess similar to the Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) in the United States. Any "general examination" or reference data for evaluating students would be processed by a single organization. But whether this idea is a viable solution "depends on the level of trust it wins in society," says Tsao Liang-chi, deputy director of the University Enrollment Testing Center, an agency commissioned by the Ministry of Education to research the university joint entrance examination system. In the end, the ultimate motivation for these reforms seems to be the same as the original reason for the joint entrance examination system: fairness. After going in circles at length, could it be that we've returned to the starting point?

Do the school principal and the students stand on an equal footing? In former times, it would be hard to imagine. Raising every child up tall is one of the ideals of education reform.

Paving the vocational-education highway

What "exam-free vocational high school enrollment" is intended to accomplish is, firstly, to do away with the joint entrance exam-to vanquish what Wu Ching called "the big monster"-and secondly to make junior-high students "neighborhood oriented," and not fixated with school rankings and the minimum exam scores needed to get into prestigious schools. Yet an even deeper doubt arising from teachers and students alike is, with the current inequality in distribution of resources among the various vocational high schools, and even the disparity in resources between vocational high schools and general high schools, can exam-free vocational high school enrollment really cure the obsession to test upward?

In a conference for high-school principals in September of this year, many principals pointed out that there are currently altogether 166 public vocational high schools all over Taiwan, and their equipment, their teaching resources and the needs of the students are all different. How can this inequality be eradicated? In addition, the disparity between the tuition of public and private vocational high schools is almost four-fold. The burden of tuition is certainly unfair. Who would be willingly placed in a private school? Who would decide who goes to a private school?

This dilemma points toward the actual root of the obsession with academic advancement. The reason students want to avoid vocational schools is not because they don't want to take the joint entrance examination, but because the distribution of resources between high schools and vocational high schools has long been unfair. That is why everybody wants to squeeze into high school. The deep-rooted traditional Chinese emphasis on studying hard and the neglect of vocational education in the social system have led people to place an overwhelming value upon getting a diploma. (Regardless of one's actual capabilities, the starting salary of a vocational-school graduate is lower than a college graduate.) In addition, the channels for further vocational study are often blocked. These are all major reasons why few are willing to attend vocational schools.

The Ministry of Education's Kirby Yang admits that those problems need to be solved. "The whole education system is structured like a superhighway and a provincial highway. The superhighway is the line from high school to university. It's wide and big. It receives the most attention from the government. Therefore, when there are some flaws in the road's condition, it will be smoothed over right away. Everybody has an easy time traveling this road, so many people try to get on it. Vocational High School is the provincial road. The road is narrow, but it has a lot of cars, and there are often traffic lights and obstructions. Traffic is often jammed; the burden is heavy," says Yang. He thinks that if the road of vocational high school can be turned into another superhighway, many people will be willing to take it. Recently, the Ministry of Education suggested "allowing those with vocational school diplomas to compete in all levels of civil service examinations, and modifying the system to recognize practical credentials like vocational school attendance." This is one method of smoothing the vocational education highway.

English-language study with a small-class structure, and a foreign teacher specially invited to instruct--this is one Taipei City junior-high English class.

Controlling quality with quantity?

The exam-free vocational high school plan is part of preparations for the academic-district system which may be implemented in the future, but it is still largely an empty mirage. Ting Ya-wen, principal of Chung Cheng High School, observes, "Conditions are insufficient to implement it right away," because resources are unequally distributed among the high schools. Unless after many years the standard of every high school is equalized, it will be hard to assure that everybody will not be eager to move their household registration to the academic district of star high schools, repeating the yet-to-be-solved problem of "star middle schools."

Besides the exam-free vocational high school and the high school school-district system, Minister of Education Wu Ching has also put forward an approach to alleviate the acute competition on the university joint entrance examination. First of all, the Ministry of Education has allowed for a stand-by list, so that extra students can fill in seats that turn up vacant. This measure will allow for an additional 6000 to 7000 students to get into university. The Ministry of Education's next step is to enlarge the ratio of selections-by-recommendation which it first suggested three years ago, as well as the quotas for achievement-based exam exemptions. According to the Ministry of Education's estimates, the number of selections-by-recommendation will reach more than 6400 people in the 1997 school year, breaking the barrier of ten percent. In the future, it will gradually increase to more than 30%.

Secondly, Wu Ching also suggested expanding the number of universities, promising to "put a university in every county seat," in the hope that all the candidates who have an aspiration and are capable will be able to go to school. This is actually very similar to what private-sector education reform activists have long been calling for: increasing the number of high schools and universities. Ting Chih-jen explains that "increasing the quantity will solve the problem of competition arising from scarce resources." These ideas are both based on the same thinking pattern-that if an equilibrium in supply and demand can be reached between the people who aspire to study and the capacity of universities to take them, then the joint entrance examination will be just a formality, and the social ill of students fixating on tests because of acute competition will probably wither away.

In the blueprint drawn up by the Ministry of Education, because vocational high schools will be exam-free, students below 18 years of age will experience the opportunity to make an independent choice. Whether they want to go to high school and then to university, or to go the way of vocational education, their direction will be determined in advance, so the number of candidates sitting for the university joint entrance examination will probably be smaller than it is today.

Currently, the number of entrants to tertiary education is equivalent to 18% of 18-year-olds in Taiwan. "Compared to 50% in the United States, 33% in Germany, and even 34% in South Korea, Taiwan lags far behind," Ting Chih-jen remarks. "How can this be enough for the Chinese, this 'people who love to study,' who care so much about struggling to get ahead?" he asks. The most urgent task currently ahead for the Ministry of Education is to make room in their manpower plan for the people who want to pursue higher education, "at least raising the proportion to 6%." Ting says that this is the solution to the problem of exam competition.

The reverence for scholars in Chinese culture has always been the great enemy of technical and vocational education. How to increase the "spirit of practical accomplishment" so that young apprentices will develop into masters, is the challenge of vocational education.

Success or failure depends on fairness

Even if the scope of college education is expanded so that everyone who wants to attend college may do so, some people feel that higher education personnel planning should be made in accordance with national economic development. One of the more extreme examples often cited is that of the nearby Philippines, where university education is very common. Nevertheless, even the Filipina maids who come to work in Taiwan have university diplomas, thus wasting the talented manpower of that nation. How should the quality of human labor be synchronized with economic development?

According to Kirby Yang, the Philippines' problem has to do with their historical background in terms of politics and economics. Large-scale economic development has just been initiated in recent years, and the country has yet to be transformed into an industrialized society. Therefore, their industry has not caught up with the speed of their manpower development. Right now, Taiwan is standing at a point of transition. "We hope that the various types of manpower development mapped out by current educational reforms will meet the demands of Taiwan in the 21st Century," he says.

The traditional civil service examination system lasted for a thousand years, from the Sui dynasty to the Qing. In 1905, the Empress Dowager made an imperial decree abolishing it. The reason was best stated by the imperial official Zhang Zhidong during the Tongzhi reign (1862-1875): "As long as the examination system remains, schools will be unable to flourish. Students will never have solid learning, and the nation will never have substantive personnel."

Just as at the end of the Qing dynasty, with its debate over the imperial examination system, Taiwan in the 1990s is also standing at the threshold of abolishing the joint entrance examination, which it has used for the past 40 years. The debate is similarly heated and chaoti

Can reforming the joint entrance examination system survive the doubts people have about fairness under a new system? In Chinese society, which stresses good human relations, this is the great challenge that education reform faces.