Chapter 901 0896 [The education system of the Ming Dynasty takes shape]
There was no court meeting the next day, and Ju Ming was only an hour and a half late when he went to work.
When it was almost noon, Ju Ming saw a memorial and immediately said: "Call Huan Guo here and prepare an extra lunch."
When Huan Guo arrived at Chui Gong Hall, lunch had been prepared.
Ju Ming said: "Come and eat together."
"Thank you, Your Majesty, for the food." Huan Guo stepped forward.
The eunuch brought a chair and placed it next to the emperor's desk. The emperor and his ministers ate in front of a pile of memorials and documents.
Ju Ming asked: "Is the Xuedian problem so serious?"
Huan Guo said: "Many official schools were abolished at the end of the Song Dynasty. After the founding of the Ming Dynasty, they were restored one after another. Especially after the destruction of the Jin Dynasty, the number of official schools was restored even more. Now that Jiangxi's farmland has been completed, the country's academic fields can finally be fully counted. The situation
It’s really bad, and the imperial court must issue an edict to unify the governance.”
"It's okay. Catch some typical examples, confiscate their homes and exile them. Anyway, the border needs to replenish its population!" Zhu Ming nodded.
"Your Majesty, Holy Might!"
Huan Guo was extremely supportive of this, and he even hoped to kill a group of them.
This is because those who invade the school fields are powerful or wealthy people. Those guys themselves are not short of money and food, but they come to ruin the jobs of the scholars.
Damn it!
The Xuedian system in the Song Dynasty was established during the Qingli New Deal.
Official schools in various places are provided with land, usually 500 acres. Later it was increased to 1,000 acres, but many schools do not have that condition and still only have the original 500 acres. In some places that value education, the school land can reach 3,000 acres!
These fields are managed by schools and rented to farmers to collect food or money.
Since there is no need to pay taxes or perform corvee labor, it is very cost-effective for farmers to farm their fields. Principals often do not dare to do anything for the sake of reputation.
With the income from school fields in various places being supported, the imperial court did not have to worry so much about education funding.
The last education statistics of the Northern Song Dynasty were during the Daguan period of Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty: there were more than 160,000 official students in the country, more than 90,000 classrooms and dormitories, and more than 10 million acres of school land. The annual tuition fee was 3 million guan, and the school food was 640,000 yuan.
Stone (study money and food supplies include both tuition fees for self-financed students and income from school fields).
Huan Guo said: "The last statistics were from the Daguan period, but Cai Jing later made great efforts to run the school, and it reached its peak in the Zhenghe period. There were no exact statistics at that time, but according to my estimate, there were at least 200,000 official students during the Zhenghe period! That's a lot!
It is difficult to allocate land for newly built schools. In order to please Cai Jing, some officials cleverly seize people's land for school fields."
"There are 200,000 official students in the country. No wonder Cai Jing later abolished a large number of official schools." Zhu Ming could imagine the financial pressure at that time.
Huan Guo said: "If there is support from the school field, and some foreign students study at their own expense, the court actually does not need to allocate too much funding. However, the school land has been seriously occupied by ordinary households, and they use various means to farm the school land.
But they did not pay land rent to the school, nor did they pay land tax to the court. The professors at the school were unable to demand the teachings, and the local officials had nothing to do with them. The official schools in various places could only ask the court for money and food to run their schools."
"In addition, when Cai Jing abolished schools, local households took the opportunity to invade and occupy the school fields!"
"You really deserve to die!" Ju Ming spat.
In fact, there are very few wealthy families who have been scholarly for generations who occupy the school fields. Not only do they not occupy it, but they occasionally donate money to the school and even directly donate their property.
The main force that invades and occupies the school fields is those local tyrants.
Their family didn't have anyone who could be a high-ranking official, but through doing business, occupying land, mining, and colluding with officials, they became local snakes in the prefecture and county. The rich people didn't bother to deal with them, and the local officials didn't want to offend them. The school's land was occupied
You can only suffer the loss of being dumb.
Zhu Ming said: "The school land system in the former Song Dynasty must be reformed. According to the size of the school, the number of students, and the grade of the school, the school land quota for each official school should be formulated. It cannot be more or less, and it is not allowed to accept school land donations."
Huan Guo couldn't understand: "Why can't schools accept land donations? Isn't it a good thing that rich households support school running?"
Zhu Ming said: "The Ming Dynasty strictly inspected the land. It will be difficult for large households to send the land to temples and small people in the future. Moreover, after the land is divided into acres, labor money will be collected according to the land. The more land, the more taxes will be paid. It cannot be cheated.
If you send it to temples and temples, if you can’t send it to ordinary people, then someone must send it to the school instead!”
"How can it be like this?" Huan Guo was shocked.
He had also been a local official, but he had never encountered such an operation.
Because of the lax government management in the Northern Song Dynasty, the property could be easily sent to temples, temples, and ordinary people. There was no need to send it to schools to evade taxes—the schools were full of scholars, and this kind of thing could easily become known to everyone.
Ju Ming said: "Let's eat first."
Huan Guo started to pick up vegetables, but his mind was thinking about the sexy trick of sending farm property to the school.
The operation is very simple, and nothing needs to be changed. Large households only need to name their land under the name of the school, and they can perfectly avoid land tax and labor money.
If the principal is greedy for money, he will definitely be willing to cooperate when charging benefits. The principal can even gain a good reputation and political achievements. After all, under his management, local gentry actively "donate land" to the school.
Even more school fields are donated, more benefits are given to the principal, and big families can even arrange for their children to enroll in schools in violation of regulations!
This situation is not likely to happen, but it will definitely happen!
After grabbing a few more mouthfuls of food, Ju Ming said: "Order the government schools across the country to conduct self-examinations and report the number of school fields. After formulating new standards for school fields, the local government will redistribute them. The excess school fields will be sold to the original tenants at a low price, and the insufficient school fields will be found.
Supplement. If a local official discovers someone who has secretly sent someone to the school or occupied the school, he can arrest him and take him to the court, and he will be tried by the police. If he should confiscate his property, he should be exiled. The local official can gain political achievements! One year later, I will send the censor to conduct random inspections.
.”
"The official is a wise man." Huan Guo used his chopsticks to flatter him.
Zhu Ming said: "Scholars from all over the country, if they have financial difficulties, can go to the county school without taking the exam. Scholars from all over the country, if there are financial difficulties, can go to the state government school without taking the exam. They can study in the official school for a maximum of three years. Those who fail after the deadline will automatically
Drop out of school.”
Official schools provide free accommodation, free meals, and free tuition, which is very helpful for students from ordinary families.
Of course, there are also self-financed students with a fixed quota, and tuition, food, and accommodation are still very expensive.
The teaching quality of official schools is often not as good as that of private schools and academies of wealthy families.
To put it bluntly, public schools are not as good as private schools (village schools and social studies are not included).
Therefore, truly wealthy people will not covet the free benefits of government schools. The teaching level there is not as good as their own, and the food there is too bad to be used to, so they cannot afford to compete with poor students for free places.
The current school system of Ming Dynasty is as follows:
Official schools (public schools): primary schools (elementary schools), county schools, state schools, imperial schools, as well as various technical schools such as military schools and medical schools.
Private school (private school): village school, social school (community school), private school (family school), library (family school), academy (large private school with open enrollment).
Students in public schools at all levels can voluntarily participate in traditional imperial examinations. They can also advance to higher schools step by step and participate in system-based subjects that recruit professional talents.
Zhu Ming carefully looked through the statistics of the Ministry of Rites and found that the number of official students in the Ming Dynasty was far less than that during the Huizong period of the Song Dynasty.
There are about 60,000 primary school students in the country, about 40,000 county students, about 20,000 prefectural students, and about 3,000 Tai students. The total number is more than 120,000, which is not as good as the more than 160,000 in the early years of Song Huizong's administration, let alone before Cai Jing abolished schools.
of 200,000 people.
There are also more than 6,000 students from military, medical, shipbuilding, smelting and other specialized fields.
The vast majority of students in Daming are actually studying in private schools!
According to Ju Ming's idea, about 12 million acres of land would be allocated for school fields, which was slightly more than during the peak period of the Northern Song Dynasty.
This kind of school field system seems difficult for the court to manage directly, but it is actually more practical than all funds being allocated by the court. It can effectively reduce corruption in education funds!
The principals of county schools and above are all Jinshi, and the school's property has no other property except academic fields. Once the principal is too corrupt, the students will not be able to afford food, and if it gets too big, the future will be ruined.
The students at this time were not so easy to get rid of, and all of them were real scholars.
In another time and space, the Ming Dynasty also had a school field system.
However, there are only 500,000 acres of academic land nationwide, which is only a fraction of the academic land in the Northern Song Dynasty. Therefore, in the Ming Dynasty, most of the land was allocated by local governments.
But how can local governments honestly allocate funds for education?
In the end, the official school system of the Ming Dynasty existed in name only. Although there were a large number of students in county schools and government schools, they only had one name. They usually did not come to class, and only the local students went to receive rice on time.
Even the Imperial College of the Ming Dynasty existed in name only, and none of its students attended school. Most of the Imperial College teachers were appointed as civil servants, and they only thought about how to take the imperial examination all day long.
Although the imperial examination system of the Northern Song Dynasty was not perfect, the educational system of the Northern Song Dynasty designed by Fan Zhongyan, Wang Anshi, and Cai Jing was far superior to that of the Ming and Qing Dynasties in another time and space.
Ju Ming will naturally inherit and improve the good system.
There was the imperial examination reform before, and now there is the academic field reform. The education and imperial examination system of the Ming Dynasty has basically been finalized.
Ju Ming thought about it carefully: "Issuing another decree: Those who occupy academic fields will be charged with a third-level crime more serious than those who occupy civilian fields. Those who collude with others to usurp academic fields and professors will be dismissed from office and handed over to a judge for conviction. From now on, write this decree
Enter the "Da Ming Law"."
The imperial minister wrote it down and asked the Tongzheng Yuan to draft the edict and submit it to the Ministry of Punishment.
Huan Guo accompanied the emperor to finish lunch and left happily.
Ju Ming got up and took a walk to eat, thinking about increasing the number of junior colleges.
Officers, doctors, scientists, agriculturists, engineers...these are not in sufficient numbers and need to be cultivated more.
Of course, the finances may not be able to sustain it, so we have to control it at a certain level.
But even if a junior college is not free, it cannot charge too high a tuition fee. This is because the really wealthy families will definitely take the imperial examinations, while the families who are willing to attend a junior college do not have much money.
Although Ju Ming has quotas for Jinshi and candidates for junior college students every year, these quotas cannot be set too many, otherwise it will arouse opposition from traditional scholars.
Alas, governing a big country is like cooking a small dish, and the heat is really difficult to control.
When Ju Ming ordered the country to clean up the school fields, Annan's Queen Mother Du finally came to Beijing.
Zhu Guoxiang deliberately avoided suspicion and had no contact with court officials, so he still doesn't know that the new concubine he wants to take is a queen mother...
