The imperial examination and educational reforms in the Chu Empire started almost simultaneously.
In terms of education, the Chu Empire has begun to implement large-scale government-run education, striving to establish a three-year government-run elementary school in every town, a three-year higher primary school in every county, and then each prefecture. To have a middle school, every province must have a senior high school.
These are the minimum requirements. In fact, more schools can be opened in places with larger populations and better economic conditions.
For example, Jiangnan Province has a large population and a relatively good reading atmosphere. Therefore, it is far from enough to have only one three-year primary school in one county.
Taking Suzhou Prefecture in Jiangnan Province as an example, each county under it has more than five primary schools. At the same time, Suzhou Prefecture also has three junior high schools. In addition, there is also a senior high school directly under the jurisdiction of Suzhou Prefecture.
Similar situations also occur in other places with larger populations and better economies.
After several years of deliberation and pilot reforms, the Dachu Empire has now fully launched a new education system.
There are already many professional four-year universities.
Although these new schools are still very immature and the teachers in them are actually not very good, they have finally made a good start.
Not only government-run schools, but also private schools that have been reviewed and run according to the new academic system.
At the same time as the new education system, the imperial examination system was reformed.
Because when the Chu Empire promoted the new education system, it also promoted the unified college entrance examination, high school entrance examination system and academic qualification system.
For example, the previous joint examination of four schools was the college entrance examination system implemented by the Da Chu Empire. In the eight years since Chengshun, the joint examination of four schools will become the joint examination of seventeen schools.
Many four-year colleges and three-year normal colleges in the Da Chu Empire will also start recruiting students this year. Together with the original four schools, they will form a seventeen-school joint examination.
By the ninth year of Chengshun, there will be more than 40 colleges and universities participating in the joint entrance examination.
With the unification of the high school and college entrance examinations, the new education system has taken shape, and the imperial examinations have been comprehensively reformed, it has become natural for academic qualifications to replace merit.
For this reason, the Dachu Empire had already carried out small-scale imperial examination reforms before.
Of course, this reform does not directly abolish the imperial examination, but moves the imperial examination closer to the civil service examination.
For example, the college examination was transformed into an examination for recruiting officials at the county and town levels, the township examination was transformed into an examination for recruiting officials at the provincial and prefecture-level yamen, and the general examination was directly transformed into an examination for recruiting new officials from various agencies in the capital.
These measures have been pretty good in the past few years, and by next year, the Chu Empire will be ready to fully roll out and complete the final imperial examination reform.
According to the proposed reform plan for the imperial examination, in the future, those who passed the imperial examination in the Great Chu Empire would be directly admitted as officials.
In the new imperial examination, there are still branch examinations, provincial examinations and general examinations.
Examinations at all levels are not subordinate to each other, and there is no distinction between high and low.
The examinations at all levels are only used to distinguish the work organizations after passing the examination.
Those who pass the mid-level examination will be assigned to county and town grassroots yamen; those who pass the township examination will be assigned to provincial and prefecture-level yamen; those who pass the general examination will be assigned to various ministries and yamen in Gyeonggi Province.
However, all candidates who take the test will only be awarded the ninth grade, and they must start from the lowest level. Of course, the speed of promotion will still be very different in the future.
The college examination is only limited to candidates from this province, the provincial examination is only limited to candidates from this province, and the general examination is only applicable to candidates from all over the country.
Jobs are assigned after passing the examination by avoiding relatives and assigning in different places. In principle, those who have passed the college examination will be assigned across prefectures; those who have passed the rural examination will be assigned across provinces; relatives cannot be assigned in the same area.
Candidates who are candidates for the joint examination are not subject to the principle of remote distribution because they work in Gyeonggi Province, but they are not allowed to be in the same department as close relatives.
To apply for the new imperial examination, new academic qualifications are required.
For the time being, the college examination requires a junior high school diploma.
The provincial examination requires a high school diploma.
A college degree is required for the general examination.
As education continues to develop in the future, the corresponding academic requirements will continue to increase.
Taking into account that there are still a group of scholars with fame among the people, this group of scholars with fame will also be awarded different academic qualifications. Ordinary students will be awarded a junior high school diploma, Linshan students will be awarded a senior middle school diploma, and candidates will be awarded a college degree.
These people were limited to students admitted by the Chu Empire between the first year of Chengshun and the eighth year of Chengshun, excluding students admitted by the previous Ming Dynasty.
In addition, nine years after Chengshun, the new imperial examinations of the Da Chu Empire will no longer grant the old titles, but the old titles can still be used.
Well, basically only the name is left.
Folk scholars would not have any objections to this. After all, fame was nothing special in the Great Chu Empire. As for not kneeling when meeting officials, the Great Chu Empire had already begun to abolish kneeling on a large scale.
The real role of fame is to participate in higher-level imperial examinations and then become an official. But this was in the Ming Dynasty... and in the Chu Empire... Basically, as long as you pass the examination as a scholar, you can He became an official directly, even though he was just a junior clerk from the ninth grade.
Only some ambitious scholars, even after passing the scholar examination, did not become officials. Instead, they continued to apply for the provincial examination and finally the national examination, just to rise to the top in one step.
Therefore, among the people of the Da Chu Empire, there are actually not many scholars who have honorary titles but are not officials. But even if there are not many, the Department of Etiquette and Education of the Da Chu Empire still takes them into consideration and makes appropriate arrangements. Not only do they retain In addition, they were granted different academic qualifications according to their merits, so that if they wanted to take part in the imperial examinations in the future, they would not be able to register...
This series of imperial examination reform measures have been piloted and brewed by the Chu Empire in the past few years, but now, it is finally time to fully roll them out.
In late November of the eighth year of Chengshun, the latest issue of the Dachu Empire's Dibao officially announced the reform of the new imperial examination system, and detailed the reform content in the Dachu Dibao and distributed it to all parts of the country, so that people can The students learned.
The issuance of the new imperial examination naturally caused quite a stir, and there were also voices of opposition, but it was not too big, at least it did not cause too much trouble.
Because... no matter how it is changed, the core of the imperial examination remains the same, which is to select candidates for the country.
The reason why the imperial examination reform in the late Qing Dynasty failed so much was because it directly abolished the imperial examination, but there was no corresponding civil service examination to keep up with it. The subsequent selection of officials mainly relied on study tours to select officials...well, that is, they were selected from overseas students. It's just donations, recommendations, etc.
At that time, if an ordinary young man wanted to be an official, he could only study abroad... So in just a few years in the late Qing Dynasty, tens of thousands of students went to study abroad. Because it was cheap to study in Japan, most of them went to Japan. In Japan, most of these people eventually became revolutionary parties...
The reform of the imperial examination in the late Qing Dynasty was a typical failure in which one shot oneself in the foot.
If you prevent young scholars from becoming officials, then they will have to rebel...
As for the imperial examination reform of the Great Chu Empire, although the external form changed, the main changes were the system and examination content. However, the core point of selecting candidates for the country remained unchanged.
As long as these core things remain unchanged, in fact, most scholars will complain a few words, but they will still adapt to the changes obediently.
As long as you can be an official, you can say anything!
Therefore, although the implementation of the new imperial examination in the Da Chu Empire caused certain waves, these waves were under control and did not cause too much negative reaction.
Of course, it is not without impact. The actual impact is quite large. The most obvious one is that more and more people are applying for various primary and secondary schools.
In the past, many people, especially those who were relatively successful in studies, studied at home and then took the imperial examination to become officials.
But now, if you want to take the imperial examination, you must first have an academic degree...
Therefore, in order to participate in the new imperial examination, they had to apply for these schools and get a high school diploma.
This is what the Ministry of Ethics and Education hopes to see. What they want is for more students to experience a complete new education, instead of just hiding away and reading the Four Books and Five Classics as in the past.
The waves caused by the new education reform of the Chu Empire almost occupied the last one or two months of the eight years of Chengshun in the Chu Empire.
It was not until nine years after Chengshun that this discussion gradually subsided, and people began to get used to it and go to new schools in accordance with the requirements of the new imperial examination.
When Luo Zhixue saw that the enrollment numbers in government-run middle schools and even primary schools had increased significantly this spring, he smiled slightly. This was a good thing.
In a few more years, this new education system will be complete.
After putting down the report from the Ministry of Rites and Education, Luo Zhixue picked it up again, again from the Ministry of Rites and Education, but it was a report from the Department of Domain Affairs.
The power of the Ministry of Rites and Education was quite large in the Chu Empire. It was in charge of education, etiquette, publicity, and vassal affairs.
That’s why people from the Ministry of Ethics and Education have just finished talking about education, and then talk about diplomacy...
This report sent by the Domain Affairs Department is still about the negotiations between the Heshuote Department and some local chieftains in the plateau area.
According to the report from the Domain Affairs Department, they have reached a consensus with the Heshuo Special Department. The general direction has basically been agreed upon, and now all they need to discuss are the small details.
The general direction of the negotiations between the two parties is no different from the previously finalized plan. The main thing is that the Heshuote Department accepts the canonization of the Great Chu Empire, becomes a vassal state of the Great Chu Empire, and fully accepts the guidance of the Great Chu Empire in politics and military affairs. , and subsequently sent troops to the Western Regions together with the Great Chu Empire, and after seizing the pasture of the Zhungeer tribe, the Heshuote Kingdom moved to the Zhungeer pasture.
Before sending troops to Zhungeer, the Heshuote tribe temporarily moved to the Qinghai area, which was the pasture of the Tumut Qinghai tribe for grazing life, and cooperated with the Great Chu Empire to fully take over Kham and the snowy areas.
At the same time, the two parties will get married, and the Heshuote Ministry will send several legitimate daughters to the Dachu Palace.
Well, there are only unilateral marriages, and there is no situation where the royal family of the Dachu Empire marries a daughter to the Heshuote tribe... On the one hand, there are no princesses of the right age in the Dachu Empire, and on the other hand, Luo Zhixue is crazy. Marrying his own daughter to a foreign race... and what's more, she is a strange foreign race in which the father is dead, the son is stepmother, and the brother is dead brother and step-sister-in-law.
Besides, it is just a so-called marriage now. With the appetite of the Chu Empire, how many years the Heshuote tribe can exist is another matter. As long as they surrender now, there will be ways and time for them to fully integrate into the Chu Empire in the future. Just like Monan Mongolia.
