In the Xuanhu, Yuzhou General Administration Examination Institute, Yang Ji was supervising the selection of the test paper. The examination paper topics were presided over by the examiner selected by the Ministry of Rites. Depending on the examination level, the difficulty of choosing the topics is also different.

In that lifetime, the imperial examinations of the Ming Dynasty were the provincial examinations, the imperial examinations, and the palace examinations. However, before the provincial examinations, there was also a "small examination", that is, the boy examination, which was considered to be the qualification examination before the provincial examinations. Therefore, the imperial examinations of this era were also divided into four levels.

In today's imperial examinations, except for the highest-level palace examinations, the test questions for other third-level examinations are not drafted by the examiner in principle, but are drawn from the question bank, called "Unified Questions", also known as "Unified Examination".

The drawing process of the test questions is like a lottery, that is, "drawing a number".

At present, Yang Ji supervises the topic selection on the spot. The method of drawing numbers for the topic selection is very special, and he uses roulette to draw:

A horizontal turntable with a high middle edge low edge, and the plate is divided into twelve grids, that is, the twelve ground branches (Zi, Chou, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu, Hai), each grid corresponds to one character.

The turntable turns, and then cast an iron bead above the center of the circle. When the iron bead rolls to, record the word "天" in the grid, such as "天".

If you throw three times in a row, you will get three characters, such as "Mao", "Yin", and "You", then the characters you draw four times in the first and second are arranged in sequence to "Si Mao Yin You".

This is the number. Based on this, you can find the corresponding question content and answers in the question bank.

Twelve characters, four times, and the arrangement and combination have 20,000 orders and 736 results (numbers), which do not exceed the number of questions in the corresponding category of the question bank, so there will be no empty numbers.

Therefore, when the exam questions are given, the questions do not need to be drawn up by the examiner. They are all "draw numbers" from the question bank. The entity of the question bank is countless pamphlets piled up, proofread, fixed, and printed by the Ministry of Rites.

The number of questions in the question bank is as vast as the sea. It is classified according to the test level and is sufficient for each exam. The number of questions will increase every year.

Such a question bank is not simple. The Ministry of Rites organizes a large number of scholars to draw questions based on the knowledge points and test points formulated by the "Teaching Outline" and "Exam Outline", and then summarize the questions.

The topic selection is to draw numbers from the question bank. In this way, the examiner will not actually have any substantial impact on the formulation of the question. The difficulty of the same level examination (boy test, provincial examination) in all parts of the world can be consistent.

There will be no situation where the questions raised in a certain place are particularly difficult because the examiner is picky, nor will the questions raised in a certain place be reduced because the examiner is too tolerant.

This design takes great painstaking efforts, and the effect remains to be seen.

Yang Ji thought that as an observer, he had to supervise the question setting and printing of the test papers. The people who shouldered the supervision responsibility also had the censor of the Censorate. The censor present at this moment was a bone instrument, which was considered to be a fate with Xuanhu, Yuzhou.

The ancestors of the Bone Art came from India, so their appearance was different from those of the Central Plains. They were upright and upright, and had a lot of impeachments during the position of the Censor, which made many officials look disgusted.

At this moment, Gu Yi and Yang Ji both stared at the examiner and threw iron beads into the turntable. The numbers drawn were registered by the clerk, and the other two people checked them.

The registered numbers will be sorted by several other officials, and then compared the entries, find the questions and answers in the question bank (booklet), and then handed them to the examiner for verification, and then handed them to the printing station for printing the test papers on the same day.

During the entire process, relevant personnel must be "isolated" from the outside world and must not contact the outside world. There is a dedicated person responsible for daily life and will be subject to supervision.

The printing process of the test paper must also be subject to supervision. The government will send soldiers to surround the printing yard. When the original test paper arrives, all the printing yard employees will be isolated from the outside world.

They have to race against time to type, test printing, errata, type and test printing again, and then confirm the correct version after confirming that the error is correct, and start batch printing, and print the test papers before the exam begins.

At that time, the official army will escort the exam papers to the examination room. Whoever dares to collide with the team will be in trouble.

Yang Ji did not need to follow the entire process, but just "observation", but the censor's bone instrument and the supervisory officials sent by the Ministry of Rites themselves need to "follow the shadows".

Everything is to ensure the fairness and justice of the exam. No one is allowed to collude internally and externally to disclose the test questions in advance.

Such a process seems cumbersome, but because the examination selection has been tried for more than ten years, the Ministry of Rites has institutionalized the entire process based on years of experience and lessons, and each link is clearly divided. For supervisors, looking at the flow chart will make it clear how to effectively supervise.

Yang Ji has memorized the flowchart. At this moment, he saw that the number drawing is going on normally, so he started to think about the test questions.

Exam questions are divided into "subjective questions" and "objective questions".

Subjective questions are to let candidates answer questions themselves to express their understanding of the test questions. The types of test questions include short answer questions, essay questions, etc., and the scores of the essay questions must be judged by the examiner, and human factors are relatively large.

Objective questions are fixed-response test questions with standard answers. This kind of question allows candidates to identify the correct answers from pre-prepared answers. The types of questions include judging questions (rights and non-questions), multiple-choice questions (single choice, multiple choice), etc.

In addition, there are also fill-in-the-blank questions. For example, the fill-in-the-blank questions in the Ming Jing Department are to leave a certain passage of a passage in the scripture and let the candidates fill in it. This actually has a standard answer. The test is whether the candidates are familiar with the passage.

The test paper with objective questions as the main body has sufficient knowledge coverage, and the marking and ratings completely avoid personal factors of the examiner.

How to arrange the ratio of objective questions and subjective questions is related to the role of examiners in the examination. For this reason, the Qingliu people were very arguing. In the end, the imperial court determined the principle that the question bank was given, and objective questions were the subject.

In this way, the examiner is actually not the question setter, but is simply the examiner. He scores the test papers with dull names according to the standard answers. Only when he reaches the discussion questions can he have some room for "freedom to play".

If a candidate corrects all objective questions, even if his or her essay answers do not reach the examiner's eye, it will not significantly affect the overall score.

Such a design makes the examiner unreasonable to become the "teacher" of the candidates on the list. The candidates who can be on the list in this exam (country examination, social examination) cannot be said to be the examiner "knowing talents with keen eyes."

Because only one person is qualified to become a "senior" for candidates, that is, the emperor, and other examiners at all levels are just "employees" who score the answers.

The candidate who passed the palace examination was the disciple of the emperor, not the disciple of a certain examiner.

The test questions for the palace examination are drawn by the emperor. As for whether the emperor chooses the questions drawn by others or whether the emperor decides them himself, that is another matter.

The premise of all this is to have a question bank with a "width" and "depth" enough. This question bank took nearly twenty years to embody the efforts of countless scholars and finally established it.

This work is extremely difficult. First of all, just setting the difficulty of the topic at four levels makes the scholars furious, because different scholars have different judgments on the difficulty of the same problem.

Famous scholars such as Liu Xuan and Liu Zhuo find it easy to see any problem, but they can't set the difficulty of the question according to the standards of these two people.

Since we need to set a standard, there must be a "standard" to set this standard, so we have been struggling for a long time just for the "standard".

Yang Ji heard about the hardships and only sighed that the emperor had prepared for so many years for the imperial examinations to sprout and grow up.

It is precisely because of long-term preparation that the imperial examination system that emerged in the Ming De year had a solid foundation. Of course, the results were effective and the facts could be spoken.
Chapter completed!