Qinghe in October has already shown the chill of early winter. The willow branches on the shore of the lake danced in the wind, the dead leaves fell on the turquoise lake with the wind, there were still a few small boats in the lake, and there were people fishing by the lake. In Qingjiang Academy, many gentlemen live on the shores of this lake.

In a small building by the lake, a bright-looking old man was playing against a young man in a black garden collar, and a pot of tea was boiling on the stove beside him, but there was no maid to serve him. The two players staring at the board intently, not noticing that the tea had boiled away.

I saw that the young man was holding a sunspot, and after a little hesitation, he finally abandoned the child.

"I lost. Except for the handicap just now, the teacher won two and a half eyes. ”

"Yes, Chengren. You've learned to count. ”

Zhu Zhiyu put down the chess pieces and said with a smile, for this disciple of his, he is probably satisfied, of course, except for one point, he is not good at the way of playing against the door, and this chess has just begun to learn for many years.

I saw that the tea on the side was already boiling. Zhu Zhiyu, who had not seen the scholar, greeted outside.

"Yunlin, come and make tea."

Yun Lin is his scholar, and he doesn't know how to wait on the side today.

"Teacher, let me come."

After speaking, Zhu Mingzhong brought up the tea set that had been prepared.

As a strategic envoy of Jianghuai, he rarely has free time to come here to ask the teacher for advice, and the reason why he came here this time is not only to discuss chess skills with the teacher, but also to discuss other things with him.

Since the last time he decided to take education as a new breakthrough, Zhu Mingzhong finally decided to follow Napoleon's example and promote the development of education through the way promoted by the state.

Napoleon established a strict, top-down, centralized system of education management in France. Schools in all localities set up courses, arrange class hours, organize teaching, and conduct assessments in accordance with government decrees. Schools across the country have achieved higher unification in terms of organizational structure and curriculum, thus laying the foundation of the modern French education system.

However, Napoleon did not attach importance to primary education, and gave the right to open primary schools to the municipalities and churches. He focused his education on secondary and tertiary education. With regard to secondary education, Napoleon first abolished the Central School, which had been established during the Revolution, and established the National Secondary School directly under the Imperial Center and the National High School under the local authorities. Both are public schools, but the difference is that the former is funded by the central government of the empire, and the students are for the purpose of going to university, and the school is responsible for training future administrators, and all students board; The latter was founded by the local government, and the level is not as good as the former, mainly to provide talents for government departments at all levels. In addition, Napoleon encouraged the establishment of private secondary schools, which were on a par with national secondary schools. With regard to higher education, Napoleon paid special attention to engineering and technical education. He led the creation of a large number of colleges and universities, some of which are world-famous.

Perhaps in the eyes of outsiders, Napoleon did not attach importance to primary education, but in 17th-century China, Zhu Mingzhong could feel Napoleon's helplessness. In terms of effectiveness, the return on starting a secondary school is quicker, after all, it only takes three to six years for secondary school graduates to be able to work, compared to more than ten years for primary school students.

And the reason why Zhu Mingzhong chose the middle school as the breakthrough point is very simple: he does not have the ability to provide thousands or tens of thousands of teachers and thousands of primary schools for the people in Jiangbei. In this case, the establishment of a relatively concentrated secondary school has become the best choice.

The task of establishing the first national middle school was entrusted to Qingjiang Academy, which was to try to use the faculty of the academy to establish an excellent middle school, but to Zhu Mingzhong's surprise, his teacher, Zhu Zhiyu, refused the order to establish a middle school by the academy. So Zhu Mingzhong asked him while pouring tea.

"Teacher, I don't understand one thing. Since the teacher has always said that "education is the foundation of the country", why did he refuse to establish a middle school? Isn't it true that teachers have always hoped to be able to educate their children? ”

"As a teacher, he just refused to start a middle school. I didn't say that I didn't run education. Indeed, for the teacher's life, there is no other, only education, for the teacher to get your help, as the head of Qinghe Academy, where you can learn all your life, teach each other, and the academy also has Mengxue, can be enlightened for children, after they become talents, they can get fame, and they can also enter the academy to study, so why do you need to set up a middle school? After all, Chengren must not want to run a middle school that specializes in reading Bagu articles. ”

glanced at Zhu Mingzhong meaningfully, the reason why Zhu Zhiyu refused to run a middle school. The simplest reason is that that middle school is completely different from what he imagined.

"Scholars in middle school are naturally not saints."

Zhu Mingzhong did not hide his idea that the middle school would not teach the knowledge of the saints, which was the most basic principle, and according to his vision, the future middle school should be a mixture of the middle school and the junior college in the later generations.

"Teacher, there are not many people who can get fame, I have reopened the imperial examination in the Ming Dynasty for nearly three hundred years, and there are only more than 100,000 people (1), and there are no less than one million people who take talents, and in today's world, there are more than millions of children in the countryside? And the literate, there are no less than 10 million. ”

In the past, although Zhu Mingzhong focused on practical education, but did not know much about the education of the Ming Dynasty, but after choosing as a breakthrough in the future development of China, Zhu Mingzhong found that the popularity of education in the Ming Dynasty was far beyond his imagination. On the other hand, the Ming Dynasty was the most active era of education in ancient China, and social studies, as a representative, a more distinctive private teaching institution, was vigorously developed in the Ming Dynasty. The Ming Dynasty stipulated the age of admission to social studies: "Folk children under the age of fifteen." That is, children under the age of 15 can participate, and there is no need for an exam at the time of admission, and there is no limit to the number of students enrolled. However, in some areas, compulsory measures are taken against children entering school, such as stipulating that "if a child of a private citizen does not go to school at the age of eight, his father and brother will be punished." That is, it is compulsive.

Moreover, the most important feature of social studies in the Ming Dynasty was the officialization of private learning, that is, the choice of social science teachers was in the hands of the government, and the appointment and dismissal of social teachers should be handled by the government, rather than being elected or invited by the people. The content of social studies is strictly integrated into the orbit of orthodox education, and the government has the power and responsibility to supervise social studies administratively.

It is precisely because of the promotion of sociology in the past two hundred years that most of the people in the Ming Dynasty can be literate, and many people can understand the text and ink, which is also the fundamental reason for the popularity of the Ming Dynasty script - the common people are literate. On the other hand, when it comes to "I Taqing", the Ming Dynasty's competition for beauty has not only become a thing of the past under the literary prison, but even the literacy rate is constantly regressing.

This kind of retrogression can even be fully reflected in the Loyal and Righteous Army, in which those who are about 30 years old are generally literate, and even many of them are coarse in writing and ink, while those who are about 20 years old can only recognize their own names or can recognize some words on the Three Character Classic. The severity of the regression of civilization in the less than 15 years of Manchu enslavement far exceeded Zhu Mingzhong's imagination.

However, now, social studies in Jiangbei, Jiangnan and other places are slowly recovering, after all, local officials, as scholars, they are willing to promote the construction of social studies. It is precisely because of this that Zhu Mingzhong shifted his focus to middle school, after all, in this era, what China lacks is secondary education, not social studies, which is close to primary school, after all, the goal of primary school is basically to make the people literate.

"Compared with the number of people selected in each subject is only a few thousand, and the number of talents selected is only tens of thousands, these people may be proficient in the eight strands of articles and theories, but they cannot meet the needs of the moment, teachers, such as the loyal army, the land division, the official needs to be proficient in arithmetic to determine the distance, manipulate the artillery, in the sea division, also need to observe the astrology, and in the private factory, also need a large number of talents, where do these talents come from?"

Looking at Zhu Zhiyu, Zhu Mingzhong continued.

Therefore, the students were interested in establishing a secondary school to educate talents to supplement the needs of the people, as for the writings of the saints...... Since you have learned almost everything in social studies, you naturally don't need to study anymore. ”

Even courses such as Chinese and Chinese do not need to be opened, Zhu Mingzhong once came into contact with some "children" in the army who had studied social studies for many years, and their attainments in Chinese studies were far higher than those of later high school students, after all, their goal at that time was to gain merit, although most of them still could not pass the lowest level in the imperial examination system - Xiucai.

Compared with the high school students and even college students of later generations, their level of "language knowledge" is much higher than that of later college students, and even undergraduate students of ordinary ancient literature may not be able to compare with them. Since the "language" that these people have learned is enough, there is naturally no need to learn it again in middle school.

"Then Chengren, if that's the case, then what did you learn in middle school?"

Zhu Zhiyu looked at the disciple in front of him with a smile.

"Math, physics, chemistry, geography, physical education, well, and music."

These subjects were formulated by Zhu Mingzhong by drawing on the experience of later generations.

"Of course, Chinese studies is not a non-study, but a relatively lower curriculum, and these courses are the same as the academy, with full-time teachers to teach."

If the biggest difference between Qinghe Academy and other academies is that its teaching methods are borrowed from later universities, and every subject is taught by full-time teachers, which is completely different from the teaching teachers of this era, after all, what a person learns is always very limited, just like Zhu Zhiyu, he may be a practical scholar, but he is not proficient in mathematics, nor does he need to obtain astronomy, chemistry and other knowledge.

"Specialized teachers and professors, each teaching their own strengths, is indeed quite effective, but it is ......"

After pondering for a moment, Zhu Zhiyu asked rhetorically.

"It's just that the students in this middle school are taken from 12 to 15 years old, and they must be from social studies, and all they learn is nothing more than Bagu articles, and their teachers are only good at Bagu articles. After all, in social studies, it is specialized in eight strands. ”

"Specializing in eight shares? What the teacher said really hit the nail on the head. So how do teachers think they can solve this problem? You know, that's what social studies teaches now. ”

Zhu Mingzhong's tone was a little bitter and said.

He wanted to build a secondary school in the short term, and then use it as a basis to promote science, so that they could become the catalyst for China's industrial revolution in the future, but these people were educated in social studies at a young age, which is a typical eight-strand education.

Ancient China was an agrarian society, and the vast majority of the people lived in the villages. Reading is not expensive, and the gentlemen in the village who study social sciences don't need much money a year, because this kind of gentleman himself has not been selected for talent, and he is likely to be a farmer in the village. This kind of half-ploughing and half-studying gentleman doesn't need a tael of silver a year, and the tuition fee is food, which is very flexible. Like Hong Xiuquan, who was a teacher back then, and Mr. Kaimeng, who was Sun Yat-sen, was also from this village, so the cost of literacy was not high. Because the test show is not a strategy, as long as you can write eight strands and poems, so after learning rhyme, you can memorize a large number of eight-strand collections.

What they learn is nothing more than hard reading, that is, memorizing the eight-strand set, as for arithmetic, astronomy and geography, etc., they are not involved. However, Zhu Mingzhong doesn't care about this, and there is no way to change it. He doesn't care if those individuals have a "scientific" mind, he doesn't care if they can become scientists. However, with the right guidance, when they graduate from secondary school, they will become a catalyst in the industrial revolution, and they will become a different group of readers from traditional readers. They will enter various professional schools, and eventually become soldiers, officials, captains, enterprise managers, and enterprise employees, and eventually, they will gradually replace the traditional imperial examination group, and at that time, the imperial examination system that has been selecting talents for thousands of years will naturally come to an end.

"You can't learn it immediately, you can learn it slowly, even the students in the academy are not proficient in mathematics, astronomy, and navigation when they come."

When referring to the students in the academy, Zhu Mingzhong had to admit that the imperial examination education in ancient China may not have been successful, but it did select a group of the best elites in ancient China, and these people were all extremely intelligent people without exception, who could learn Western mathematical knowledge and astronomical knowledge from the Western missionaries in the academy in a very short period of time, even if it was unfamiliar navigation knowledge, they could quickly master it. Even the foreign language that once plagued Zhu Mingzhong, they were extremely easy to learn. Zhu Mingzhong believes that in time, they will surely achieve certain achievements in various aspects, and perhaps a group of scientists will emerge among them.

Looking at Zhu Mingzhong, who had turned around, Zhu Zhiyu asked with a smile.

"Since they can learn, why does Chengren think that teachers in social studies can't learn this?"

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(1) A total of 102399 people will be admitted to the Ariake generation. The figures come from the "Ming Dynasty Number of Lifters and the Average Age of Jinshi Entrance Examination"