Introduction
The examinational hall has long been an arena for the struggle over who has access to the opportunity to gain knowledges and develop skills that enable financial success and social respect in East Asia.1 Today, the make-or-break examinations – in the form of the Gaokao in China, the Suneung in Korea, and the Center Shiken in Japan administered at the end of secondary schooling — form the backbone of the model of opportunity and distributive justice. Entrance examinations function as narrow bottlenecks that the Chinese, South Korean, and Japanese youth must pass through if they hope to reach high-paying and secure job opportunities. The centrality and function of entrance examinations in both education and in wider society serve as a monument of the meritocratic project, which tells us that those who do well at the end of schooling will deservedly get more opportunities than those who don’t.
Much criticism is directed towards the reality that there is an ‘uneven playing field’ when it comes to schooling: how existing inequalities are imported into the classrooms and often recreate unfair academic and educational outcomes.2 The meritocratic story tells us that we are rewarded from our efforts and not our circumstances – yet evidence shows that youth who have access to more resources and support, not by their own merit but by chance, are better equipped to perform well on entrance examinations and outcompete for the subsequent educational and job opportunities than those with less.3 While government efforts across the three countries unanimously expressed their commitments to ‘level the playing field’ for low-income students, state interventions in providing supplementary aid to disadvantaged students have not been effective in mitigating the reproduction of class inequalities.4 The explosive rise of both formal and informal private tutoring in all three countries in response to equalizing schooling reforms by their governments demonstrates that school reforms have been no match for the pervasive structural inequality that underlies East Asian educational systems.5
The failure of policy reforms should force us to confront the driving cause behind the persistent disparities and to question the very foundation of East Asian education systems: the entrance examination.
The meritocratic metaphor of life as individuals competing on an even playing field is a powerful model that helps map our intuitions of justice, equality, and opportunity onto our deeply unequal and complex society. However, the idea that individuals can equally and fairly compete for opportunities through a universal and standardized test at the end of schooling overlooks the much deeper, structural injustices at play: entrance examinations administered to individuals at a young age fails to account for iterative development of individuals; unfairly exaggerates the developmental advantages that upper-class children are privileged to, and creates a hyper-competitive environment that zones in on a singular pathway towards ‘success’.
Examinations are a False Test of ‘Merit’
In East Asia, entrance examinations mean more than just a quantitative measure of academic performance. The Gaokao in China, the Center Shiken in Japan, and the Suneung in South Korea materially embody the deep-rooted Confucian principles of self-cultivation and personal accountability as well as the ideals of fair and equal opportunity. Across all three countries, there remains a strong belief in meritocratic promotion and personal responsibility as the key logics that determine upward mobility and the distribution of economic rewards, and the exams remain widely regarded as a credible and transparent mechanism for social competition.6
Confucian ideology has imparted the idea that entrance examinations and academic acumen are reflective of one’s moral character, and these beliefs still remain firmly held in East Asia, especially as it finds resonance in with the dominant neoliberal milieu that emphasize individual responsibility rather than societal responsibility for social injustice. In China, the rise of suzhi (‘quality’) discourse has further popularized the idea that test scores are externalized expressions of value – both as human capital and as one’s internal moral character.7 Similar sentiments are shared in South Korea and Japan, where educational credentials are read as signs of one’s “true character” and serve to mediate understandings of social mobility.8
Yet, under an exam-oriented model of opportunity, the problem of ‘starting-gate’ inequality will always threaten the coherence of the meritocratic narrative. Entrance examinations, portrayed as equal opportunity and fair tests of merit, fail to recognize and acknowledge the social nature of human development, and, with it, the structural injustices tied to class inequalities.
The conception of an open and standardized test as a fair and impartial method of identifying merit and allocating opportunities will always be problematic because it runs on the false idea that there is pure merit that is separable from environmental influences.9 There is no ‘innate’ or ‘natural’ talent to be uncovered by a test. The process of human development is social – our skills and ambitions are not pre-determined and consequently lived out. Instead, talents are nurtured: they are rather the result of interactions with our environment. A child’s interactions with her parents, teachers, and peers directly affect her choices, her directions of effort, and thus, her identity. For example, a child privileged to extracurricular instruction and opportunities to develop their skills and hobbies may show more early promise in performance and will receive more opportunities and encouragement to continue developing their talents.10 Likewise, those who fail to conform to perform well quickly at an early age will be restricted in the range of developmental opportunities they can access. A child in a low-income family whose parents do not have the time or resources to provide support may find herself scoring at the bottom of the examination cohort and being placed into lower-performing classes or schools with lesser resources. Unsurprisingly, it is those who are already facing class disadvantages who disproportionately find themselves shunted into fewer and lower-quality opportunities for development.
East Asian education regimes represent a classic case of structural inequality, where those already disadvantaged find themselves further marginalized by the system. Because the education system is organized around entrance examinations as a sorting mechanism for promotion and reward, it qualifies and disqualifies a child’s future developmental opportunities in an unforgiving way: a child’s performance in tests administered at an early age permanently determines the quality of educational institutions and opportunities that are available. This way, early advantages that young children are exposed to are multiplied in effect: the developmental opportunities at higher quality educational institutions further help a child become more qualified to pass the tests leading to the next one. In Japan, children as young as five are competing for seats at top elementary schools as the primary entrance examination begins sorting students into different levels of schooling based on their performance scores.11 China’s streaming system similarly exacerbates early differences in performance, with the government designing the national Zhongkao (High School Entrance Exam) with a strict ‘failure rate’ for that shunts the lowest-performing half of the student population out of academic education and into vocational education and working-class careers.12
Examination-oriented models of opportunity claim to promote one’s efforts and not circumstances, but this is simply illusory. It is impossible for any sort of equal starting gate since our development is inherently tied to our social environments, which will always be diverse and affected by class differences. East Asian discourses and faith in entrance examinations as fair reflections of the inherent quality of individuals problematically falsify our idea of development and obscures the vital role that class plays in determining our aptitudes and potentials. Calling this ideological process “the transcoding of inequalities”, Anagnost (2004) argues that it problematically sanctions “the “transfer of economic value from one body to another.”13 When test scores claim to reflect the inherent work ethic and quality of the individual, it works to naturalize social and political inequalities of all types, with those who are of ‘high quality’ justified as deserving more wealth, power and status than those of “low” quality.14 Real human development is iterative: the traits and capacities we develop are intimately influenced by the way society views us and responds to us.15 Our skills or ‘merit’ is inescapably molded by our environment, and therefore, it is inevitably by class.
Examinations Exacerbate Class Inequalities
The problem of class inequality is not a novel problem. In fact, the selection and distribution of opportunities for upward mobility have been a driving force for the transformations that East Asian education systems have undergone in the past century. East Asia’s efforts to universalize basic education and lower barriers to accessing higher education over the past 70 years have delivered incredible results: China, Japan, and South Korea have seen a rapid expansion and increased participation rate in all levels of education across all household income levels.16 Under this light, entrance examination reforms have undoubtedly transformed opportunities to be distributed beyond the exclusive and insulated circles of elites.
Upon a more critical look, however, the continued commitment from the Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean governments to impose high-stakes entrance examinations and to have a high percentage of career paths depend on a single crucial test have exaggerated class advantages and worsened existing inequalities.
When opportunities are structured in a zero-sum way that incentivizes everyone to strive for the same prize, the immediate effect is that families will be strongly motivated to leverage any available advantage to ensure their children succeed.17 In East Asia’s case, given that scoring highly on an entrance examination success (are perceived to) promise financial security and social while failure entails serious economic and social hardships, the pressure for academic success has become exceptionally intense.
Consequently, families are devoting unprecedentedly large sums of money and resources to private tutoring to help their children get an upper hand in the competition against their peers. In South Korea and Japan, the reality of parents and children fiercely competing with others through a anxiety and fatigue-ridden process to take college entrance examinations has been given its own name of ipsi-jiok and juken jigoku, literally meaning ‘examination hell’.18 Private tutoring in South Korea and Japan has mushroomed into a widespread practice that is not limited solely to households from higher-income groups, but across all income groups.19 China recently saw private tutoring’s explosive growth come to a head with the state’s decision to ban private tutoring, but the inelastic demand for educational advantage has only channelled private tutoring to become underground and further concentrate resources to the hands of the elites.20
The resulting outcome is a vicious cycle where the inequalities for the youth are directly linked to their parents’ financial and human capital, which stands in direct contradiction to the meritocratic ideal that asserts success is to be based on individual merit rather than social background.21 Cho and Stark (2017) identifies the structural inequalities pervasive in South Korea’s educational regime, observing that “the “reliable income” group…was able to establish themselves in prestigious neighborhoods, where elite cram schools also came to cluster,” while “the middle class without the ability to afford the expensive cram schools were forced to hope that their children would themselves be standout pupils and have qualities of their own to allow them admission.”22 Evidence has continued to re-affirm the direct advantage class brings to entrance examination performance, as elites are successfully securing educational advantages.23 This phenomenon has repeated in China and Japan, where shadow education remains immune to policy regulations, demonstrating this pattern of inelastic demand for competitive advantages is a not simply the outcome of poor policy regulations but a fundamental by-product of any educational regime organized around exam-testing.24 The desire for educational inequality is not the opposite to the project of the entrance exam as an ideal of meritocracy – it is one of its conditions.
Examinations Create Hyper-Competitive Societies
As parents invest considerable resources and efforts into guiding their children towards success, defined by high performance in entrance examinations and admission to elite universities, this singular focus on test scores inadvertently channels children’s ambitions and shapes their perception of success as well as the paths they aspire to pursue. Articulating this phenomenon as the fetishization of the number, Woronov identifies how test scores are producing not just hierarchies of academic value, but also social, affective, and even moral value. Test scores not only “represent value in the mathematical sense: how many points are required to enter this school, or that course, or to get this job, this income, this ranking, but it also “produce value in the sense of what is meaningful, worthy.”25
When success becomes heavily tethered to a narrow and singular conception of academic achievement, it creates extreme pressure on youth to homogenously conform to one set of standards. In a structure where only a select minority of students can enter prestigious tertiary institutions, which is perceived to be necessary to access remunerative employment, the emphasis on high test scores as a singular pathway to ‘the good life’ creates a hyper-competitive environment that actively constrains individuals with diverse interests and aptitudes by pressuring them to develop skills for one contest. When only academic performance and accomplishments are deemed worthy and are rewarded, the pressure to conform to this standard can severely limit individuals from flourishing because it leaves so little room for individuality or exploration of alternative paths.26
The harmful outcomes of a society organized around a singular contest are unfolding before our eyes: this relentless pursuit for high test scores has taken a toll on both the health and well-being of East Asian youth. Present-day South Korea perhaps presents the starkest picture of what this society would look like. With access to lucrative job opportunities is nearly exclusive to graduates of an elite trio of the ‘SKY’ universities, intense competition has entrenched society in a dog-eat-dog mentality where their tremendous pressures on families and children to invest in their education and accumulate higher amounts of human capital.27 Homogenous path towards success also results in adverse effects: with approximately 80% of youth entering university, simply obtaining admission to university is no longer sufficient, and the pressure to stand out among peers in a fiercely competitive landscape has only further intensified.28 Not only are South Korean students averaging 14-18 hours of studying a day, but they are also compelled to ferociously add to their credentials, winning internships and other achievements, all in a bid to enhance their resume.29 The stranglehold of this hyper-competitive society is evidenced by South Korea’s status as having the highest OECD postsecondary education rate juxtaposed with alarmingly high youth suicide rates.30
Signs of burnout, fatigue, and cynicism are also manifesting among the youth in China and Japan. The discourse emerging on social media sites used by Chinese college students are filled with viral posts connecting over “the shared reality that many students at these institutions feel like “trash”: anxious, stressed, overworked, trapped in a status race.”31 The popularity of the buzzword ‘involution’ (neijuan), which literally translating to an inward curling and figuratively used to express the sentiment of work without progress, are used in online discourses express the disillusionment of Chinese youth with the meritocratic narrative.32 The inputs of hard work and effort put into studying and preparing for entrance exams are not changing the outputs of bleak job prospects amidst widening inequality.33 In Japan, the term kakusa shakai, which literally translates to ‘society’ and ‘disparity’, gained prominence in the mid-2000s and quickly became ingrained in everyday conversation as people increasingly acknowledged the country’s growing social and economic inequalities.34 This growing public discourse highlights a parallel sentiment among Japanese youth, who are similarly questioning the meritocratic narrative as Japan’s system of lifetime employment continues to erode and become replaced with precarious employment and intense competition under neoliberal governance.35
Towards A New Model of Opportunity
The picture and unfolding reality of a meritocratic society built around a single opportunity scheme that zones in on the outcome of a high-stakes examination is bleak. What should we do about this?
Perhaps we can look towards a model of opportunity pluralism. Opportunity pluralism, according to Fishkin (2014), represents the “objective is to open up a greater plurality of paths that people might pursue…with greater priority given to those whose paths are more limited.”36 Unlike the exam-oriented model, which is grounded on an ideal (and unachievable) state of perfect equality of opportunity and consequently prioritizes uniformity and competition, opportunity pluralism abandons the ideal of perfect equality in favour of thinking in terms of improvement in and constantly directing effort to provide a larger and more diverse range of opportunities.37 Whereas exam-oriented models of opportunity are organized around a single pyramid of merit, opportunity pluralism advocates “to recognize and reward a plurality of different kinds of merit” such that individuals “define new paths for themselves that do not fit into any of the spheres their society has defined.”38
What would an educational structure of opportunity pluralism look like?
Building on the principle that policy solutions require helping people through existing pathways of success as well as creating new paths and diversifying opportunities beyond the traditional academic route, state efforts should be focused on expanding access to competitive colleges and creating conditions for a plurality of pathways to success. Fishkin suggests that states can do this by increasing meaningful employment opportunities that do not require a four-year college degree to enter or to advance into higher-level jobs, especially in entry-level employment.39 To reduce the multiplier effects of bottlenecks, Fishkin advocates for hiring and job promotion should be based on “job-related performance measures or other measures of the relevant skills, rather than on the basis of degree credentials.”40
While these are undoubtedly tall tasks, there is one clear and feasible first step: expanding opportunities by removing high-stakes entrance examinations so as to widen access to quality higher education and the subsequent opportunities and rewards that follow.
Nicole Shi is a sixth-year undergraduate student currently studying Contemporary Asian studies, Political Science, and Philosophy. Her research interests lie at the intersection of equality of opportunity and education. Through her work with Synergy, she hopes to promote discourse on the role of education in realizing social ideals, and a deeper understanding of the structural inequalities and power differentials within the education systems in Asia today.
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- Terri Kim, “Confucianism, Modernities and Knowledge: China, South Korea and Japan” ↩︎
- Hannum et al., “Education in East Asian Societies.” ↩︎
- Ye Liu, “Meritocracy and the Gaokao: A Survey Study of Higher Education Selection and Socio-Economic Participation in East China”; Mark Bray, “Shadow Education in Asia and the Pacific: Features and Implications of Private Supplementary Tutoring”. ↩︎
- Okada, Education Policy and Equal Opportunity in Japan; Zhang and Bray, “Equalising Schooling, Unequalising Private Supplementary Tutoring”; Cho and Stark, “South Korean Youth Across Three Decades.” ↩︎
- Bray, “Shadow Education in Asia and the Pacific.” ↩︎
- Howlett, Meritocracy and Its Discontents: Anxiety and the National College Entrance Exam in China; Kim, “Confucianism, Modernities and Knowledge.” ↩︎
- Kipnis, “Suzhi”; Woronov, “Class Work.” ↩︎
- Lo and Choi, “Forming Capital”; Smith and Colpitts, “Japan’s Pursuit of Meritocracy, Cosmopolitanism, and Global Rankings in Higher Education.” ↩︎
- Sypnowich, “Is Equal Opportunity Enough?” ↩︎
- Fishkin, Bottlenecks: A New Theory of Equal Opportunity. ↩︎
- Nagano, “Japan’s ‘Exam Hell’ Now Reaches into Preschool.” ↩︎
- Woronov, “The High School Entrance Exam and/as Class Sorter: Working Class Youth and the HSEE in Contemporary China.” ↩︎
- Anagnost, “The Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi).” ↩︎
- Kipnis, “Suzhi” ↩︎
- Fishkin, Bottlenecks: A New Theory of Equal Opportunity. ↩︎
- Hannum et al., “Education in East Asian Societies.” ↩︎
- Manzon, “Private Tutoring in Asia: Illuminating the Shadow.” ↩︎
- Kim and Lee, “Private Tutoring and Demand for Education in South Korea.” ↩︎
- Lee, Jwa, and Lim, “The Effects of Private Tutoring and Parenting Behaviors on Children’s Academic Achievement in Korea: Are There Differences between Low-and High-Income Groups?”; Dawson, “Private Tutoring and Mass Schooling in East Asia: Reflections of Inequality in Japan, South Korea, and Cambodia.” ↩︎
- Shi, “Managing the Optics of Educational Equality.” ↩︎
- Cho and Stark, “South Korean Youth Across Three Decades.” ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Dawson, “Private Tutoring and Mass Schooling in East Asia: Reflections of Inequality in Japan, South Korea, and Cambodia.” ↩︎
- Chen and Cheung, “The Hidden Victims of China’s Ban on After-School Tutoring”; Yamato and Zhang, “Changing Schooling, Changing Shadow.” ↩︎
- Woronov, “Class Work.” ↩︎
- Fishkin, Bottlenecks: A New Theory of Equal Opportunity. ↩︎
- Kim and Lee, “Demand for Education and Developmental State”; Cho and Stark, “South Korean Youth Across Three Decades.” ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Lee and Larson, “The Korean ‘Examination Hell’”; Cho and Stark, “South Korean Youth Across Three Decades.” ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Liu, “China’s ‘Involuted’ Generation.” ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Hashimoto, “Transformation of the Class Structure in Contemporary Japan.” ↩︎
- Ellis, “The Public and Political Discourse on Socio-Spatial Inequality in Japan”; Lukacs, “Labor Games.” ↩︎
- Fishkin, Bottlenecks: A New Theory of Equal Opportunity. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎