15.  Exam-oriented or Quality-oriented

At present there exists side by side two contradictory educational systems: the traditional exam-oriented system and the new quality-oriented one, which leads to a heated nationwide discussion as to which is preferable. 

The exam-oriented educational pattern is the inevitable result of the existing exam assessment system.  In order to climb into the ‘ivory tower’ or work for their degrees, students are cramming data and facts only for exams and forget all the information right after the exams.  What’s worse, when students become interested in testing techniques, they gradually lose their freedom and creativity.  As a result, they always bury themselves in multiple choices and never attach importance to practical ability and originality. 

In contrast, the quality-oriented educational pattern stresses the creativity of students and their all-round development.  Students are not expected to memorize information mechanically and passively as computers.  Instead, they are encouraged to do some creative work actively and independently as the programmers of computers.  In this pattern, what students aim at is no longer their academic performances, but their practical abilities. 

No doubt, what the new quality-oriented pattern aims to train and bring up are not merely learners successful in studies, but responsible citizens fit in health, rich in knowledge and competent in their work.  Therefore, it’s high time we reformed our existing exam assessment system and adopted the new one.