Western influences on Chinese educational testing

Abstract

China has one of the oldest educational testing systems in the world, yet its modern form was influenced by various western educational modes borrowed during the twentieth century. This essay reviews the history of the Chinese traditional educational testing system: its origin, features, and its past impact on Chinese people's lives as well as on modern education. It then examines the western influence on the Chinese educational testing system in the twentieth century, focusing on two historical periods, from 1905 to 1949 and post‐1980, when western influences were most vigorous. It concludes with a discussion of the characteristics of Chinese assimilation to western educational models and the impact of such assimilation on Chinese people's lives.

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank the two editors of this volume, Professors Julian Elliott and Elena Grigorenko, for their patience and helpful comments on earlier drafts of this project. Special thanks are due to Professor Julian Elliott for his invaluable editorial comments on the final draft of this article.

Notes

1. It is taken from Zhang Zhidong's (1837–1909) Quan xue pian (Exhortation to learning). His famous statement ‘Chinese learning for the fundamental principles and western learning for practical application’ is widely used to illustrate the reformers' half‐hearted measures for reforming China.

2. Lu Zhiwei (also spelled as CW Luh, 1894–1970), one of the founders of psychology in China. He studied psychology at the University of Chicago in the mid‐1910s and received a Ph.D. in psychology there in 1920. He then taught at Nanjing Teachers College, Southeastern University, and Yenching University until 1952, when he became a research professor in the Institute of Linguistics, the Chinese Academy of Social Science.

3. The early Republic was established in Beijing in 1912 after the fall of Qing but soon fell into an era of repeated wars among numerous warlords and fragmented by foreign powers. The Nationalists, led by Guomindang, unified the country again in 1928 and took Nanjing as its national capital. Later the Nationalists were forced to move to the interior of China during the Anti‐Japanese war and ultimately they withdrew to Taiwan in 1949 after the three‐year civil war.

4. The Nationalist government withdrew to Taiwan, resulting in two entirely different Chinese societies, separated by the Taiwan Straits for over a half century, with different political ideologies and two different educational systems.