"Yes, in a place where the smell of stale is the strongest, how can we cultivate new talents?" , Li Hui couldn't help but sigh lightly when he heard this, but he immediately stopped the trend of going off topic and cut back to the topic, "But then again, a high-level school like this, even if it is done well, it doesn't make much sense." Because these schools, including the original overseas study program for young children in the United States, only a few elites are cultivated, and now China, compared with the upper elite, in fact, there is a shortage of qualified workers, farmers and soldiers, why are the products of Tianjin Machinery Bureau of poor quality, even if I improve the management methods, can not be fundamentally changed, is not because of the lack of qualified skilled workers? The same is true of the army, where the navy has a small number of personnel and can ensure average quality through careful selection and rigorous training, while the problem of the army with a large number of people is too great, but is it really a lot of troops with only tens of thousands of troops using new guns? You must know that any first-class power in the West can easily mobilize a million, or even a million, army as long as it is willing, and if it weren't for the fact that we are too far away from Europe, and the great powers can finally join forces to invest at most 100,000 troops in the eastern battlefield, our China would have been completely reduced to a colony like India."

But it's not going to last forever! Now that Western technology is advancing faster and faster, and the capacity of transportation is increasing, the army they can use to invade China in ten years will never be only 100,000 men. In particular, Russia has now begun to build a railway line across the whole of Siberia, and once completed, they will be fully capable of committing no less than half a million troops in the Far East. Think about it, at that time, China will have no power to fight back, will people still be satisfied with forcing us to sign a few unequal treaties? Ten years, we only have ten years, if China cannot strengthen itself during this period, the disaster of national extinction is imminent! In order to persuade Yan Fu, Li Hui deliberately exaggerated the danger, "However, if China continues to engage in the so-called 'foreign affairs' at its current slow pace, this goal will never be achieved."

Yan Fu, who was worried about the country and the people, was really frightened by the terrible scene described by Li Hui, but he knew that Li Hui had never been a critic, and every time he pointed out a problem, he would often come up with some solutions (although others might not listen), so Yan Fu did not despair, but lowered his voice and asked, "Dongyang, say it, what do you want to do?" ”

"The general principle is to shorten the school period as much as possible and speed up the speed of education, but Chinese is recognized as one of the most difficult languages in the world to master, and it takes a lot of time just to take the first step of literacy. What's more, with the current requirements of domestic education, it is far from enough to know how to read and write Chinese characters, but also to master classical Chinese and calligraphy, and this will take several years. Then modern education still needs to learn mathematics and physics, I am afraid it will take ten years to get rid of illiteracy, this cycle is too long, we must try to simplify it", Li Hui confidently said his plan to Yan Fu, "First of all, we want to invent a phonetic alphabet, to phonetize Chinese characters I know that there was a method of phonetic phonetics in ancient times, but it is not easy to recognize and remember, in fact, it does not save too much time, we need a phonetic method that is easier to master"

"Is this the pronunciation of the official dialect in the Latin alphabet? Wonderful! With only 26 letters (ü was replaced by a v by Li Hui) and 4 tone marks, you can accurately express the pronunciation of all Chinese characters, and if you are smart enough, it is not impossible to learn it in one day. And in this process, it can also strengthen the sensitivity to the Latin alphabet, which is also helpful for learning foreign languages and mathematical knowledge in the future", Yan Fu immediately applauded after reading it, and immediately thought, "If you add a pinyin index to the dictionary, theoretically you only need to master pinyin, and you can learn all the Chinese characters through the dictionary!" ”

After Yan Fu said this idea, Li Hui couldn't help but look more and more impressed with this historical celebrity, it seems that as long as they can leave a big name in history, they really have a few brushes, as long as they can open the shackles of their thinking because of the environment they are in, these characters are fully expected to bloom far more brilliant than in history

"With Hanyu Pinyin, the difficulty of learning Chinese characters can be reduced a lot, especially for self-learning is very beneficial, but even so, Chinese characters are still too complex, and too many strokes also put forward higher requirements for printing, increasing the cost of book printing, so the simplification of Chinese characters is also imperative!" , Li Hui then threw out the big killer of simplified words, but saw that Yan Fu did not respond immediately, but sighed faintly

Sure enough, from the beginning of the compilation of the "Kangxi Dictionary", the Qing court took the right to change the font of Chinese characters to the center, prohibiting individuals from changing it without authorization. Before that, anyone has the right to create their own fonts, the bad ones will be eliminated naturally, and the good ones will be widely spread, so that the Chinese characters continue to be simplified, more and more perfect, and more and more simple, but this process was interrupted in the Qing Dynasty, isn't it because he was born as a barbarian, and he lacks confidence in his heart, so he has to deliberately flaunt the orthodox status in everything? Li Hui couldn't help but sneer after understanding, but he didn't give up his plan because of this, although he couldn't directly tell Yan Fu that he was ready to rebel, but there was still another way to convince him, "Brother Dao, the simplification of Chinese characters is the trend of the times, even the imperial court will have a day of relaxation sooner or later, let's finish this work first, we can always save a little time." And even if the court still doesn't allow it at that time, we can also say that this is a fake word! In any case, the main purpose of making these simplified characters is to facilitate the literacy of workers, peasants, and soldiers, and even if these people write some 'fake characters', the court will not care."

Yan Fu's expression suddenly relaxed after hearing this, and he smiled, "Fake words? Haha, that's a good idea, wait, Dongyang, you said literacy, it turns out that you are this idea, too, adults have at least completely mastered the spoken language, with such a foundation, it should be much faster to learn than children under the age of ten, but it is only the case in some parts of the north where the dialect is not much different from the official dialect, and it is estimated that it will be much more difficult in other areas, especially in the south"