Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 588 Overview of the Development of Ming Dynasty Education

Since the 25th year of Chongzhen, there have been five ways to select talents in the Ming Dynasty: subjects, schools, recommendation, civil service, and examination.

But subjects and schools are actually for the same purpose, and recommendation is not an exception. Civil service is just an internal assessment of officials.

Therefore, up to now, there are only two ways for the first-class citizens of Ming Dynasty to join the ruling class, one is the imperial examination and the other is the examination.

The imperial examination is the traditional way of reading the Four Books and Five Classics and studying stereotyped articles, taking the road to career, going to school, going to the provincial examination, the imperial examination, and then becoming an official.

The examination is the selection method for the birth of the new education in Ming Dynasty.

From elementary school to middle school and then to university, one exam is required for each level. Because there is no threshold for entering elementary school, and the number of places in middle school and university is several times the number of tributes in the township examination and the Jinshi Association, so the chances of passing the examination to become an official are even higher. big.

At the beginning, Ming students were still keen on the road of imperial examinations, but gradually found that it was extremely difficult to become an official through the road of imperial examinations, so most of them had to switch to new schools.

And because the number of seats in the imperial examination is small and the Confucian manager's study is the most important, the monopoly of the imperial examination by the official and scholarly family is even more serious.

In the end, more and more students had to be selected into the new-style schools. By the 30th year of Chongzhen, the new-style education in the new-style schools had become the mainstream of basic education in Ming Dynasty.

In addition, there is no obvious difference in political treatment between the imperial examination and the examination.

It is even easier for scholars who graduated from the new-style education to enter popular yamen and hold important positions.

For example, the Ministry of Households preferred the top students of the Qianfa Department of the Imperial University to be the head of politics, and the Ministry of Officials preferred the top students of the Political Science Department of the Capital University to be the heads of politics.

The Ministry of Rites prefers the top students from the Normal School, while the Ministry of Industry prefers the top students from the Daming Industrial School.

The Grand Marshal’s Mansion mainly recruits military officers from the Daming Army Military Academy and the Daming Shipbuilding Academy. At the same time, it also sets up military officer training bases in the first batch of key universities of the Ming Dynasty, such as the Imperial University Hall and the Daming Industrial Academy, and will also absorb some professional knowledge. Talents enter the core institutions of the Grand Marshal's Mansion.

There are even those who can live in the Qianqing Gate of the Forbidden City of the Ming Dynasty directly after graduation, and can see His Majesty the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty no less than five times a day.

Juren born in the imperial examination still waited for luck and waited for officials to be selected by the Ministry of officials. More than half of the Jinshi born in the imperial examination would enter the Hanlin Academy for history editing and compilation, and some would be selected to serve as professors of Chinese in the Daming Institute of Higher Education or even the University Hall.

But it is very difficult to enter the core ruling department of the Ming Empire. There is no other reason. They can only write stereotyped essays and have been unable to adapt to the management of an industrialized Ming Empire.

The top of the empire no longer paid attention to the talents selected by the imperial examination, and only regarded them as historians and economists in the academic field.

Many people began to abandon the road of imperial examinations and entered the road of new-style schools from the very beginning.

Even, gradually, graduating from the Imperial University, the Daming Army Military Academy, the Daming Shipbuilding Academy, the Daming Industrial Academy, and the Imperial Normal Academy has become the highest honor for scholars.

The rulers of the empire also give priority to the top students who graduated from these schools.

Five years later, the cabinet officially abolished the centuries-old Guozijian institution, and the school's tribute selection system was also abolished.

In the 45th year of Chongzhen, the imperial examination system was also abolished, and Confucianism was only listed as a university subject. It was still a relatively popular subject at the beginning. After all, there are still many Confucian scholars in the world.

But later, with the narrow scope of work of Confucian graduates, it gradually fell into an unpopular subject.

Money, Law and Politics in the Imperial University, Mechanization in the Daming Industrial School, and Ideology and Etiquette in the Normal School in the Beijing Normal University are the most popular subjects. Most of the high-ranking officials and wealthy businessmen come from this, but it is also very difficult to enter. The leader.

There are mainly two organizational departments for the distribution of scholars at the top of the empire, one is the Ministry of Officials, and the other is the General Political Department of the Grand Marshal's Mansion.

However, the Ministry of Officials is responsible to the cabinet, so the power to appoint officials is mainly concentrated in the hands of the cabinet and the Political Department of the Generalissimo's Office.

In the first ten years, Daming was extremely short of professional talents.

Whether it is the army or the government, a large number of practical professionals are needed to make up for it. Therefore, the cabinet and the Grand Marshal's Office often rob people, and many lawsuits have been brought to Zhu Youjian.

Later, with the stabilization of the new education system, there were more and more professional talents just like the products produced by the assembly line. The two departments no longer competed for each other, but organized an examination each year according to the vacancies of each department. Students or above sign up to participate in the examination, the outstanding ones are appointed to important positions, and those who are eliminated are assigned to local or cold yamen according to their grades.

The distribution of college graduation packages is still the main way for Ming to utilize talents at present, after all, the empire is still relatively short of people.

In short, starting from the 25th year of Chongzhen, the education system of Ming Dynasty gradually changed from elite education to universal education.

There are more and more talents from all walks of life. First-class citizens who were not good at studying liberal arts will no longer be able to become ordinary people because they failed the imperial examination, and will become masters in mathematics. The utilization rate of human resources has also been greatly improved. leading to higher literacy rates.

Twenty years later, almost none of the first-class citizens of Ming Dynasty are illiterate, and there are very few useless commoners. More than 20% of the first-class citizens graduated from elementary schools, and more than [-]% of the first-class citizens graduated from universities. The total number is about half, which is close to the Huaxia of the later generations, but still far behind the developed countries of the later generations.

However, there are no less than one million first-class citizens in Ming Dynasty, and the base of high-level talents is still quite large, which is enough to beat any country in this era.

……

Turn the words back.

As soon as the court discussion on new-style education was over at the end of April 24 in Chongzhen, Zhu Youjian returned to the Qianqing Palace. At this time, Xu Zhaohua came over with a more important memorial: "Your Majesty, this is the Henan Road of the Metropolitan Procuratorate. Censor Lu Zun's memorial to impeach the chief assistant of the cabinet, Gao Hongtu."

According to Zhu Youjian's New Deal rules, the Metropolitan Procuratorate and the cabinet stand side by side, so the memorials of the Metropolitan Procuratorate will not go to the cabinet, but will be directly handed over to the Supervisor of Rituals by the Secretary of General Administration.

However, because the matter involved senior officials above the second rank, Xu Zhaohua could not make decisions without authorization even if he was the supervisor of ceremonies, so Zhu Youjian had to review it himself.

The memorials before Zhu You's prosecution are now except for the self-recommendations of high-ranking officials of the Ming Dynasty, which are the memorials of the Metropolitan Procuratorate and the Ministry of Criminal Affairs, and there are also some secret memorials. The prosecutors will take a closer look, not to mention the impeachment of Gao Hongtu, the chief assistant of the dynasty.

Therefore, Zhu Youjian took it over, and at the same time couldn't help but look at Xu Zhaohua's expression, seeing that she was slightly blushing and embarrassed, he naturally understood why she was like this.

But after Zhu Youjian opened the memorial and read the content, he couldn't help laughing: "Gao Aiqing has good physical strength, even stronger than me!"

(End of this chapter)