Ambiguous Objectivity: The Standardized Test Movement (1920–1937) and the Remaking of Chinese Examination Discourse

After the abolition of the imperial examination system (keju) in 1905, the introduction of the standardized test was important in construction of a modern sense of trust in examination in China. In the political context of the 1920s and 1930s, the standardized test movement (STM), initiated by education scholars trained in the United States, embodied a peculiar sense of objectivity that was used to justify existing practices of competition regardless of social consequences or methodological flaws. To counter the student activism that flourished after the 1919 May Fourth movement, STM scholars reduced education to a purely technical question about “objective” methods of assessment. To circumvent conflicts with traditionalist testing practices promoted by the Nationalist government, which came into power in 1927, they became less critical of conventional examination methods they had initially condemned as subjective. This ambiguous form of objectivity became an indispensable element in the construction of trust in modern examination after abolition of keju.