My life skills in Daming Liver

Su Ze paused and said:

"The ancient sages gave lectures, and the purpose of education was to educate, to pass on knowledge and teach the truth, and to resolve doubts. What focused on was the personal development of scholars."

"However, since the emergence of the classics, some aristocratic families have used the commentaries of the sages as their family education, monopolizing knowledge and monopolizing official careers, and using the nine-rank official law to isolate backward progress, losing the true meaning of education."

"Although the imperial examinations in the Sui and Tang dynasties corrected this problem, since the imperial examinations, the Tang, Song and Ming Dynasties have all regarded the imperial examination as the way to advance students. Scholars studied literature in order to become officials through the imperial examination. Is this the original intention of the sages when they wrote books and biographies? "

Su Ze added: "The world is like this. The number of scholars in the world is always increasing, and the positions that the government can provide are also limited."

"In the early Ming Dynasty, there were still examples of people from Imperial College being imprisoned and serving as officials. However, during the Jiajing period, it was common for Hao Shou to be unable to read scriptures. It was also normal for people to fail in the imperial examination for decades."

Xu Wei thought of himself. His failure in the imperial examinations many times was the result of this vicious involution of education.

In fact, involution has already occurred in some areas in the southeast. For example, the selection of civil servants in areas such as Southern Zhili has become very difficult. Many educated people even went to those newly occupied areas to take the civil servant exams, which also caused confusion among scholars in those places. dissatisfied.

The admission ratio for this year's Jinshi imperial examination has also changed from one out of 30 people in the first session to one out of nearly 100 people.

The popularization of printing presses has made studying not so difficult, and with it, the competition for knowledge-related positions has become more intense.

And all this happened when the old officials of the Ming Dynasty were no longer employed in the southeast and so many positions had been vacated.

Nowadays, in some academies in South Zhili, there are already special studies on imperial examinations and civil service examinations, and a large number of examination papers are printed every day for surprise training.

Some academies will even advertise to recruit students with the promise of "guaranteing to pass" the civil service exam, then charge high tuition fees and promise to refund the money if they fail the exam.

Then there are special banks that provide loans to poor scholars who cannot afford the high tuition fees. As long as they are admitted to the civil service, they can repay their debts.

All of this happened before the unification, and this kind of thing will definitely become more serious in the future.

Su Ze raised this question, and officials from the Ministry of Rites, including Shen Shixing, began to think about it. They had not thought about this issue from this perspective, but found that it was almost an unsolvable problem.

Education can also be superimposed on Su Ze's previous problem of uneven regional development, which was the North-South Ranking Incident in the early Ming Dynasty. Is it necessary to follow the old path of the Ming Dynasty again?

Shen Shixing felt a headache, saying that the Governor was too ingenious. When the new dynasty established the cauldron, they all rewarded the meritorious officials. Why is it our turn to propose questions to the meritorious officials?

No one has been able to solve these problems for thousands of years. How to solve them now?

After Su Ze finished talking about education, he continued:

"The first two problems have been experienced by all dynasties, and there are precedents to refer to. No matter how bad the situation is, there are lessons from the previous dynasties. But the next problem is a major change that has never been seen in the past, and it is a new situation we have encountered. The problem is one that has never been encountered before.”

"For these difficult problems, we cannot turn to the ancient books of the sages, nor can we gain any experience from history. The standards we set may become the general guidelines for future generations, so we must be cautious."

"The third question is urban and rural areas."

"For thousands of years, we have been a rural country, with most of the people living in the countryside. The countryside is the majority of the country."

"But it's different now."

"This is the household registration file data of the Ministry of Household Affairs. In the Susong Erfu area, the population in the city exceeded the population in the countryside for the first time."

"Everyone should understand what this means."

All the representatives of the Constitutional Convention who were serving in the government were in a daze. Yes, times have changed.

Rural governance and urban governance are completely different things. Social problems in the rural world are also completely different from social problems in cities.

And those officials serving in Nanzhili nodded with concern.

A new world in which the rural population decreases, the urban population exceeds the rural population, and a large number of people enter the city has never been described in Confucian classics before.

There are also some great Confucian scholars who denounced the old-fashioned people and denounced the increasingly open atmosphere in the city. Some people even proposed to deny themselves and return to etiquette, returning to the past life of men farming and women weaving, and returning to the traditional pastoral life.

But anyone with any brain knows that this is the fear of the new era. This kind of retro cannot solve the problem, and the era can no longer go back.

There is no classic book about what life is like in a city dominated by the population, and no sage has ever said how to govern such a world.

But the world is already like this.

The change between urban and rural areas is indeed a major change that has never occurred in ancient times. It contains many problems, and how to deal with it?

Everyone looked at Su Ze, who still shook his head, and then asked the fourth question.

"The fourth question is about the Central Plains and Yi Di."

"Now our territory has exceeded that of the previous Ming Dynasty. We already have tributary countries overseas and introspection to surrender to. This is a country that far exceeds any era, but how do we maintain this country?"

"In other words, our policy is to safeguard the interests of our nation. Should we choose to give priority to local interests, or maintain the current trading system, use force to intervene in enemies that affect our interests, and invest more money in maintaining the entire world trade order? Up?"

Everyone fell silent again.

Su Ze continued: "In fact, this question is also related to the first question. The southeastern coast can naturally benefit from the entire ocean trade, but the central and western regions not only do not benefit, food-producing provinces such as Huguang also It will be affected by the price impact of foreign low-priced grains, and this impact will definitely spread to other industries in the future."

"At that time, when we still need to invest money and force to maintain maritime trade and maintain our hegemony in the world, what kind of voices will those regions that cannot benefit from maritime trade make? What will they say? What kind of demands do you have?”

"Which comes first, overseas or domestic? When local interests cannot be prioritized and overseas interests are only obtained by some citizens, how can we maintain this pattern without retreating into a closed country?"

Everyone looked at each other in confusion again. Su Ze's questions were too sharp, but these questions seemed to be a curse and were destined to happen.

We are in a meeting now and will update the last chapter directly at noon. I am writing and writing!