中国的教育制度已经有了1000多年的历史,承担着教育和人才选择的功能,作者根据其历史分为三个明显的阶段特征:中国古代教育制度、过渡时期和当前现在这个进行阐释。
Chinese education system, covering a history of over 1000 years , has a function of both education and talent choosing; and can be divided into three obvious periods according to its historical features :Ancient Chinese education system ,the transition period and the present one .
Ancient Chinese Education System
Ancient Chinese education system (also called the Imperial Examination System) , built up in the year of 605 in Sui Dynasty and abolished nearly a century ago ,had acted as a main evaluating access to ancient China’s talent choosing during its life span(Haifeng L ,2017).Before 605,when there was no constitutional system built, approaches such as recommendation from the influential and hereditary system were widely used to select the bureaucrats for the government .Obviously ,it meant the later generation ,even with limited talent, could still enjoy official treatment without any contribution. As a result, a large quantity of financial expenses of the governing class did not get deserved payback on the development of social economy and stability; on the contrary, potential corruption and incapability made a messy bureaucracy and a social disorder.
In 605,emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty then ,established the Imperial Examination System which is also called the Ancient Chinese education system today , and brought a halt to such a situation to some degree （Xiong,2017）. According to this system, people participating in this test hold by the Ministry of Education were supposed to write a to show his or her capability on the assigned topic; finally, the ministry of education then picked out a few winners entirely according to their score based on what they had written previously. With a measurable and relatively credible evaluation standard, this kind of system had acted as a major method for the government to recognize the capable and then put them in the important position until September 2nd, 1905, when Qing Dynasty declared its abolishment. During its life span, a variety of efforts were made to make it more scientific and effective, but the fact that it chose the qualified talents through a mere dissertation had never been changed.
Far-reaching as it was, it finally failed to avoid the fate of going all into pieces. Seen from an objective view, it was off to reasonability more or less. A should not have played such a large part in talent choosing; after all, an outstanding talent in writing does not necessarily equal an excellence in administration and severing the civilians and the lord. What is more, the examinees had no freedom choosing their own writing style, even the words or viewpoints they wanted to quote (the constitution put a limitation of the books available and the writing form), let alone their own perspectives. However, these factors did not hold back the step of the masses, since official career gained from this test appeared nearly a peerless approach for ordinary people to get rid of poverty and low-class status and pursue a promising future. As a result, to some extent, this system barely fell to be a motivation of seeking for fame and fortune and picked out such geniuses, parts of whom showed an advantage on machine-made writing field.
However ,the Imperial Examination System, since then ,has made great influence on people’ view of life and view of value :an excellence in getting high scores in the exams and s nearly equal a bright future based on money ,social status ,fame and many other kinds of benefit even it finally walked out of the historical stage .And people’s view about exams (such as the National Entrance Examination nowadays ) with benefit and futuristic fate can be still found in present education system .
Transition Period
Then, the New Culture Movement in 1919 filled the shoes of Ancient Chinese Education System and flagged a brand-new educational concept of “Democracy (about civil rights) and Science” .Also, it performed as a bridge to the present education system.
The present Chinese Education System
As for Present Chinese education system, it is regarded to originate from 1952 , a couple of years behind the foundation of People’s Republic of China in 1949, and has been widely used so far (Harvard University Press, 1968.).Referring to present education system, National Entrance Examination, which stands out as the most attractive mark and the relatively fairest approach ever, is an unavoidable issue. As is known to the public, on June 7th and June 8th every year, millions of senior high school students all over China are supposed to take this test on their academic subjects to compete for the rights of going to universities (Shirk S L, 1979). And usually the higher score the examinee gets, the better university he or she may enter: academic level is almost the whole standard.
During the past several tens of years ,exploration to a more effective and more scientific evaluation system has never ceased its step ,and just like explorations in many other fields, mistakes did happen at times .In 1965,Mao Zedong ,the first chairman of People’s Republic of China ,launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution; consequently ,causing the end of National Entrance Examination which had lasted for 14 years(Shenkar O& Ronen S 1987).The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, aiming at defend the Communist Party from being smirched by the increasing capitalism initially ,went out of control and eventually developed to be a 10-year-long political disaster (Bian Y,et,2017). So devastating was it that education, production and many social normal activities fell into disorder or even an absolute abeyance ,but not the suppress against the capitalist class in their view .Many innocent intelligentsias, including many encyclopedic professors, were unilaterally classified as the capitalists and were sent into prison or persecuted to death as political threat .
Not until the year of 1977 did the universities stopped to enroll new students again .And it is not hard to imagine how harshly the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution had treated to National Entrance Examination, to national talent choosing and cultivating and to Chinese social overall development (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.). Up to now ,National Entrance Examination system has made constant progress during the past 37 years after its back to life ;as a example of which ,in order to cultivate specialists swiftly ,the system of Branch of Art and Science has been widely adopted in Chinese mainland since 1977 (Davey G, et,2017). As volume of data suggests, more reasons and more humanistic care has been taken into consideration to provide a more advanced fairness and justness due to regional education and economy gap .Truly, it offers a way for plenty of poor mountain village students to change their fate through efforts and plays an irreplaceable role in picking out the intelligent and hard-working, thus contributing to national comprehensive development.
Hard as it tries, it is still far from perfection .There is no doubt that it selects people with higher scores ,equaling to higher learning capacity to some extent ,but things become quite different in the university .That hard-working and intelligent students turn to endless computer games and Valentines from school subjects has been widely seen in part of Chinese advanced academies, especially nowadays .As a saying goes, “where there is fire ,there is smoke ” ; deep-seated problem must exist in present education system .
Given a second view, the education system will expose its shortcoming: all in all, it is just a test however much it means to the examinees. As talent choosing approaches are almost under the monopolization of National Entrance Examination, it feels like an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to turn the tide against their inborn poverty and low social status. Even ,it is not exaggerated to say that they almost regard such an exam as everything in their life :capability ,respect and a promising career .For that reason ,both the examinees and their families spare no efforts to work from homework to homework, and from books to books ,to compete for a piece of advantage in this examination .Actually ,lots of middle school students are not so pleased to study and live in such tight nerves, but the high expectations from their parents, their schools and the society make them have no choice but to work hard all day from 6:00 in the morning to even deep night(of course ,exceptions do exist ).That is to say, for some students , the quality of being hard-working is just an outcome of no alternatives. In addition, many parents and teachers tell a well-meaning lie (some of them think this way indeed) that pressure and discomfort will not last a second longer after the accomplishment of this examination and universities will be filled with brand-new comfortable life. Above all, it is not so hard to throw light on students’ drastic fall in universities and their poor conducts in other fields as well, a lack of fundamental morals, for example.
Then some links with the education system emerge if more cases in reality are taken into consideration .In April ,2017, Fudan poisoning case shock the people all over China like the sun rising from the south( LI Y ,et,2017).People could hardly believe that Lin Senhao ,a postgraduate in Fudan University ,one of the best universities in China ,should poison his roommate without too much mercy. It is really beyond imagination that daily incidents could accumulate so much as that hatred, bloody enough to push social elite to the cliff of committing a crime at the cost of precious lives. The whole nation got puzzled and tried to think over the root of this evil .Finally, the mainstream viewpoint from the media and the izens insisted that it was a reflection of Chinese educational flaws, as the education system laid overmuch attention to academic scores and ignore students’ comprehensive development. Truly, compared to the situation a few tens years ago, an increasing number of cases of this kind is ed now and then, such as students’ bad manners on the bus, treating the elderly rudely and so on.
Conclusion
It is never credible to throw light on complicated Chinese educational system with one word or two. But without doubt, it is such a system with the existence of both glitter and tough problems to be settled.
Work cited
Bian Y, Shu X, Logan J R. Communist Party membership and regime dynamics in China[J]. Social Forces, 2017, 79(3): 805-841.
China's great proletarian Cultural Revolution: master narratives and post-Mao counternarratives[M]. Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.
Davey G, De Lian C, Higgins L. The university entrance examination system in China[J]. Journal of further and Higher Education, 2017, 31(4): 385-396.
Haifeng L. A New Probe into the Influence of the Chinese Imperial Examination System [J][J]. Social Sciences In China, 2017, 5: 018.
LI Y, ZHANG Z, SUN P. Case-only Study on the Relationship Between Genetic Polymorphisms in XPD and Risk of Occupational Chronic Benzene Poisoning[J]. Practical Preventive Medicine, 2017, 5: 002.
Shirk S L. Educational reform and political backlash: Recent changes in Chinese educational policy[J]. Comparative Education Review, 1979: 183-217.
Shenkar O, Ronen S. Structure and importance of work goals among managers in the People's Republic of China[J]. Academy of Management Journal, 1987, 30(3): 564-576.
The criminal process in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1963: an introduction[M]. Harvard University Press, 1968.
Xiong, V. C. (2017). Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty: His life, times, and legacy. SUNY Press.
|
