My daughter has just started junior high school. She has to get to school by 7:20am, and since the second week of the semester she's been sitting for tests before her first class. Foreseeably, her school life will become even tougher as the entrance exam to senior high school draws near. As a parent, I can do nothing but encourage her to study hard in order to get into a good senior high school because when she's in a good senior high, she stands a better chance to get into a better university and later to secure a better job.
Other than my parenting job, I also teach at the department of finance at National Taiwan University. My department is one of the most popular in Taiwan so every year it attracts top students from all over the country. Teaching there, I have the opportunity to observe more about competition and exams than average people. I find that most of the students admitted into my department graduate from top senior high schools -- one-third of them come from Taipei First Girls' Senior High School and Taipei Chien Kuo High School, two of the best senior high schools in northern Taiwan.
It seems that top senior high schools provide a direct ticket to top universities. However, I often think that, provided the entrance exam to senior high school is abolished and these top students are scattered in every senior high school, my department would probably still get the same students through the college entrance exam.
Then doesn't it mean that the distress that junior-high school students go through for the senior high school entrance exam isn't really necessary?
Exams have two main functions: to strengthen the learning effect and to screen brilliant talents. Most exams have both functions but with different emphasis. Tests held within schools aim at motivating students to have solid learning; entrance exams aim at distinguishing and setting excellent students apart from the rest.
The exams aimed at selecting the best students usually force them to work harder and longer than they need to in order to defeat other contestants. Just imagine two students competing for one opening at a university which recruits the one with higher scores. If both of them study for the same amount of time, say two hours every day, the brighter student should achieve higher scores and get accepted.
However, provided the less bright student studies one more hour every day so as to catch up, the brighter student probably wouldn't let it go by and also increase his/her study time to three hours every day. Knowing this, the less bright student would spend even more time studying and so follows the brighter student until both of them spend all of their time preparing for the exam.
Then which student would win out in the exam? The answer is the smarter one. So after all the time they put into study, the result is the same as it would be if they studied only two hours every day. But they have invested in a lot more time and effort. This case is similar to the famous case of prisoners' dilemma in game theory. Those involved in a game usually develop strategies to maximize their benefits, yet the outcome is usually inefficient.
One of the basic concepts in economics is that we have only limited resources, so unrestricted investment in any item would result in inefficient allocation of resources. Students have only limited time and energy. If they devote most of their energy to academic competition, they won't have extra time and energy for sports, arts, humanities, sciences or family, let alone for recreation or spiritual cultivation.
Students are not the only ones involved in the game of academic competition. Their teachers and parents have also invested a tremendous amount of time and money in the race for getting their kids into good schools.
In earlier years, elementary students had to take an entrance exam to attend junior high schools and the screening process caused a great deal of distress to them. Since the entrance exam was removed and the practice of nine years of compulsory education was introduced in 1968, students have become happier in elementary schools and enjoyed a more enriched curriculum.
The government is now studying the possibility of 12 years of compulsory education. We should insist that the senior high school entrance exam be removed and students placed at senior high schools closest to where they live. Issues other than this are not as important since academic competition is the greatest drain on resources.
Whether to abolish the college entrance exam is a more complex issue and should be discussed separately. Yet it is still good if we can get rid of the senior high school entrance exam since there is really no need to go through distress twice if once is enough.
Chiu Shean-bii is a professor in the department of finance at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Jennie Shih
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