Research On The Relationship Between Examination And Society

Examination has been considering as a measure tool or means all the time, and was researched and improved from microscopic and technical angles, whereas its societal attribute was ignored. Since technical research can not solve all the problems examination ever faced, especially its contradictions with society, we need to pay attention to its macroscopic institutional research. This dissertation exactly focuses on the relationship between examination and society, with institutional and theoretic angle. Firstly, it demonstrates examination's societal attribute and its promotional function to society by analyzing examination's educational, cultural, political and economic function; secondly, it takes Imperial Examination(Keju) as one example, and demonstrates its close relationship to Chinese ancient society by researching Keju's influence on social mobility under a quantitative method, and by analyzing the formation of Keju Society and the historical influence of abolishing Keju on society at Qing dynasty; thirdly, it takes College Entrance Examination(Gaokao) as another example, and demonstrates its close relationship to modern China by reviewing Gaokao's developmental history, analyzing its reform puzzledom and the reason why it became the focus of societal contradictions; fourthly, discusses the social reason of examination's long-standing situation and the value criterion of Examination Society. Besides, this dissertation also answers the question about the need or no need of examination which exists in the development process of examination, thus endows this dissertation some contribution to examination's practical development.The main innovation of this dissertation consists in its conjunct method of macroscopy and microscopy. On one hand, it analyzes examination's social function and attribute and the relationship among examination, fairness and society, with a macroscopic view. On the other hand, it takes Keju and Gaokao as research examples and analyzes their function, status and influences on their own society with a microscopic view as well. Especially, the quantitative research on Keju's influence on social mobility based on《Qing Dai Zhu Juan Ji Cheng》,is the most important academic contribution and innovation in this dissertation. The analysis on examination's functions and Keju Society, the statistic research on undergraduates'social stratum of Xiamen University, and the analysis about examination fairness arealso valuable and innovative parts of the dissertation.Following are main viewpoints and conclusions of this dissertation: Keju's social status was becoming more and more important in ancient China, which made it to be the social center of gravity, and caused the formation of Keju Society; Keju promoted social mobility with a limited strength; Gaokao has reacted hugely on modern Chinese society since its foundation, plays an important role in social and educational development, thus becomes the focus of social contradiction; it is still necessary to insist on Gaokao, with golden mean as its reform value tropism; pursuing fairness is the main reason why society chooses examination as its means of selecting abilities, it is also the motivation and theme of examination reform, once it becomes the main or even the only way to pursue fairness, then forms Examination Society; only when the relationship between eliminative and discriminative functions of examination is in balanced state, and both of them can develop in situable ways, a benign interaction between examination and society then might come true.