After Su Yonglin established the General Affairs Bureau, he sent people to conduct a large-scale survey of the country's population status.
The vast rural areas directly controlled by the Renaissance Association provided great data support for this population survey.
During this thorough investigation, Su Yonglin learned that in the Central Plains, people generally have a strong need for literacy.
Not only the urban population needs literacy for their production and living activities, but also the farmers living in the countryside.
Due to their daily life and the need to deal with government tax collectors, farmers strive to fight for their deserved rights in tax collection and service, so they also have a strong need for literacy and are unwilling to cheat others in vain.
Therefore, some farmers will send their children aged five, six or seven to local private schools for a year or two. After they know some common words and are not blind, they can drop out of school and come back to work in production. .
In this way, farmers can also recognize some words, and they can understand when the government posts notices and will not be deceived.
But the efforts of farmers to provide education for their children can only go so far. Reading and writing require a longer period of learning, and cannot be solved by one or two years of enlightenment education.
And longer education is not affordable for ordinary farmers. It really requires a lot of investment. Generally, a farmer with a family of several people and more than ten acres of land cannot support a full-time scholar.
Therefore, there are still very few [literate people] nationwide who truly master reading and writing skills.
There is no way around the other three subjects, they must be able to read and write. Before the Fuxing Society's efforts to eliminate illiteracy on a large scale are generally effective, the candidates for the remaining three subjects can only choose from these 5% of the population.
But the technology is different.
A considerable number of craftsmen who master technology these days only understand technology but are not literate. They do not have access to literacy and education, but they can master very sophisticated technology through the inheritance and accumulation of experience from master to apprentice.
If the special talent examination is not opened, this part of the illiterate population who masters sophisticated technologies will inevitably be excluded, which is not conducive to the country's overall control of technology.
Su Yonglin attaches great importance to technology and knows that the current accumulation of technology will have a significant impact on future technological breakthroughs and even the dawn of the industrial revolution.
Now we must do our best to collect talents who have mastered technology, bring them together to summarize technology, learn from each other, and summarize experience. At the same time, we must let them have culture and establish a scientific system, and ultimately realize the birth and development of physics, chemistry and other disciplines.
So Su Yonglin worked hard to create this [Special Talent Examination].
He will allow illiterate talents with truly outstanding skills to enter the Ministry of Industry, so as to recruit the best technical talents in the world for the country and increase the reserve of technical talents.
This news will continue to spread and ferment as messengers from Zhongdu scatter out. Soon, people in the nine administrative districts of the Ming Empire will know the news.
As for what they would think and whether they would come to Zhongdu to take part in this unique imperial examination, that was not something Su Yonglin could decide.
The next thing Su Yonglin has to do is to continue to promote the reform, and pay attention to the questions of the first imperial examination, prepare the examination room and examination method for the first imperial examination, select examiners, etc.
Don't look at just one exam. There is really a lot of manpower and material resources that need to be mobilized.
More importantly, there is the martial arts examination, which is different from the civil examination. It also requires a large assessment venue and more assessment preparations, and requires a lot of manpower and material resources to prepare.
But in order to select the best talents, Su Yonglin did not hesitate. Anyway, he had a lot of gold and silver stolen from the powerful people of the Jin Kingdom that could be converted into money.
He won't be stingy in this regard.
The first imperial examination in the second year of Hongwu's reign has been settled. Everything will go according to Su Yonglin's wishes, and Su Yonglin achieved complete victory.
But beyond that, there's a lot more to do.
For example, the resumption of graded examinations, and the reform of the education system supporting the imperial examinations.
The issue of graded examinations is a small one. With the experience of graded exams in the Song Dynasty and Jin Dynasty, Su Yonglin just added some steps and set up three levels of examinations at the county, state and provincial levels. For those who took the imperial examination For scholars, the changes are not big.
It's not a big problem to have to take two exams when you arrive in the capital. As long as there are exams, everyone can get used to it.
Of course, the central government was solely responsible for the overall planning and arrangement of the imperial examinations. For local graded examinations, special officials from the Central Ministry of Rites would dispatch academic officials from other places to take charge of the examinations. However, education still had to be handled locally.
This requires the establishment of academic officers specifically responsible for local education in the three administrative divisions of county, state capital and province to implement the new education reform measures.
This was also the practice in the Song and Jin dynasties. The Song Dynasty made a great contribution to the development of culture and education, so Su Yonglin could directly use the current system to make some improvements.
Su Yonglin promulgated supporting measures for the imperial examination in subsequent decrees.
Each province must set up an Admiral's Education Department to be responsible for educational issues within the province. Its subordinate departments are located in state capitals and counties. Each Admiral's Education Department is accompanied by a government-run school to absorb local school-age children. Enroll in school.
These local admiral academic affairs departments will also be fully responsible for the implementation of the four-subject education of liberal arts, science, law and engineering stipulated by Su Yonglin, and directly correspond to the sub-subject selection of the four liberal arts, science, legal and engineering subjects.
Regarding this ambitious education reform measure, at the joint meeting held by Su Yonglin between the Shangshu Province and the Ministry of Rites, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Personnel, several senior officials of the Shangshu Province, Kong Zheng, Lin Jingchun and Liu Yongzhen did not look too good.
Su Yonglin's requirements were too many, and it was very difficult to implement them in practice. Although the Jin Kingdom originally had corresponding officials, Su Yonglin's requirements were completely different from those of the Jin Kingdom. Even if the academic officials in the original place were restored, they might not understand What is the four subjects to obtain scholars?
"Your Majesty, I think it will be very difficult to implement this policy suddenly. The material resources are okay. It is nothing more than providing money and people. As long as you can afford the money, there will naturally be people. However, in terms of manpower, the number of officials who meet the requirements is too small. The central government still has Not enough, let alone space.”
What Liu Yongzhen said was also a practical issue and was not an exaggeration at all, so Su Yonglin was not angry.
"I know there are many problems, but there are also many things I want to do. Ten thousand years is too long. I seize every day. Things to be done are immediately put on the agenda, and a time schedule is set. I must follow this process every moment. Do it.
Of course, I’m not asking you to do it all at once. I know where the difficulty lies, so what I mean is to take your time and start implementing it in the centrally-administered regions first. Once this is done, then go to the localities. .
Be it three years, five years, or ten years, the first thing we need to know is that the number of students is actually not many. There are only so many literate people at the moment, and the number of school-age students is only so many. It is divided among the provinces, states, capitals, and counties. , and how many school-age students are there?
Don’t think that this matter is difficult to handle because of the vast territory and the large number of people involved. Once it is divided, there are only a few hundred people in one county, so how difficult can it be? Therefore, first restore the academic administration official position, erect the academic administrative office, put up the shelf, and then slowly fill it with things. "
Su Yonglin began to explain his method of doing things.
Now that the central government has decided to handle this matter, it will then promote the experiment in areas directly under the central government, accumulate enough experience and service officials, and finally promote it to all provinces.
He did not expect to achieve immediate results in one go. These things would require continuous promotion and accumulation over a long period of time before they could finally be truly popular across the country.
Time is still time, fascinating and nerve-wracking time.
This time, no one was arguing about whether what Su Yonglin wanted to do could be done, but what to do.
Kong Zheng had just experienced the impeachment storm and did not dare to speak. He had to watch his nose and heart, said nothing, and allowed the emperor to do what he wanted to do. Anyway, he knew that no one could stop what the emperor wanted to do.
Others probably have the same mentality as Kong Zheng, either they are die-hard supporters of Su Yonglin, or they know from the beginning that they can't stop it, so they might as well just lie down and enjoy it.
Kong Zheng decided not to oppose Su Yonglin's reform measures at least for a period of time in the future, so as to slowly accumulate Su Yonglin's favor in order to return to the top, and then...
It's time to take revenge on Huo Jianbai.
