Hearing about this kind of thing, let alone Yu Yunwen's head was in a mess, Lu You was not much better.
A country that has completely abandoned Confucianism is still pursuing the concept of "education without discrimination" and is putting it into practice. . .
But a country that fully uses Confucianism to govern its country has failed to do so and failed to educate its people.
They even think from the bottom of their hearts that the common people at the bottom do not need to be educated at all. They can just stay stupid and produce. What books should they read? What education did you receive?
Why was the Confucian school, which made its fortune through education and ultimately defeated other schools of thought, so different from the Ming Dynasty, which deposed Confucianism?
The reason why Confucianism was able to defeat other schools of thought was not just because of a policy of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, but because Confucian scholars did the best job in education. There were so many people studying Confucianism, more than any other school, and the mass base was the largest. good.
Even without Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty and Dong Zhongshu, it was only a matter of time before Confucianism became the academic hegemon.
But times have changed, and when Confucianism became the absolute academic hegemony, they also began to isolate themselves, establishing themselves as academic lords and enclosing their inheritance.
But now, the Ming Dynasty has deposed Confucianism and denied Confucianism, but it is doing things that only the Confucian school in the past would do.
What kind of strange contrast is this?
Lu You felt extremely ridiculous.
Yu Yunwen felt the same way.
He found that when he came to the grassroots level of the Ming Dynasty, not only did he not solve the things he wanted to solve, not only did he not prove the things he wanted to prove, but there were more and more things that could not be solved.
Not only did he not prove that all of this was false, but he discovered more and more things that he could not deny.
He became more and more panicked, more frightened, and more aware that all of this was true, but he just didn't want to admit that it was all true.
He was afraid.
He was afraid that once he accepted the fact that all this was true, he would no longer be able to successfully complete the mission entrusted to him by Zhao Yu, and he would no longer be able to convince himself to look at Ming Guo from a cold perspective.
He will carry heavy ideological and moral baggage.
So he didn't stay here long and left.
"Deputy Ambassador Yu, don't you want to take another look?"
Wang Qi called him from behind.
"I'm tired, let's go back!"
Yu Yunwen stopped, replied, and then walked quickly towards the way he came.
Wang Qi looked at Yu Yunwen's slightly embarrassed figure walking away, feeling a little proud in his heart.
Then he turned around and found that Lu You was looking at the children who were reading in Meng Academy, slightly lost in thought.
He did not disturb Lu You.
After a while, Lu You came to his senses and looked at Wang Qi standing next to him.
"Is the Ming Dynasty really planning to popularize education so that everyone can read and write?"
"It's not preparation, it's already being done."
Wang Qi smiled and said: "I am from Shandong. Although I am not the first group of people to follow Your Majesty in raising troops, I am the first group of people to be literate. My hometown is not far from the place where Your Majesty raised troops, so It has long accepted His Majesty’s governance.
At that time, His Majesty's army was still called the Shengjie Army. It only had a few thousand people and was not large in scale. However, Your Majesty has begun to reduce our burden. He exempted us from excessive taxes and sent people to guide us in establishing a peasant association. Not only that, he also allowed us to The instructor taught us how to read.
While we were doing farm work, we were learning to read, and we kept hearing from the instructor what kind of victories and achievements His Majesty had achieved. So when His Majesty defeated the sponsor Wan Yanliang, because I knew so much, I He was recommended by his instructor to join the Liberation Army at that time and did a civilian job.
Later, when I was working in the Liberation Army, I further studied, learned more words, and studied real books. This process took about two years. During this period, I joined the Renaissance Association and learned more. There were so many things, so just a year ago, I was assigned to work at Honglu Temple. "
Lu You seemed to be very emotional after listening silently to what Wang Qi said about his experience.
"Master Wang must be very serious about his studies, right?"
"Of course, my family has been tenant farmers for several generations. They have faced the loess and turned their backs to the sky. They have been dealing with the land from birth to death. They have never left their hometown and cannot leave. It is like wearing heavy shackles. Same, can't break free.
Later, His Majesty came, smashed the shackles on our bodies, and allocated land to us. Not only that, His Majesty also gave us the opportunity to read and become literate. At that time, I was ignorant and didn’t know what this meant to me. .
But now when I look back at that time, I can see how much kindness Your Majesty showed me. He allowed a sharecropper's son to read and become an official. It only took six years. In just six years, I had completely changed. The past was completely different, and there were countless people like me in the Ming Dynasty. "
Wang Qi sighed, and asked with emotion and pride: "Deputy Ambassador Lu, has such a thing happened in the Southern Dynasties? Is there a son of a tenant farmer like me in the Southern Dynasties who could read, read, and master knowledge to become an official?"
Hearing this, Lu You thought about it seriously.
Search for relevant information from his memories formed over the past nearly forty years of his life.
Unfortunately, according to the relevant laws and policies of the Song Dynasty, the content he searched could not be displayed.
Maybe there is nothing to show at all.
So Lu You could only reply in a low mood: "I don't know, maybe it happened, maybe it never happened..."
"I guess not."
Wang Qi looked at the young children who were writing seriously in the Meng Academy and said, "The cost of letting a person go off work and study is really too high. Even His Majesty cannot make it possible for all of them to study in one go. situation.
Therefore, His Majesty took a compromise approach and spent money on young children to allow them to go to school and acquire knowledge. It would be enough if the other farmers could be literate and master reading and writing. However, I have also heard that Your Majesty, in order to do this, How much did it cost to do this?
Real money is thrown at it, school, tables, chairs, pens, ink, paper and inkstones, literacy instructors, none of which is free? Of course one village is cheap, but what about a hundred? What about a thousand? What about ten thousand? how much? Is the Southern Court willing to spend? "
Lu You didn't answer.
But the answer was already in his mind, very clear, without any hesitation.
Lu You looked at the scene in the school and felt as if he could already draw a clear conclusion - a conclusion on why the Song Dynasty could not defeat the Ming Dynasty.
Many officials in the court gave wrong answers.
They often think that the Ming Dynasty has a strong military, soldiers who dare to fight, and generals who are brave, so they feel that they should invest money into the army, train well-trained soldiers, and discover generals who understand the art of war, so that the army of the Southern Song Dynasty becomes stronger.
But as time went by, Lu You gradually realized that the gap between the two countries was not just a military issue, nor was it just about training the army as they said to defeat the Ming army.
There are deeper things, very deep things. These deep-seated reasons make the gap between the two countries wider and wider.
In the end, a military conflict broke out between the two countries, so this gap was largely reflected at the military level, but beyond the military level, everything was completely different.
The Ming Dynasty's surpassing of the Southern Song Dynasty may have been comprehensive.
After coming to this conclusion, Lu You thought he would be very frightened, but when he heard the sound of children reciting in the Meng Academy, his emotions were gradually calmed down.
He cast his eyes on the young children in the school who were learning to read under the guidance of the teacher, and suddenly felt that if such a thing could happen in the Southern Song Dynasty, it would definitely be a good thing.
The farmers in the Ming Dynasty were laughing, but the farmers in the Southern Song Dynasty were crying and dying...
Lu You closed his eyes, and the scenes he had seen before kept appearing in his mind.
He recalled everything he had seen along the way and everything he had read in "Hongwu Political Commentary".
Really, it's all true. Su Yonglin is very honest. He doesn't lie. Everything he says and writes is true.
So, who is lying?
The answer in Lu You's mind was already very clear.
