Entrance Examinations As a Tool for Socialization and System Maintenance: Comparisons Between the United States, Japan, and France

Examinations have visible and invisible functions in education and society. In particular, entrance examinations for higher education have a great impact on shaping compulsory education, and they reveal the types of abilities and attitudes that each society is attempting to nurture. Moreover, the immutable modes of entrance examinations inevitably reproduce indigenous education, its system, modes of knowledge and pedagogy, although the influence of globalization on education is apparent and educational reforms are continually introduced. Thus, entrance examinations function as a form of system maintenance, even when alien elements are grafted onto education. Since the modes of these examinations are often consistent in both schools and the wider society (e.g., in employment and civil service exams), examinations contribute to the maintenance of much bigger systems, outside schools.

     This paper examines the various functions of examinations by comparing three countries, France, the United States, and Japan. Special attention is paid to the socialization patterns in each country. The Japanese National Center Test for University Admissions was modeled after the American SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test), but what each test examines is quite different in terms of modes of knowledge and students' faculties. Unlike the SAT and the National Center Test, the French Baccalaureat employs essay-type exams. The Baccalaureat is accepted as a rite of passage to becoming “French” through the acquisition of a dialectic for writing and talking that is based on an idea of a shared culture. With this analysis of three types of examinations (contents and systems) and the preparatory education involved, the paper attempts to model different types of socialization and the links between education and society.