People in the Ming Dynasty are lawless

Chapter 677 Education is definitely a big problem

This method is indeed very useful, because it best represents ancient politics in the entire feudal period and forces all the common people to follow the court.

How to create this kind of thought is through these scholars who are extremely talented and capable.

Each of them became the most knowledgeable people in the village or county, and what they said became wise sayings.

This is a very clever method used by the rulers, because in this way, the common people will admire such scholars and regard their words as wise sayings, passing them down from generation to generation, which will invisibly erase the consciousness of resistance in the hearts of the common people.

This kind of cultural castration may not be deliberately created by the ruling class sometimes, but once such a trend is formed, it will become a distorted trend in the entire process of dissemination.

Therefore, cultural brainwashing is extremely useful for the growth of people's character and their spiritual formation. At the same time, this method is also very effective in castrating creativity.

Chen Han has always been saying that the reason why many things in the Ming Dynasty cannot be accepted by the common people all at once is because the inherent ideas in the common people's minds have been at work. The common people are always thinking about how to make their lives more in line with the entire dynasty.

It is best not to be the first to stand out, because if you are the first to stand out, you will easily be shot down. However, this idea is actually formed because of the degree of ideological castration. Mencius once said that family, country and the world are issues that every citizen should think about.

And his ideas, such as "the people are more important than the king", have always been something that the rulers of successive dynasties particularly hated. If the people believed in such ideas, if the people acted according to such formal principles, then their rule would be shaky.

They absolutely did not want to see such a thing happen, and they absolutely would not allow such a form to happen, so what should they do? They had to remove Mencius's status as the second sage.

Once the imperial court did this, what would the officials below think? They would definitely not spread Mencius's thoughts again. They would definitely castrate him to a certain extent and make this idea disappear from then on.

The power of this is that as long as the idea is unfavorable to me, I will spread it through such powerful means and the imperial examination system, leaving no soil for rebellious ideas to survive.

This is what the ruling class wants to do, so why do they have to implement a policy of keeping the people ignorant? They think that as long as the people have no thoughts and can only work on the land for their whole lives, then the people will definitely follow them like sheep, but they have never thought about one thing.

If the common people are all like sheep, then in the future whenever there is an invasion by foreign enemies, the common people will choose to be cowards and think they can't see anything. In their eyes, the world is not mine, it belongs to your emperor. I have no desire to take action. I just want to see you being destroyed one by one. Anyway, those who die are all you upper-class people.

Although there is a saying that every man is responsible for the rise and fall of his country.

But how many ordinary people will remember this sentence? The ruling class hopes that the common people will take the initiative to stand up and help the court fight against foreign enemies when they invade.

However, they forgot how much effort they had put into castrating the common people's character. While adding fuel to the flames, they also instilled a sheep mentality into the common people, making them feel that if they were the first to stand out, they would be eliminated, so it would be better for them to hide.

This kind of thinking is of course the best when the ruling class wants a stable ecological environment, but when foreign enemies invade, they find that the common people no longer care about the so-called rise and fall of the country.

It was after listening to Chen Han's words that Zhu Biao realized how important cultural education is.

Just as Chen Han said, although it is not possible for the Ming Dynasty to immediately reach a point where all the people can actually enjoy it, it will take decades or even hundreds of years to accomplish this goal, but now we have to do it slowly.

How can we do this? The first thing is to make those educated people less burdened with thoughts, so that they can have the energy to create more popular works.

There may be no way to let the people all over the world know about these works at the first time, and there is no way to let many people understand the mysteries, but when there are more, word of mouth can also shape the people's thoughts and character.

This is a very important point, and another point is universal education.

In fact, many people don’t know that when Zhu Yuanzhang was emperor, he established many private schools all over the country.

The reason why he did this was to promote the imperial examination system. It is very ironic that the imperial examination system had already taken shape during the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and it had even been implemented in the Northern Song Dynasty, which gave the entire imperial examination system more stringent rules.

However, most people don’t know that the imperial examination system was truly popular throughout the world during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Especially after the Ming Dynasty laid a solid foundation, the imperial examination system in the Ming and Qing dynasties became truly perfect and reached its pinnacle.

Of course, many people have criticized the fact that the imperial examination system during the Ming and Qing dynasties required eight-part essays, saying that the eight-part essays would restrict scholars' thinking and make them rigid.

In fact, people who say this simply don't use their brains.

Eight-legged essay is a genre, similar to a routine.

Its format requires you to complete it, which consists of eight parts: breaking the topic, continuing the topic, starting the lecture, entering the part, starting part, middle part, last part, and concluding part.

There is actually nothing wrong with the format of the eight-part essay, because the prototype of the eight-part essay can be traced back to the selection of scholars based on the classics promoted by Wang Anshi during the Song Dynasty's reform, and it was finalized during the Chenghua period of the Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, in the imperial examinations during the Hongwu period, writing eight-part essays was not mandatory. Chen Han still had a chance to change this trend.

Of course, it is not fair to say that there are definitely errors in the eight-part essay. You must know that the eight-part essay is equivalent to a genre of composition. You cannot say that there is a problem with the genre. There must be a problem with the question.

For example, there was a problem with the scope of the questions. The questions were strictly limited to the original texts of the Four Books and the Five Classics. In the later period, there were even splicing questions, which was to splice different paragraphs to increase the difficulty.

This way of asking questions is the main reason that restricts thinking.

Because candidates must write in the tone of sages such as Confucius and Zhu Xi, the content must conform to the interpretation of Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism, and they are not allowed to put forward new ideas. They emphasize "literature carries the message" and pay attention to moral ethics.

This is the fundamental reason why academic research is divorced from reality and lacks innovation.

Therefore, the root cause is that Chengdu Neo-Confucianism has become a prominent school of thought in contemporary times, which has led to the confinement of thoughts.

Because this can easily lead to formalism, excessive pursuit of parallelism and empty content, and become a bureaucratic style of writing that is equivalent to saying nothing. However, we have to talk about its progressive significance. Eight-part essays have been criticized as feudal dregs, but as a product of the imperial examination system, they reflect the complex relationship between ancient education and political control.

At the same time, it also provides the most fair and just way for the poor to rise.

Just like the college entrance examination today, all the public intellectuals who were formed under the influence of foreign ideas in the past are criticizing the college entrance examination system, thinking that the college entrance examination has become a product of exam-oriented education.

It restricts students' thinking and makes them become examination tools.

Even because China does not produce so many Nobel Prize winners, everyone agrees that this is the result of a lack of innovation.

However, in recent years, as China's economy continues to take off, local talents have continued to emerge, imperial examination products have continued to innovate, and market ownership has continued to occupy a dominant position in the world.

Many people have just realized that there is no more fair and just way to select talents than the college entrance examination.

As many people have said, the college entrance examination is not like a thousand troops crossing a single-plank bridge, it just screens out those who are not suitable for studying.

In fact, if you can pass every subject in the college entrance examination, then there will be no problem in getting into a second-tier university; if you achieve a good score, which is 80 points, then there will be no problem in getting into a 211 university; and if you achieve an excellent score, which is 90 points, then you can almost reach the standard of a university.

Why do some people say that even if you pass the college entrance examination, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have achieved great success?

This trend has been popular in modern society because many people actually ignore the essence of modern education?
First of all, from the founding of the People's Republic of China to around the 1970s, the essence of education was to eliminate illiteracy, that is, to make the majority of people aware of literacy.

What was the essence of education from the 1970s to around 2000? To select the elite.

The essence of education after 20 years is to reserve more outstanding talents and elites for the Belt and Road Initiative.

Therefore, education at each stage is to achieve different goals, so there must be different educational requirements and pressures at each stage.

The reason why so many people are criticizing modern education now is, to put it bluntly, because with the development of the Internet, most people can read and understand texts and use mobile phones through scanning, so this kind of talent has emerged.

If there had not been the previous literacy campaign and the elite screening from the 1970s to around 2000, how could there have been so many people who felt they had some knowledge? The knowledge of these people is still very low and they cannot see the real benefits of exam-oriented education.

Why does the country vigorously promote education? It is because it draws on the disadvantages of the ancient policy of keeping the people ignorant.

Although the ancient policy of keeping the people ignorant could ensure a certain degree of stability, the lack of overall motivation for upward innovation would greatly limit the development of productivity.

But it is different with universal education. China’s education is the most universal in the world, because most of the education outside of China actually has its roots in China’s ancient policy of keeping the people ignorant.

This is because the education level of citizens in most countries is actually very low, and only a small number of elites can receive education.

Even the happy education promoted by the so-called superpower Da Piaoliang makes children happy and stress-free, but it also means that you have no competitiveness.

It can even be said that your birth has already determined what kind of education and knowledge your children can receive. A piece of transparent glass has been placed above your and your children's heads, blocking your path to success.

As for those real elites, the education they received may be a hundred times more rigorous than the exam-oriented education. Those real elites who are desperately competing in the West are actually competing even more rigorously.

The reason why those elites want to compete is because their monopoly nature is even stronger, and ordinary people have no chance to compete like them. The class of ordinary people is fixed, and they may only be able to do some very simple service industries and struggle at the bottom.

In many good universities in the West, such as the Ivy League in the United States, in addition to meeting the score requirements, the most important thing is a letter of recommendation.

A letter of introduction is not just an ordinary person's letter of introduction. It must be written by someone who has a certain social status, including political status or wealth status.

Therefore, it often happens that two candidates with very different scores can meet in the same university, because the student with the lower score has a strong family background and can make up for the score deficiency with a letter of introduction.

This kind of competition is not about education, it is simply about competing with one's father.

But China’s exam-oriented education is very transparent. If you don’t meet the required scores, you cannot go to any university.

If a student in China who scored 300 points in the exam was able to get into Tsinghua University, public opinion would explode.

But in the United States, this kind of thing can happen easily, and the American people also accept it. They will think that it is my fault. I can't provide better things for my children, so they don't compare.

Because they have never had the idea that there is nothing special about them.

So they won't question it, but it's different in China. Why? Because the education you receive from childhood has already planted this cultural consciousness of resistance in your mind.

When you encounter such unfair things, the first thing that comes to your mind is why?
This is also the benefit of education. It is the same if we return to the imperial examination system today. After the implementation of the "blind name" method, at least ordinary children from farming families can have the opportunity to "be a farmer in the morning and enter the emperor's palace in the evening" one day.

Therefore, whether in modern times or in ancient times in China, the imperial examination system, the college entrance examination, and the civil service examination system are all the greatest inventions. They are actually the result of the hard work of countless ancestors.

As for the so-called college entrance examination, the civil service system, or the imperial examination system, no matter how many people criticize them, it cannot conceal their advanced nature.

Those who criticize these systems are all people who don’t have the ability to get good grades in the college entrance examination, can’t pass the civil service examination, and failed the imperial examination system...

(End of this chapter)