VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 7, SECTION 3
The West Is in the Examination Too, From the SAT to the Pendleton Act
The last two sections covered how the examination runs today. But many still carry an impression: the examination is a Chinese thing, and the West walked another road. This section breaks that impression. The fact is that Westerners today have been inside the examination all their lives, on a scale the ancestors never imagined, only they have not noticed, and do not use the name examination.
Set out the exams a present-day ordinary American faces across a life: the various school tests of elementary school, the standardized tests of middle school, the preparatory tests and college-entrance exams of high school, the essays and interviews of the college application, the graduate-entrance exam, the law-school or medical-school entrance exam, the qualifying exams of graduate school, the professional-license exams, plus the renewals of various professional qualifications. The number of times he sits down in a formal exam room across a life may be somewhere between twenty and thirty. Now set out the exams a Qing-dynasty presented scholar faced across a life: the child test to become a licentiate, the provincial exam to become a recommended man, the metropolitan exam plus the palace exam to become a presented scholar, three levels, a few great exams, generally no more than ten. You find that the number of exams a present-day ordinary Westerner faces may be more than a Qing presented scholar. Not only the number, but the kinds of exam are finer, more specialized, covering every field, the influence of the exam more directly deciding a person's career path and social position, the exam's industry chain larger and more global. The present-day Western world does not lack the examination, it has taken the examination to a scale the ancestors never imagined, only the name changed and the form changed, the skeleton of one line.
The core mechanism of American college admission is the SAT and the ACT. The SAT is run by the College Board and remains one of the most important standards of American college admission, with about two million American high-school students taking the SAT each year, and with the ACT the total near three million, nearly every American young person who wants to enter college facing this standardized exam. Top universities like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and MIT have admission rates between three and five percent, and to get in, the SAT generally must be in the top two or three percent nationally, the fierceness of the competition no less than a Chinese student testing into a top university. A vast industry chain has formed around the SAT, the various prep companies taking in billions a year in total, many American middle-class families spending heavily from a child's middle school to prepare, of one line with the intensive child-rearing phenomenon in China. The running mechanism, the industry scale, and the social influence of the American SAT are almost the mirror-image two faces of the Chinese college-entrance exam. British university admission is mainly through the A-Level exam, students in their last two years of high school taking three or four courses, graded by level, deciding which tier of university they can enter. But Britain's elite universities, Oxford and Cambridge, besides the A-Levels have their own independent entrance exams and interviews, the written test followed by a personal interview with the college's tutors, testing the power of thought and interest in the subject. British law-school and medical-school entrance have their own special exams too. The whole British university and professional entrance system is a complete multi-tier examination.
In speaking of the Western examination, France's national school of administration is a sample especially worth opening out. It was built after the Second World War to train top civil servants for France's reconstruction. Its entrance exam was extremely strict, the content including law, economics, politics, history, culture, and foreign languages, plus a long essay, an oral exam, and discussion, lasting several days, admitting about eighty to a hundred each year, the competition extremely fierce. After graduation the graduates chose their government department by rank, the top few entering the highest bodies and becoming France's most powerful senior civil servants. The figures this school produced are astonishing, four French presidents in succession, many premiers, and thousands of ministers and senior officials came from it. It is the present-day Western examination that came closest to running through to the top, so that through one strict exam a French young person could go from commoner to the summit of power, near the most complete form of the ancestors' examination dream of fourteen hundred years ago. But even it did not truly complete the full examination, for its graduates who would become president still had to pass the presidential election, the test of party, media, and voter enfeoffment, the final rise still a process of enfeoffment, not decided by an exam. It took the examination to the extreme of the Western world and yet stayed within the boundary of the half dream. In recent years this school was declared abolished and replaced by a new one, meaning to make elite education more diverse, and this change stirred wide debate, itself a present-day Western discussion of the boundary of the examination dream.
Germany's educational system is a sample all its own in the Western examination. Students begin to be streamed on finishing elementary school, part entering the academic secondary school to prepare for the Abitur exam toward university, part entering the vocational track. What is distinctive about Germany is that other track, the apprenticeship. Students who do not go to university can, through three or four years of apprentice training, train on the ground in a company while attending a vocational school, and on finishing pass a strict national exam to become a certified skilled worker. The world-class quality of the German auto industry comes in large part from this strict examination of the apprenticeship. Germany's senior skilled workers are not far from university graduates in social standing and income. This is a two-track examination running in parallel, one toward the academic, one toward the technical, both passing through strict exams, both socially acknowledged channels of rising, in some degree breaking through the limit of the traditional Chinese examination that honored study alone, leaving a position of equal dignity for the one who does hands-on work. The American professional-qualification exam system is another complete sample. The law-school entrance exam has about a hundred thousand takers a year, and an American young person who would become a lawyer generally passes an entrance exam, three years of study, and a state bar exam, some seven years in all. The medical road is longer, eight to twelve years from entrance exam to independent practice. The certified public accountant, the chartered financial analyst, the licensed engineer, each professional qualification a strict examination, deciding whether a young person can enter that profession, how far they can go, how much income they can take. These exams together make up the professional examination of present-day American professional society.
In speaking of the Western examination, one piece of history must be made clear: the building of the modern American civil-service exam system directly drew on the Chinese examination. From America's founding to the late nineteenth century, federal civil servants were appointed mainly by political spoils, and at every change of president a great body of civil servants was replaced by the new president's supporters, a practice low in efficiency, heavy in corruption, and low in professionalism. In the mid-nineteenth century European scholars began to attend to the Chinese examination system and take it as a reference for the modern civil-service exam. British scholars described the Chinese examination in detail in their works and clearly argued that Britain should draw on it, and Britain formally built an exam-based civil-service system in the mid-nineteenth century, a change that directly influenced America. Later an American president was assassinated by a disappointed office-seeker, which shook American society and pushed the change forward, and the American Congress passed the Pendleton Act, formally building an exam-based federal civil-service system and ending a century of the political-spoils tradition. The root of the modern American civil-service system is not in a European tradition, it is in the examination the Chinese ancestors invented fourteen hundred years ago. Today the American federal government has about two million civil servants, most coming to their posts through exam, assessment, and interview, and the running spirit of this whole system is at bottom of one line with the Chinese examination.
Look at all the above together, and an image slowly clears. From an American elementary pupil's school tests, to a British high-schooler's A-Levels, to a French university student's school-of-administration entrance exam, to a German apprentice's national exam, to an American lawyer's qualifying exam, every Westerner faces twenty or thirty formal exams across a life, and each one decides by score which tier they can reach. This is the present-day Western examination, no one openly using the word examination, yet the running mechanism at bottom of one line with the ancestors' invention of fourteen hundred years ago, become the underlying infrastructure of how society runs, which no one can wholly get around.
But like China's thirteen centuries of examination, the present-day Western examination has not run through to the highest position either. The president, the prime minister, the highest judge, the legislator, these positions are not tested into, and even the graduates of that French school that took the examination to the extreme, to become president must still pass the election, the final rise still a process of enfeoffment. The ancestors' half dream is still a half dream in the present-day Western world, enfeoffment will not abolish itself, a law consistent across East and West. What this section sets firm is the last layer of Part Two and the close of the whole examination Part: the examination is not a Chinese story, it is the shared underlying floor of all humankind, the examination is both brilliant and bounded, the highest position never passing through the examination, the examination carried on jointly today East and West, and enfeoffment will not abolish itself, a law universal and the same.
By here, Part One covered enfeoffment and where a position comes from, Part Two covered the examination and who fills the position. But have you noticed, we have spoken all along of the matter of one position. A real group has not one position but a whole structure of thousands of positions, and for that structure to coordinate, to pool its strength, to react to the outside world, on what does it rely? On a decision-center. The next Part walks into the third root structure of political institutions, centralized authority.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.