Sun Yuanqi went north this time to prepare for the Senate election of the Central Society.

The "Central Society" is a strange name, and almost no one knows that such an organization existed in history, mainly because it existed for a very short time. From August 1912, when Yuan Shikai promulgated the "Organic Law of the National Assembly of the Republic of China", which clearly stipulated that the Central Society should elect eight members of the Senate, to January 1914, when Yuan Shikai ordered the dissolution of the National Assembly, the most important task of the Central Society, the election of members of the Senate, became a flash in the pan, and the Central Society was also discontinued, and it only existed for a year and a half. If you count the official formation time, I'm afraid it will be even shorter.

Although the Central Society has been unknown, it has important significance in the inheritance of academic context and political system.

According to the Law of the Central Society signed and promulgated by Yuan Shikai on November 29, 1912, the Central Society is a national academic body, directly subordinate to the Minister of Education, with the purpose of researching scholarship and promoting culture, covering natural sciences and humanities and social sciences. From the perspective of academic positioning, the Central Society should take the regulations of the French Academy, the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, and the Imperial Academy of Japan, and follow the tradition of the Hanlin Academy, the highest academic institution since the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and open the precedent of the Academia Sinica of the Republic of China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The government of the early Republic of China also gave great support to the establishment of the Central Society, and even placed it on an equal footing with the provinces, allocating 8 seats in the Senate, compared to only 10 seats in the provinces, which shows the importance it attaches to the Central Society. Of course, this respect did not originate from the government of the early Republic of China, but was born out of the Senior Administration Yuan in the last years of the Qing Dynasty, because among the 200 seats in the Senior Administrative Yuan, 10 were appointed for master's students and Confucianism. After the Central Society, this tradition has also been maintained, such as the later National Assembly of the Republic of China has the names of educational groups, technician groups, medical groups, social elites, etc., and the National Political Consultative Conference of the party-state also has the fields of science and technology, social sciences, and education.

Logically speaking. The Central Society has its own unique position in both academics and politics, and it should not die so easily, right, how could it die at the age of one? The fundamental reason is that before the establishment of the Society, the Great Presidential Office hastily promulgated the "Central Society Law", resulting in the Central Society having serious congenital defects, and it is naturally difficult to live a long life.

The first point is the status of the Central Society.

As can be seen from Article 1 of the Law of the Central Society, the Central Society is an academic institution directly under the Ministry of Education. Its main task is to carry out the scientific research of the academy and promote academic and cultural development, similar in nature to the scientific research institutes of modern countries. However, Article 16 of the Law of the Central Society stipulates that only the president, vice president and ministers of the society shall be given public funds, and ordinary members shall not receive a penny. In other words, membership is only part-time. They are not full-time researchers, which is similar to ordinary academic groups.

In addition, the National Research Institute is generally directly subordinate to the central government, while the Central Academy is directly subordinate to the Ministry of Education. It can be seen from this that the Central Society is neither a national research institute in the strict sense nor an ordinary non-governmental academic organization, and should be regarded as the prototype of the national research institute. or an intermediate transitional form of the evolution of civil society academic groups into national research institutes. Therefore, the position of the Central Society is very awkward.

The second point is the positioning of the Central Society.

As a national academic body, the Central Society should have relatively strict requirements for the scientific research ability and academic achievements of its members, but the Law of the Central Society stipulates that members shall be elected by those who have graduated from domestic and foreign universities and colleges for more than three years, or those who have special works that have been assessed by the Central Society, and shall be elected with more than 50 votes; Foreigners who have made special contributions to Chinese scholarship can be recommended as honorary members. That is, college graduates are eligible to be elected as members. Although college students were still rare in the early years of the Republic of China, far from being as ubiquitous as they are today, there were nearly 1,000 people every year. A high-level research society with a mission of academic research requires only university graduates to join. The membership requirements of the Central Society Act are somewhat overly broad.

In his view, the Central Society should refer to all national academic organizations, including the Chinese Society for Science and Technology and its various professional societies, as well as various university research institutes, scientific research institutions established by the government in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, and non-governmental private organizations (such as the Chinese Nursing Association founded by Ms. Xin Baozhu in Shanghai in 1909, the Chinese and Western Medicine Research Association founded by Ding Fubao in 1910), and the Poetry Society. and not a specific society. In this way, the Central Society can not only avoid overlapping with the institutions of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but also include the two major contents of natural sciences and humanities and social sciences.

Without waiting for Sun Yuanqi to express his opinions, the chief of education has been replaced by the current Cai Yuanpei. At the time of the promulgation of the Central Society Act. Sun Yuanqi was busy with election campaigns all over the country, watching the good Central Society being tossed into four different ways, he couldn't help but shake his head and sigh: What kind of Central Society is this, it is clearly the Republic of China version of the All-China Federation of Students!

-- The All-China Federation of Students, the full name of which is the All-China Student Federation, is a joint organization of the student union, the graduate student union and the student union of secondary schools in China. Although there are quite a few complaints about Yuan Shikai, Zhao Bingjun, Cai Yuanpei and others, they are not in their positions and do not seek their own politics, and Sun Yuanqi can only let them toss.

In accordance with the decree on the date of the election of the members of the first House of Councillors announced by the Grand Presidential Office in December, the election of the members of the House of Councillors of the Central Society was scheduled for February 10, 1903. Before that, the Central Society must complete the mutual selection and qualification of members as soon as possible. It's a huge project!

If the establishment of new-style schools during the Wuxu Reform period is regarded as the beginning of modern higher education in China, it has been 145 or 5 years now, and the total number of students who have graduated is at least tens of thousands, of which Jingshi University alone accounts for more than half of them. In addition, there are also those who have graduated from foreign universities and have special works that need to be assessed by the Central Society, and it is estimated that there are nearly 100,000 people. These people are scattered all over the country and even overseas, and after the dynastic change, many academic qualifications and archives have been scattered, and it is very difficult to verify. It is almost impossible to complete the mutual selection and qualification of members in just one or two months!

Although the task is arduous, no one can deny that the Central Society is a big piece of fat. Just imagine, Shandong, Henan, Hubei, Sichuan and other large provinces with a population of tens of millions only have 10 senator seats, while there are 8 seats in the Central Society of less than 100,000, the proportion is hundreds of times different. In particular, the Kuomintang lost the primary election in the House of Representatives and the New China Party was in hot pursuit. Naturally, it will not be easy to abandon this battleground for soldiers. Therefore, the Kuomintang and Cai Yuanpei and others all gritted their teeth, knowing that there were tigers in the mountains, and preferred to go to the tiger mountains.

Despite being mentally prepared before taking over, it turned out that they underestimated the enormity of the task. The problem arises first and foremost in the interpretation of qualifications in the Central Society Act.

The first to raise objections were former graduates of the preparatory department of Kyoto Normal University, who asked the Ministry of Education to be eligible for elected membership. The Ministry of Education was a little stunned: although pre-university also belongs to the category of higher education, it is an important cornerstone of high school education to cross over to higher education. However, the preparatory department is only equivalent to a cram school, and the level and qualifications are obviously lower than those of college graduates, and they do not meet the requirements stipulated in the "Central Society Law" at all.

The preparatory students explained eloquently: first, Beijing Normal University Hall (now Peking University) was a university; Secondly, the preparatory department is a part of the university; Third. We studied at the university for three years. These are fully qualified for "those who have graduated from domestic universities for more than three years", so why are they not eligible to elect members?

Only then did the Ministry of Education discover the loopholes in the bill, and quickly added and explained: the words "higher specialization" should be understood in conjunction with "university", which means that only those who have graduated from professional courses in a higher education or higher school for three years are eligible.

Just when the Ministry of Education and pre-university students were fighting. Another wave of students in Japan jumped out and asked to run. According to statistics, among the tens of thousands of students studying in Japan at ,——the end of the Qing Dynasty, 60% of them studied accelerated courses, 30% of them studied general courses (preparatory courses), 5-6% of them transferred and dropped out of school, 3-4% of them entered colleges and universities, and only 1% of them entered universities. The level of accelerated college is not even as good as that of the preparatory department.

The accelerated college is more formal for one or two years, and later there are more Chinese studying in Japan, and they also begin to do not wash the mud quickly, shortening from one year to eight months, from eight months to half a year, and even a few months or even days of accelerated courses! There are also many names of accelerated courses, including accelerated teacher training, accelerated law and politics, accelerated technology, accelerated physics and chemistry, accelerated policing and many so on.

In accordance with the provisions of the Law of the Central Society. You also need to study at a college for at least three years to be eligible for the election, and the accelerated college is only two years at most, which obviously does not meet the requirements. However, many people pick the word "three years", such as the fourth batch of students of the Hosei University of Japan's Qing International Students Hosei Accelerated Course entered the school in November 1905. He graduated in May 1907 and was in school for only one and a half years, but he occupied three years. Therefore, it is not reasonable to go to the Ministry of Education to ask for candidacy.

Graduates of the Law and Politics School and the Jingshi Law School also jointly signed a letter to the Ministry of Education, striving for mutual qualifications. The Ministry of Education is the first two majors: the students of the Law and Politics School in various places are officials or juren, tribute students, prison students, etc., who have good conduct and are proficient in writing and ink are selected to enter the school after passing the examination, and only learn the knowledge of law and politics; The Jingshi Law School is also a specially selected public official, and neither of them is clearly a graduate of secondary school or a secondary school graduate who has been admitted to a higher education hall as mentioned in the bill.

What is even more ironic is that some people have added a sign to the middle of the "higher education" to understand, becoming "those who have graduated from higher education and vocational schools for more than three years", and suddenly lowered the academic threshold of the Central Society from undergraduate and junior college to high school (higher education) and technical secondary school (specialized school).

"Vocational colleges," "higher education schools," and "vocational schools" are all half-foreign products, first appearing in the Japanese education system and then adopted in China. In the view of the drafters of the bill, the meaning of "college of higher education" is simple and clear, that is, a full-time college graduate, but I did not expect to encounter these different interpretations in practice.

The election of members was already crowded and eventful, but I didn't expect to encounter this incident, which really made the Ministry of Education anxious. Graduates of various schools protested continuously, and the petition queue blocked the entrance of the presidential palace and the Ministry of Education every day, which made Yuan Shikai, Cai Yuanpei and others even more suspicious.

Although the fatty meat is delicious, you have to have the ability to eat it in your stomach! They thought about it again and again, and finally decided painfully: ask Sun Yuan to get out of the mountain! (To be continued.) If you like this work, you are welcome to come to the starting point (qidian.) to vote for recommendation, monthly pass, your support, is my biggest motivation. For mobile phone users, please go to m.qidian. )