Exams and Standardized Tests

Here in China, they place a huge emphasis on exams and standardized tests. Beginning in primary school, students are taught how to pass the state exams. The higher the average scores for the schools, the higher their status and the more benefits they can get. This continues right up to the university level. Students majoring in English are required to pass certain exams before graduation. These exams are usually the TEM (Test for Emglish Majors) 4 and 8. The TEM 4 is given to students in their sophomore year and the TEM 8 is given in their final year. Where I have found the going to be difficult is that the students and the administration don't care if you are teaching your students the skills they will need to communicate in English, so long as the students can score highly on the TEM exams. This is like teaching doctors how to pass the MCAT without teaching them anatomy. Although the government (both local and national) are trying to change this and shift the focus of the officials and the average people away from "teaching for tests," there seems to be a cultural reluctance to change this focus.

Standardized testing is not a recent phenomenon in China. Rather it has its roots in the imperial exam system in which young men would have to score highly on these government tests if they wanted to attain a high ranking job with in the government. The higher the score, the better the job and the more prestige an individual could hope to gain. If a person failed or did poorly on an exam, they lost face and would run the risk of shaming not only themselves, but all their relatives. This is something that many westerners have a hard time coming to terms with as most western cultures view the individual as a separate entity. In other words, we see the successes or failures of an individual as their and theirs alone, not as a reflection of the entire familial line. This cultural dependence on exam results seems to have carried forward through today's TEM and other similar exams. However, there are some problems with this. The first is that students know that no matter how poorly they do in a particular class, so long as they can pass the exams, they are pretty much guaranteed to graduate and find a decent job. It takes away from the authority of the teacher (at least at the university level).

This is not to say that I am completely against standardized exams. On the contrary, I think they serve a purpose but that purpose should be secondary to classroom academics. This would ensure not only that students would learn the necessary skills to succeed in their chosen field, but it would still leave room for standardized exams. Standardized exams should be used as "benchmarks" or tools by which we might judge a particular student's strengths or weaknesses. Once those strengths or weaknesses are known, then the student should be given the opportunity to receive more focused training or tutoring to strengthen weak areas. The standardized test should not be where the buck stops, but rather where it begins.

Anyone else have thoughts on this? I'd love to hear them.