Classical education, character, competition, and privilege

I have run across the argument that the Imperial Chinese practice of selecting officials based on tests of Confucian classics was a factor that limited China's ability to innovate and keep up with the West.  It's a tempting argument, and the more I think about it the more I sympathize, but first we have to explore one significant objection to the argument:  Reading Hofstadter makes it clear that the educational systems of all Western powers in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries emphasized classical studies for their elites.  I don't know that reading Homer and Plato is any better or worse for one's character and judgment than reading Confucius.  I'll grant that the Western canon taught to elites seems to have had greater diversity of sources than the Chinese canon, but I don't think that the choice of texts was the limiting factor.  Rather, I think it may be that (ironically) the Western system may have put less pressure on elites.  Let me explain.

Advanced schooling was not terribly commonplace in Western countries prior to the 20th century.  Anybody who got an advanced education was probably from a pretty privileged background.  The people teaching in the high schools, boarding schools, universities, and whatnot might be stressing mastery of the classical liberal arts, but the kids in those schools knew that they had a good shot at a decent future just based on their backgrounds.  For most of them, academic excellence was not necessary; getting by was enough.  That's not to say that they all drank and partied their way through boarding school--many did, but not all.  There were still sports and clubs and other pursuits befitting a young gentleman of the right background.  A person who did a decent job in class and also earned respect as a leader on the sporting field and in his clubs might be recognized as a young gentleman of the right character and be recruited into some fast track in public service or business.  It might not be like today's career fairs, but if he attracted the right notice it would serve his future well.

The key thing is that he was in an environment where he stood out for going above the minimum, because he and the people around him all felt some baseline of security.  Within the context of their society and upbringing, they already had good reason to feel fairly secure.  Those who excelled did so because of their character, not because it was their only shot.

Contrast that with today's kids seeking admission to elite colleges.  I'd be the first to say that anybody who can seriously even contemplate an elite college will probably be OK if "all" that they get is their "safety school."  However, they don't feel that way!  They feel like they need to push farther and farther.  They aren't on two athletic teams AND in orchestra AND in a community service club AND doing a special science club AND getting A's AND taking AP classes in five different fields because they are well-rounded and simply love all of those things.  OK, a few of them are.  However, the vast majority know that there's a game to play, and so they play it.  Some will become deeply humanitarian as a result of all of that service, and be humbled by all of the privilege that they enjoy.  Some will become arrogant and narcissistic because they feel that their giant resumes prove that they are so great.  Most will wind up somewhere in between and just keep pushing on in life.  But the key thing is that people observing them in that moment can't know who will become a humanitarian and who will become a narcissist!  The competition obscures character.  You never know who is passionate and who is just doing what they need to do.

There's a lot to be said for taking people outside of their comfort zones, but there's also a lot to be said for observing people in their comfort zones.  Anybody who has ever taught pre-meds (or been a college student taking freshman chemistry alongside pre-meds...) knows that pre-meds are all the exact same ultra-competitive little shits (sadly).  Anybody who has been to more than one doctor knows that doctors vary widely in personality, approach, and skill.  Before they get into med school they are all the same because they have to be.  Once they get into med school, they know that their worst case is a low-prestige residency in primary care...which will still yield them a comfortable income!  Some will push hard anyway and qualify for the most competitive residencies in the most competitive specialties.  Some will just keep their nose to the grindstone and do a good job and become good doctors but not shine in the most competitive heights.  And some will be slackers who keep malpractice lawyers employed.  But they all know what their baseline is, they have a certain margin of comfort, so now their internal motivation and character matter.  Really, it's not so different from observing people after tenure.  Some make good use of their security and leverage it to greater accomplishment, some just keep on doing decent work, and a few are as lazy as you'd fear.

The 17th to 19th century Western systems of elite education varied in many ways, but they all took the sons of privilege, put them in an environment that combined classical learning with extracurricular pursuits, and told them that they'll all do OK in life but how far beyond that they go will depend on their character, effort, and accomplishment.  Those sons of privilege then proceeded to distinguish themselves to varying degrees, and could be observed for all manner of traits, to be recruited (or not) for various paths.  It was more like medical school or tenure than the Chinese system of ever-more-competitive exams for ever-higher stakes.

The problem with our elites is not that they got good grades and test scores.  The problem is not even that they enjoy privilege and security. Every society has privileged elites--even (and especially) the ones that undertook an ideological project of being "classless."  Rather, the problem is that the political system is too closely aligned with sectors that give their greatest rewards to people who play the game for top colleges and then play the game for top law and MBA programs and then play the game to be recruited by the biggest law firms, banks, and corporations.  I don't care that elite law firms and banks and big corporations exist and have their games.  I care that we have a political class too focused on those elements of the economy, while the middle is hollowed out.

The real solution has nothing to do with universities and everything to do with economic policy.  But if you absolutely insist on trying to at least partially improve the elite class through college admissions we are stuck with a paradox: The elites show their character when they are most comfortable, not when they are most competitive.  However, there's no morally or socially acceptable to pitch protection or comfort for elites as a solution to inequality.  There are far more people who would like to attend Stanford and Harvard and Yale than there are spots at Stanford and Harvard and Yale. The only morally acceptable response is to make the applicants demonstrate (in some way) that they are worthy (by some measure).  That measure can be grades, character, writing samples, extracurricular accomplishments, service, interviews, whatever.  However, as long as there are way more people who want it than there are spots, and as long as there are huge returns to getting one of those spots, there will be intense competition.  Consequently, you will be observing how people compete on grades, or interviews, or service, or whatever, not what they do when they are relaxed.

I have no easy fixes to offer, but my best guess is that you'll  have to just accept a certain amount of entrenched elitism, let their kids relax and let their guard down instead of doing 10 different extracurriculars alongside sports and AP classes, and then use some class-based and/or race-based affirmative action to add some non-elite kids to the mix.  No competitive formula will fix things.  But I'll take some bright young gentlemen (and ladies) who displayed their character from a position of comfort over the socioeconomic elite version of a pre-med.

Final Thoughts on Miyazaki

The strangest thing that jumped out at me in the second half of the book is that young men who passed the imperial exams felt more loyalty to the people who passed them than the people who taught them.  The mindset seems to be that people who passed them recognized their merit* and gave them the ticket to success, whereas their teachers merely performed their duty in their job, as part of a transaction.

On the other hand, the concept of loyalty to the exam system, and identification with it, that is something that I get.  These men felt loyal to the academic system that they came up in, and one result is a back-and-forth political battle between men who gained influence through the exam system and bureaucracy, and men who gained influence by other paths. The winners of the high-stakes exam system would struggle amongst themselves, but unit against external threats. We see similar things today, and one could argue that my defense of sages on stages and skepticism of educational reform is in part a psychological response to perceived attacks on the legitimacy of the academic system that I have succeeded in.  Of course, I have tried to articulate my stance in other terms, and defend it by appeals to more factors than just "Well, it worked for me."  Nonetheless, I acknowledge that a reasonable person might make that inference.

One important thing to note about China's exam system is that it emerged from the efforts of Sui and Tang emperors to fight back against the aristocracy.  They wanted public servants drawn more broadly from the population, with loyalty to the national good rather than their own families, and they wanted the best talents that they could find.  It was a noble idea, and it had some noble features, being nominally open to almost anyone irrespective of birth (with a few narrow exceptions for men whose fathers or grandfathers had been involved in certain disreputable lines of business, e.g. brothels).  Also, they made a genuine and energetic effort to keep the system honest, working hard to fight cheating rather than accept it as something to be expected and forgiven in the sons of privilege, and the public outcries against cheating scandals (centuries before modern electronic media made public outcry easy to arouse) testify to the wider population's perception that the system could be a valid one if conducted fairly.

Of course, the emperors failed utterly in their effort to eradicate elite families from the social and political landscape of China.  There was turnover when the exam system first started, with some new elite families rising and old elites falling.  Nonetheless, the winners were able to pass on advantages to their children, and in time the system became as stratified as any openly aristocratic system.  Perhaps the most important lesson is that you cannot select your way out of inequality.  Other authors that I've critiqued on this blog have argued that you can't teach your way out of inequality, but I would go farther and say that you cannot select your way out of it either.  If you want to advance people from disadvantaged backgrounds you have to explicitly select them and promote them.  You cannot simply pick some other criterion, nominally neutral or perhaps even favorable, and trust that competition will not emerge to reinforce the advantages of having advantages.

I mean, even a Communist revolution failed to eradicate class distinctions in a nominally meritocratic society!  How could we expect better interview questions or admissions essays to accomplish that goal in a capitalist society?  If we want to address disadvantage we should look squarely at disadvantage and explicitly make allowances, not look at education as a proxy for whatever it is that we actually want (or claim to want).

*Yes, say what you will about merit and meritocracy, but that's how they saw it, and I'm trying to describe the mindset.

Thoughts on Miyazaki

I am about a third of the way through China's Examination Hell.  The first thing that jumps out at the modern reader is how familiar some of this is.  Miyazaki was writing in Japan in 1963, but much of chapter 1 could be published unedited in the NYT and people would assume that it is about rich Manhattanites selecting preschools, test prep services, and even prenatal care with the goal of maximizing a kid's odds of acing standardized tests. I just hope that we don't go down the same road to ruin that Imperial China followed. All of this has happened before and will happen again.

Second, the mixture of official solemnity and public spectacle around the exams in China helps us understand how modern Chinese immigrants in the US, most of them descended from merchants and farmers rather than officials, could nonetheless include a substantial number of parents who send their children to test prep services and try to inculcate in their children an academic mindset that their own ancestors probably had not been able to profit from:  Standardized tests were not merely a matter of personal advancement but rather a public occasion that the whole community was encouraged to celebrate. 

Third, while many in the US worry about what standardized tests will do to our elite class, I worry about what a focus on narrow targets will do to education.  On pages 35-36 Miyzaki notes that originally one could enter officialdom via either success on tests or overall performance at university.  However, over time tests became the sole route to officialdom and so universities declined  in prestige and quality.  I believe that this cautionary tale should be read more broadly than just as a tale of testing or even vocational emphasis in universities.  Rather, it is a tale of narrow targets.  When the only purpose of an educational program is to prepare students to hit one narrow target they will aim for that target and neglect all else.  The breadth, depth, and intellectual playfulness of the institution will decline, and how could they not?  I am in the middle of some bureaucratic tasks involving curriculum design, and if we ever start treating narrow, targeted learning objectives as the real purpose of a class we will be in big, big trouble.  Fortunately, that sort of paperwork is ignored once it has been approved.

Finally, this book shows us the timelessness of issues of exam security and test prep industries.  That should give pause to anybody who says "Well, clearly we could fix everything if elite institutions just selected their students by <INSERT METHOD HERE>." As long as the stakes are high, people will game whatever process you put in place.

Prelude to the next book: China's Examination Hell

The next book that I'll blog about is China's Examination Hell by Miyazaki.

Americans tend to act as if the concept of high-stakes standardized testing was invented in the 20th century.  Obviously the most famous and significant high-stakes standardized testing practices in the US are only a little over 100 years old, but if we want a broader view of the phenomenon, we would do well to remember that China has been at this for a very, very long time. Standardized testing has certainly not been the only player in Chinese history, culture, and government, but it has undeniably been significant in shaping the Chinese elite class, and also in shaping the aspirations of parents who seek to lift their children into the elite class.  Moreover, 1300+ years of human experience with a subject is not something that we should just ignore.

Additionally, I see the legacy of China's experience with high-stakes testing literally every time that I run errands.  I live in a neighborhood with a very large concentration of ethnic Chinese families, and there are numerous tutoring and test prep centers in the local strip malls.  The Chinese practice of high-stakes testing led to the rise of a test prep industry long before Kaplan, and elements of that industry have come here with Chinese immigration. If Americans wish to analyze and debate the proper role of standardized test in an educational system, ignoring Chinese experience with these tests (as well as the experience of countries adjacent to China) means ignoring a historical and cultural legacy that continues to influence the experiences of my neighbors and my students.

Before I delve into the book, I should also say something about the stereotypes that often come up when one mentions test prep and East Asians.  I know people who work in the local tutoring industry, and I socialize with families that send their children to tutors.  While the motivation for this forthcoming series of posts is the very real legacy of high-stakes testing in China, it would be a grave mistake to view Asian Americans solely through that lens.  For starters, not all Asian Americans are of Chinese descent, and educational achievement actually varies quite a bit among Asian Americans from different ethnic groups.

Moreover, even within a particular ethnic group, you will find tremendous variation.  Yes, certain academic practices are undeniably more common in Asian American neighborhoods, but that's only one piece of a much bigger story.  Go and socialize in an Asian neighborhood some time. You will find parents that range from near-perfect confirmation of stereotypes to surprisingly (even dismayingly) lackadaisical.  You will find well-balanced parents with high but realistic expectations, and parents with all of the usual pathologies that can plague a family. You will find drug abuse and mental illness and learning disabilities and criminal behavior and child abuse.  You will meet affluent parents and parents who are one paycheck away from defaulting on the mortgage. You will meet surgeons and fast food workers and everything in between.  In short, they're as mixed as any other group of people.

But now that I've given the "Really, they're just people like the rest of us" speech, let me note another facet that sometimes goes unnoticed when white people offer up stereotypes about Asian American parents.  Hiring tutors isn't solely about the cultural legacy of imperial exams, or about pushing kids as far as possible.  Sometimes it's just about making up for deficits.  The white people who have made snide comments about Asians hiring tutors in my presence are all fluent English speakers.  They can help their kids with homework.  They can critique their kids' grammar.  They can introduce their kids to books and other media with English words that are challenging but developmentally appropriate.  While plenty of Asian Americans are either native English speakers or fluent speakers of English as a second language, the parents who patronize tutors around here are usually limited in their English ability.  Hiring a tutor is something that they do to make up for their own deficits, to make sure that their kids get help that kids from other homes could take for granted.  Hiring a tutor can the act of a loving parent who is trying to help a struggling kid.  Of course, it can also be the act of a pushy parent with unrealistic expectations.  Like anything involving parents and children, it's complicated.

OK, with all of that said, let's talk about the book.