If a country wants to industrialize, it needs more than just steam engines.
In other words, the steam engine is actually just the product of various basic sciences that have reached the standards. After all, if you want to build a practical steam engine, you must have the corresponding materials and processing technology.
And this comes back to basic science.
As for the development of basic science, Luo Zhixue cannot just recruit a group of students and teach them for a period of time.
Not to mention that Luo Zhixue has many military and political matters to deal with on a daily basis, and does not have that much time to teach in person. Even if he does teach, it will be difficult to directly achieve the desired results.
The development of many basic sciences requires many scientific researchers to work together on various studies and conduct many experiments to slowly explore and develop.
What Luo Zhixue has to do is to provide them with some guidance and then create a better research environment.
The other is to train enough scientific researchers.
This is why Luo Zhixue attaches so much importance to educational development.
To this end, they have not hesitated to reform the traditional education system that has lasted for thousands of years, forcefully promote new education throughout the year, and directly elevate the importance of mathematics and physics to a level that is more important than the Four Books and Five Classics. In order to achieve this, it is directly Reforms were carried out at the imperial examination level, and the contents of new subjects were directly included in the examination content.
Some people in later generations said this: If you want the national football team to win the World Cup, it is actually very simple. You don’t need to do other messy things. You just need to include football in the college entrance examination...
In this way, hundreds of millions of parents will let their children play with footballs while feeding... When they are a little older, they will go to various football training schools. There will be countless football training institutions in society. People began to delve into football-related matters.
In the end, there will be hundreds of millions of young people who have been trained in professional football since childhood... By then, it will be trivial to win the World Cup.
However, to put it bluntly, football will not be included in the college entrance examination... After all, this is just a competitive entertainment game. People can just entertain themselves and it cannot rise to the level of affecting national policy.
However, mathematics, physics, and chemistry are subjects that can promote the development of science and technology, promote social development, and enhance the country’s hard power, so they are included in the college entrance examination.
In the Chu Empire, the current joint examination of the four schools is not that influential, so Luo Zhi learned a more powerful trick and directly included it in the imperial examination...
If you want to be an official, you must first learn mathematics, physics and chemistry from me...
As a result, in just a few years, a trend of learning mathematics, physics and chemistry has set off in China, and it is also an extremely positive trend, which is widely praised by many parents and students...
Without official guidance, a large number of private schools and academies have obtained a large number of books on new subjects to serve as teaching materials. Various teaching materials compiled and published by the Teaching Materials Department of the Ministry of Ethical Education, such as elementary mathematics, elementary physics, elementary chemistry, and geometry have been became the best-selling book.
Various annotated versions, detailed explanations of real questions and other teaching aids for new subjects have also become the best-selling books in many private printing factories and bookstores.
The books about the scholar's affair are not as popular as the teaching aids.
As for the handwritten manuscripts of various teaching aids written by students, they are countless.
Songhua Academy is an academy that actively engages in new disciplines in this great wave.
The academy has a history of more than a hundred years. It is located in a secluded place on the outskirts of Huating County, Songjiang Prefecture. Although it has been in operation for a long time, it has been tepid before. For a long time, only some students from Songjiang Prefecture could run. Come and study.
Since the Chu Empire took control of Jiangnan and implemented the new imperial examination, Songhua Academy has actively embraced new disciplines. It was among the first academies in several prefectures around Jiangnan to offer new disciplines.
Since its establishment, its school performance has been pretty good, and it has contributed to the imperial officialdom, with dozens of candidates, four Jinshi, and six Imperial Academy students.
As for the students who have passed the college examination, there are even more.
Fang Beitong was a student in Songhua Academy. However, unlike the seniors in other academies who were rushing to take the imperial examination directly to become officials, or to apply for the Imperial Academy, Fang Beitong chose to join the army and applied for the imperial examination. Army Academy.
And he successfully passed the exam and became the first student of the Army Officer Academy in Songhua Academy.
Naturally, the dean of the college would not turn a blind eye to the fact that the students of this college had achieved such good results. Two days after Fang Beitong returned home, he received an invitation from Songhua College, inviting him to give lectures at Songhua College for several months. Provide study and examination experience to students.
Fang Beitong did not refuse. After all, Songhua Academy was the place where he studied for six years. He had been studying in Songhua Academy in the pre-Ming Dynasty. In the era of the Chu Empire, he passed the student examination one after another. And now I'm admitted to the Army Officers Academy.
Fang Beitong is still grateful to his alma mater for cultivating him.
Of course, this is also related to the fact that Songhua Academy is not far from his home. If he goes to give lectures, it is also close to his home.
At the same time, it is said to be a lecture, but the academy will not arrange too many courses for him. He will still have a lot of time to continue studying and study some cultural courses at the Army Officer Academy in advance.
Finally... I get paid for teaching for several months, and it's quite a lot.
Fang Beitong was not a child of a big family. The Fang family had no worries about food and drink, but they were not associated with great wealth. The remuneration offered by the academy was not a small amount, so Fang Beitong did not hesitate and directly agreed to give lectures. .
According to his plan, he would teach at Songhua Academy for about three months, and then leave for Jinling City to report in December at the end of the year, waiting for the official start of school in the first month.
Fang Beitong was invited to come, and Songhua Academy was very happy.
In the past, Songhua Academy often invited students who were admitted to the Imperial Academy or passed the exam to give lectures, but none of them were admitted to the military academy...
And Fang Beitong was still the first.
Therefore, there is still a lot of value for Fang Beitong to give lectures, especially since Fang Beitong is a person with both arts and sciences. He writes well and has excellent grades in science and engineering, which can effectively improve the quality of running the college.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, they can also take the opportunity to recruit a group of students this autumn and winter, and then ask the local gentry and the parents of those students to contribute a sum of money to build more and better school buildings, and invite teachers who understand Western learning to teach.
As long as the teachers and hardware facilities are in place, the qualifications for running a high school will be almost the same.
Since the Ministry of Rites and Education released the relevant plans for education reform through the Da Chu Di Newspaper, government-run schools have nothing to do with their Songhua Academy, but the content related to private schools has a lot to do with them.
The dean of Songhua Academy is also very ambitious. He not only wants to obtain the qualifications to run a junior high school, but also wants to get the qualifications to run a high school.
As long as they obtain the qualifications to run a high school, students who graduate from their high schools can directly take the joint entrance examination and apply for the two major military academies or the Imperial College, the Royal Institute of Technology, and several colleges and universities that are under preparation.
And you can also directly participate in the provincial examinations.
It's no longer the same as in the past. You have to take the exam to be a student member before you can be qualified to report, and then you have to pass the preliminary examination of the college examination before you can directly participate in the provincial life. It's very troublesome.
It's just that it's not easy to obtain the qualifications for running a private high school. In addition to relatively high requirements for hardware facilities, it also requires sufficient teaching staff.
Especially the teaching staff!
The hardware is nothing more than a school building. If this kind of thing is not extravagant and wasteful, the construction cost actually does not cost much. Not to mention that Songhua Academy is not a small family. In addition to tuition fees, the income is also With the donations from the gentry, I can't say that there is no shortage of money, but it will be easy to build a school building or something.
But the teachers are not easy to deal with!
There are not many people who know mathematics, physics and chemistry these days, and they are all in high demand. To grab people requires not only connections, but also good treatment.
In the earliest days, there were only a few people in the entire Chu Empire who knew mathematics, physics and chemistry, and most of them had only a passing knowledge of it. Basically, these people were recruited by the authorities to serve as the earliest teachers.
The follow-up is the science and engineering talents trained by the four major official academies. Needless to say, those from the two military academies have basically entered the military.
Those trained by the Royal Institute of Technology either stay at the school to teach, or they work in major enterprises under the Ministry of Industry. Well, they are all officials.
Those trained by the Imperial Academy also entered the officialdom and were assigned to serve in various departments according to their strengths.
In other words, regardless of whether they majored in science, engineering or pure liberal arts, the talents cultivated by the four major universities have basically become officials, and few have flowed into society.
And in this process, a group of self-study, mathematics, physics and chemistry talents trained in private academies have actually emerged... However, the level of these talents is relatively low, and many of them are at the scripted level.
However, even so, it is still very popular, and major academies and government-run middle schools are actively inviting students.
The existing teaching staff in Songhua Academy is quite good, but it is enough to apply for the qualifications to run a junior high school, but it is still a little short of a senior high school.
But now the price of new talents is getting higher day by day...
Government-run middle schools are okay, they can directly give you an official status, and you will have a rank as soon as you join the job. From then on, you will receive royal food. You may even have the opportunity to choose the level of the government-run school and directly enter the etiquette department/department of the local government.
This kind of treatment cannot be provided by private academies, so if they want high-quality talents, they can only spend money!
Since we have to spend money, we naturally have to raise the tuition fees and let the gentry sponsor some of it.
And if you want parents to pay for it and prestigious local gentry to sponsor it, the school's performance must not be bad.
And Fang Beitong is a very useful sign...
Songhua Academy invites parents who hope their children will succeed, and when it invites wealthy gentry to visit, they will point to Fang Beitong, who looks like a successful student and is teaching students, and say: "This is our academy's entrance exam this year." Students of the Army Officer Academy, tsk tsk, that’s the Army Officer Academy, and it’s even more difficult to pass the Jinshi exam!”
"In the future, he will retire midway. According to our current rules and follow-up arrangements, it will be excellent. It will be much smoother than taking the imperial examination!"
"If he is lucky, he can go on smoothly and become the first general or even a noble in our Songjiang Prefecture!"
After visiting the Wanli signboard, the dean will take the guests to the reception room and ask for help with all kinds of rhetoric...
In just a few months, Songhua Academy had raised more than 10,000 taels of sponsorship fees... In addition, more than 200 students were attracted to enroll, making another fortune from the tuition fees.
With the money in hand, Songhua Academy began to contact some teachers who had already been booked and poached them in various ways...
This made many people in other colleges feel itchy. Damn, this money is being spent too hard. They can't do it!
However, compared to other private academies that spent money, the recruitment of teachers for the first government-run high school in Jiangnan Province was much smoother.
They can't get many elites from the four major universities, but relying on their official status and salary, they can catch a handful of talents in society, and there are enough to choose from.
However, these mathematics, physics and chemistry talents in the society are far from satisfying Jiangnan High School. They want real experience, elites from the four major universities!
