以考試清算學校：1920與1930年代中國的教育破產論與會考實驗

Holding Schools Accountable: The“Bankruptcy of Education”Narrative and Centralized Graduation Examination Experiments in 1920s and 1930s China

自清末推行新學制開始，考試與現代學校兩種教育秩序一直處於競爭狀態。在考試的秩序下，只要通過考試就完成目標，大體上沒有固定修業年限與留校規定；現代學校則相反，學生必須於特定學校登記，循年漸進，直至畢業，轉學與學歷承認受到多重限制。兩者的競爭並沒有隨著1905 年廢除科舉而塵埃落定，直至1920 年代，對於現代學校成效的不滿，逐漸凝聚為一種新的考試論。論者主張由國家或國家式的機關建立獨立於學校的考試制度，檢驗教育效能，對學校究責。他們也認為，校外考試能擺脫學校秩序的束縛，擴充學生的自由：只要能通過考試，學生也可以在正規學校外多途並進，不必負擔沉重的學費，按僵硬的年級晉級。歷經1920 年代各地的政策實驗，考試論最終在1930 年代落實為國民政府會考制度，卻與獨立於學校以及賦予學生自由的宗旨漸行漸遠。所謂外在於學校的畢業考試，在行政資源與空間上都仰賴學校的合作。更要者，無論是國家或其他執行考試的機關，都不願承擔根據考試成績媒合考生出路的責任，因此無法直接以升學就業作為勸誘學生參與考核的回報。要推行校外考試，就只能施以直接武力、配合法律行政手段來強迫學生參與。考試論在現實中的種種扭曲，確定了真正獨立於學校秩序的考試，無法在後科舉時代存在。廢科舉以來一直受到考試秩序挑戰的現代學校秩序，於焉趨於穩定。

Since the introduction of the modern school system in the New Policy Reforms of the early 1900s, two distinctive approaches to education—examination oriented and school oriented—came in competition with one another. In the traditional system oriented to the imperial examination (keju) before 1905, the major goal of education was to pass examinations and earn the respective titles (gongming) that qualified their holders to government offices. Residency at academies or other institutions of education was thus virtually irrelevant. However, in the modern system of schooling, students registered in specific schools and they needed to advance through the year-grade system until graduation. This competition between the two approaches persisted beyond the 1905 abolition of the imperial examination system. By the 1920s, seeing problems in the modern educational system, critics advocated the use of external examinations to hold schools accountable in terms of fficiency. An education system with external examination, its advocates argued, also provided students with alternatives to regular schooling, which was costly in terms of the tuition paid to schools and the time consumed by the year-grade system. After experimental policies were conducted in the 1920s, this vision of external examinations was eventually institutionalized as the Centralized Graduation Examination System (huikao) under the Nanjing Nationalist Government in 1932. The huikao system, however, deviated from the ideal of independent assessment of schools and flexibility for students. The Nationalist Government relied on the cooperation of schools for the administrative and logistic arrangements of the huikao, rendering independent assessment of efficiency of the schools impossible. As well, declining to bear the burden of arranging placements for huikao candidates, the Ministry of Education, along with other examination authorities, lacked the means to incentivize voluntary participation in the external examination. In the end, coercion—either by police forces or legal administrative devices—became necessary the sustain the huikao. As these practical problems dissolved the possibility of a sustainable external examination system thoroughly independent from schools, the institutionalization of huikao in the 1930s ironically reconciled the longstanding competition between orders of examination-oriented and school-oriented education.