I know you're trying to say that testing for Confucianism is not the same as testing for how well you can do a government post, but these weren't worthless tests.
1) Passing old Chinese tests required literacy, something we want bureaucrats to have. This is a big chunk of what liberal arts degrees are about. (Calligraphy, too, was included in the test.)
2) Studying Confucianism meant that you at least had to think and respond about moral and ethical matters. Again, I'd rather have a bureaucrat who has thought about morality and ethics than one who hasn't. And according to Wikipedia,
> The core of Confucianism is humanism, the belief that human beings are teachable, improvable and perfectible through personal and communal endeavour especially including self-cultivation and self-creation.
3) People with liberal arts degrees quite often take posts that are entirely unrelated to their field of study.
Saying that "Confucianists got jobs which they didn't deserve" is just a pathetic jab at Chinese culture.
Very true. My partner is currently a schoolteacher in China, and has to go through regular examinations. However if a teacher does not have a politically powerful background, or fails to bribe the appropriate contacts, the result is guaranteed failure and missed promotion opportunities.
