New Shun 1730

The staff's words could no longer be understood.

Reform, change, change, reform must have a purpose.

So, what is the purpose of making a fuss about issues such as student membership and imperial examinations?

If we say, the purpose is to select real, talented, practical, so-called eclectic talents.

Then, when it comes to county schools, it is meaningless to carry out separate fasting education.

The average age of becoming a student is at least 17 or 18 years old, or even 20 years old. At this age, are you starting to learn those already severely differentiated and specialized subjects from scratch? What can be learned?

Therefore, reforms must not be carried out for the purpose of educating more comprehensive talents. Because that means changing the national imperial examination system and changing all private education into school education.

Whoever dares to change like this will die.

And there is no money to change it like this. Now the county government schools only accept students, and the education before the students who pass the exams is either from private schools, or from ethnic studies, or from teachers hired by their own families, or from A very small part of home education comes from volunteer education.

If we want to change it to a comprehensive school education, if nothing else, where will the money come from? If we build less, then who can and who cannot enroll?

This is different from the practical voluntary schools run by Liu Yu. In the voluntary schools there, it was made very clear from the first day of enrollment: you are all marginalized people and you cannot be an official or pass the imperial examination.

And if we adopt a pre-exam education model that starts from primary school and focuses on Confucian classics, students will have to take the imperial examination and become officials.

Besides, there is no shortage of talents in Dashun at this time for such humble studies as flood control, engineering, architecture, civil engineering, ordnance, agriculture, metallurgy, navigation, and surveying.

Since reform must not be aimed at educating more comprehensive talents, then there is no need to consider such things as separate education.

Then, the remaining purposes are nothing more than two.

One is to strengthen the centralization of power, weaken the control power of hundreds of thousands of privileged students at the grassroots level, and completely solve the problems of political gangsterism and local influence among students that began in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.

One is to pretend that reforms have been carried out, so that the emperor thinks that great efforts have been made and great achievements have been made, but in fact nothing has changed.

If it is to pretend that some reforms have been carried out, and not for the purpose of better selecting talents, then in fact, it is okay to engage in this kind of separate education from official schools.

Just a formality. At the age of twenty or fifty, if you pass the student examination, you are forced to learn something else every month.

It seems ironic to think so.

Lin Min sighed and said, "I have seen the praises of our dynasty from Western countries compiled by people sent by Duke Xingguo."

"There is a priest named Trigg, who said: The imperial examination system is the most perfect system in the world. The imperial examinations select the most perfect and all-round talents. It is necessary to examine whether the candidates' will is weak and whether they are correct. If the punishment is too keen and severe, we must examine whether they are too tolerant but not powerless, whether they are careless in handling official affairs, whether they extort money from the people, and whether they are geniuses or mediocre people in governance..."

"The great French scholar Voltaire also said: If there is a country in the world where the people's right to life, reputation, and private property are protected by law, then this can only be the Chinese Empire... If the people of any province If an official is not praised by the people when he leaves office, he will definitely be severely punished. The laws of the Chinese Empire are the only laws that value morality, private property, honor and the people's right to life. The system for selecting officials is closely related.”

"However, Mr. Tinglin lamented the shortcomings of selecting talents and lamented that mature people spend their useful years in the field; while young people who have achieved success easily regard the affairs of the world and the country and think that the reason for life is Those who seek fame are nothing more than this. Therefore, if the talents of the world are ruined, and the soldiers will not become soldiers, the officers will not become officers, the soldiers will not become soldiers, and the generals will not become generals, then... the enemy will defeat them."

"The prosperity of the world's culture is in Jiangnan. Half of the Jiangnan culture is in Jiangsu. I really want to make a difference in the selection of students, so that we can really select talents for the country."

"Since the county's separate fasting method is just a formality, then that's it."

"I just feel that the tens of thousands of students in Jiangsu Province, with the deepening of Xing Guogong's reform in the future, may... may become like the clan of the previous dynasty, becoming a local harm and living waste."

"When they exist, we must find something for them to do, so that it can benefit the place, the country, and the famous religion."

The last words are from the perspective of a Confucian scholar, using a perspective that is difficult to explain clearly, to consider the things involved.

He can be a governor, so does he look down on those students who can't even pass the examination and can't get ahead after spending a lifetime?

I definitely look down on you in my heart. In a hierarchical society, academic qualifications and status are looked down upon, which is very serious.

But from an unclear perspective, looking at the fate of these students in Jiangsu in the future, Lin Min felt that Liu Yu simply wanted to raise these students like pigs.

From another perspective, the tax reform and tax rebate system in southern Jiangsu are actually attempts to turn students into dogs of the imperial court.

Under the previous exemption system and privileges, when conflicts arose between the imperial court and these gentry and students, the only solution was to "remove their official titles."

There is no buffer between the two.

Who among the local students actually lived on the little money given by the imperial school? They lived on the land rents such as fraudulent rents under the preferential system, legal tax avoidance and evasion of military service, etc.

And the most disgusting thing about Liu Yu's reform in southern Jiangsu for the students was the tax refund system.

Not to mention that many interests of the students and gentry were severely suppressed, and finally achieved the biggest demand of the people in the Jiangnan region at the end of the previous dynasty - equal land tax, not equal land, but equal land tax.

Just talking about the tax refund system after the tax revenue came up, it actually created a huge buffer space between the court and the students.

If you are obedient, you will be given dog food.

If you are not obedient, you will not be given.

It is no longer like before, either listening to the students' noise or being ruthless to abolish the reputation. Now there is an additional middle option of "not giving money".

The money for nearly four new battleships a year was returned to the gentry and students. It seems a lot, but it is not much. In the first year of Longqing, in Songjiang, Jiangsu, and Zhenjiang alone, the amount of land that was occupied by the government and the amount of land that was illegally occupied by the government was more than 5 million mu. If we add the expenses of official schools, stipends, and tuition fees, the expenditure of one million mu really made the court a lot of money.

And what can these students do?

In fact, they can't do anything. Liu Yu is really raising pigs, and it's even more excessive than before.

In the past, students had to find their own food, no one cared, and the emperor was far away. They had to rely on their own abilities to make money with privileges and exemptions.

Now, Liu Yu has put a trough in front of them.

Literacy rate?

It doesn't depend on them, but on those poor scholars who can't pass the imperial examinations, plus the new students, who provide education in the elementary school, because these people can accept the minimum wage.

Disaster relief?

It doesn't depend on them either, but on the increasingly perfect grassroots civil service system.

Grassroots management?

Still not relying on them, relying on the Qingmiao loan after the tax was equalized, and the charity schools that penetrated into the rural areas in the wealthy southern Jiangsu region.

Although the school plus the Qingmiao loan bank cannot achieve comprehensive control. However, it was not down to the county before, and it must be much stronger than before.

Of course, Liu Yu did this, openly, or from the perspective of this time, this is to highlight the "difference between gentlemen and villains", "the difference between hard work", "make people envy the imperial examination to become a student", "educate the people to learn more about the famous teachings".

However, in fact, this is to deliberately create social divisions, create social contradictions, and create dissatisfaction among marginal and emerging classes.

However, it is definitely not visible at this time, because the rapidly developing economy has covered up these contradictions. But some seeds of hatred and injustice have been slowly planted.

Lin Min certainly would not think that Liu Yu was deliberately creating contradictions. On the contrary, giving preferential treatment to students and serious scholars is originally a sign of the orthodoxy of the Celestial Empire. Without preferential treatment and privileges, how many people are willing to learn these things, it's exhausting.

On the one hand, he looked down on his peers who couldn't even pass the imperial examination as a superior; on the other hand, as a senior official of the court, he felt that the local forces were too strong, which seriously affected the court's rule; at the same time, from the perspective of a scholar-official with a little ambition, he felt that the reflections of the great scholars in the late Ming Dynasty were very reasonable, and better talents should be selected; at the same time, he also wanted to please the emperor's needs and show his reform ability.

In this mixed and awkward mentality, Lin Min felt that if he didn't make some noise, he would really become a clown.

What did he change as a reformer who shouted loudly in the court? Including the reforms within the salt administration, is there any similarity with the reform direction he clamored for at the beginning?

However, if he really had no face at all, or was really a pure bureaucrat who flattered his superiors, then it would be easy to say.

Carrying out separate education is just a formality. Although it is useless, it is not just pretending that there are changes. As long as there is no provincial examination, even if other subjects are taught in the county school, it is just forcing a group of students to go through the class hours.

Theoretically, there may be three or five out of a hundred who feel that the door to a new world has been opened. However, the problem is that the knowledge of this new world is really useless even with two more professional groups of people. If this is put at zero, it will be useful; but now it is not zero. In fact, Dashun now has more professional scientific talents than Europe.

Therefore, the reform idea of ​​the county school and the academy's separate education was directly made worthless by Liu Yu's practical learning system.

Seeing that Lin Min was bored and a little depressed, the staff still comforted him: "Master, you should be more open-minded about some things."

"Originally, many reflections and ideas at the end of the previous dynasty are actually not very useful now. It's not just the separate education."