"When Wang Mang became the prime minister, he wanted to impress the people, so he established Piyong. Because he usurped the throne, he moved to Hai Nei Bank." [Hanshu·Liyuezhi]
"Since you moved the capital, Your Majesty has been heartbroken to see the country abolishing the teachings of students and the family's efforts to encourage learning. Therefore, when the court was in difficulty, he resolutely reopened the Imperial College and revived its flagging business. He did not hesitate to allocate millions to the Imperial College every year.
The money, the library, books, and bedding are all provided, and additional money is given to help the poor students to study." Zhao Wen first expressed his gratitude to the emperor, and then said slowly: "Your Majesty is so worried about the students.
There are very few gentlemen who come and go, so how come there are not more people seeking to learn? On the contrary, there are still people who are afraid of not being able to do so."
Chen Ji's face darkened. How come he still didn't understand what the other party meant? Zhao Wen was clearly instructed by the emperor to reform the Taixue admissions method after reforming the five subjects of Taixue!
Sure enough, just listen to Zhao Wen continue to say
"I think the root cause of this is the way to enter Taixue." Seeing Chen Ji's face gradually becoming serious, Zhao Wen couldn't help but tone his voice a lot more serious, no longer politely treating the other party as a senior.
, celebrity, but it has the meaning of senior officials instructing juniors: "His Majesty once said before that Taixue should be 'to solve the difficulties of people's livelihood and educate the world's talents'. How could we first take this path of selecting students further?"
What's the reason for being narrower? Mr. Chen is too ordinary, so he should relieve your worries."
After Zhao Wen finished speaking, he glanced at the emperor again. At this time, the emperor finished drinking the tea in the lacquer bowl, nodded slightly, and seemed to be very satisfied with the bowl of tea soup.
Seeing that the other party was silent, Chen Ji also knew that it was his turn to speak. He pondered for a long time and said cautiously: "Since Emperor Xiaowu founded the Imperial Academy, in the past four hundred years, although its scale has changed many times, the way to enroll has not changed.
, but it is passed down from generation to generation like a firewood. What Sikong Shicai said is nothing more than that many people who are aspiring scholars take the initiative to submit themselves to the Imperial College. However, the imperial court has this example, and it seems inappropriate to change the method of admission."
For a long time, Taixue has indeed allowed students to recommend themselves to the family. On the surface, family background is not valued, but in fact, during the review, family background and knowledge are still used as the judging criteria. How can ordinary ordinary people compare with others in knowledge?
It's natural to turn them away.
The sons of scholars are scholars, and the sons of common people are common people. Even if there are a few humble students from humble family backgrounds who are lucky enough to get into the eyes of celebrities and nobles because of their character, studiousness, and luck, and are able to change their entire life, they are rare.
A flash in the pan.
From the Western Han Dynasty to the present, class mobility has become increasingly rigid. The emperor is not willing to see Taixue become a scholar's Taixue, so he naturally has to make changes in the root of enrollment: "Of course I know that there are many ways to enroll in Taixue, such as local prefectures and states.
You can recommend talented people of the right age for admission. Even Mr. Chen, as Tai Chang, you can personally select those who are over 18 years old and have good appearance as a doctoral disciple. Mr. Zhao did this before."
Seeing the emperor mentioning this matter, Zhao Wen was immediately flattered and thanked him in panic: "At that time, I only relied on justice and did not dare to show any partiality. I recommended more than 20 doctorate disciples to the country, all of whom were virtuous at the time and dared to serve the public.
"Jian."
Before the death of former Situ Zhao Qian, in order to obtain Zhao Qian's full support for the salt and iron franchise, in exchange for benefits, the emperor promoted Zhao Wen to serve as Taichang. Not only did he let him preside over the reconstruction of Taixue from scratch,
He branded it Zhao Wen, and even tacitly allowed him to bring more than twenty of his own disciples into the Imperial College. Although the results have not been seen yet, three years later, the first batch of Imperial College students will be promoted to officials, and Zhao Wen
A huge harvest is about to come.
"I didn't say anything about you, but you are quick to defend yourself." The emperor put the tea bowl on the table and saw that the warm tea on Zhao Wen's table had not been moved, so he stretched out his finger and said as if it was a joke: "Your Majesty made a mistake.
, you will be punished by drinking it.”
Zhao Wen breathed a sigh of relief and drank all the tea in the bowl very simply.
His tacit cooperation with the emperor just now was undoubtedly for Chen Ji, the current Taichang. The method of recruiting students to the Imperial College must be modified. As for Taichang, he can select students by himself, and even use his status as his immediate superior to influence
Whether or not Taixue's rules should be changed is a matter of choice.
As expected, Chen Ji hesitated. He did not enter the court just to be a noble idler, but the emperor obviously wanted to use his reputation and status as Taichang to reduce the resistance to the reform of Taixue enrollment. Is this deal worth it?
Value, he was still weighing it.
The emperor smiled and said calmly: "Taichang selects doctoral students, the prefecture recommends high-quality talents, and allows self-recommendation. I have no intention of abolishing these. It is just to determine the amount of those recommended by the prefecture. It is best to compare it with the promotion of various places.
According to the rules of Xiaolian, as for Taichang, whether he is Chen Gong or after Chen Gong, the number will be twenty."
These were just trivial details that did not touch the core that needed to be changed. Chen Ji had a vague decision in his mind, but he still shrewdly refused to bring it up. Instead, he returned the topic to the emperor: "I promise, I just follow the instructions.
This solution does not seem to be able to solve the problem of not increasing the number of people studying. Should we look for another method?"
It's funny to say that when Chen Ji was the minister, he never spoke like this to Emperor Xiaoling. Now when facing the young man in front of him, he actually lowered his attitude and said such words.
The emperor had seen a lot, and his expression was relaxed and comfortable. He seemed not to worry about what unexpected words Chen Ji would say. His eyes seemed to have penetrated the gauze curtain in front of him, looking directly at the vast Cangchi, and his thoughts were boundless.
thinking.
At the very beginning, because the descendants of officials and nobles in the early Western Han Dynasty had other more convenient ways to enter the officialdom, they did not care about the Imperial College, which was still a new thing at that time. Therefore, they were selected through recommendation by the county and the state, self-recommendation, etc.
Tai students are mostly civilians and rarely have official backgrounds. It is a relatively fair and smooth promotion channel for people at the bottom.
At this time, Taixue also adopted these methods. If this relative fairness had been maintained, the emperor would not have bothered to change it. But who allowed this approach to happen when Emperor Xiaoping, that is, Wang Mang was in power.
Deterioration.
In order to please the intellectuals and powerful bureaucrats at that time, Wang Mang deliberately increased the number of Taixue students, so that the children of scholars could directly enter Taixue and pursue careers, which set a precedent for the children of aristocratic bureaucrats to enter Taixue without taking the examination. Later, the Guangwu Zhongxing and the selection of Taixue
The method was expanded on the basis of inheriting Wang Mang's reform, and developed to the point where all generals with as low as six hundred stones could send their sons to study.
In addition, famous scholars in the field can also make it easy for others to enter Taixue through evaluation and recommendation. This resulted in the number of Taixue as many as 30,000 in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. As for the pre-school ability test, it did not matter whether it was possible or not.
The consequences of this are that, firstly, Imperial College was completely out of the control of the imperial power from the source of students to the running of the school, which eventually led to several major "snow tides" and "party bans" during the reign of Emperor Xiaohuan, which had far-reaching consequences.
, the establishment of Hongdu School was also eager to kick out Taixue and regain the right to speak.
Another negative consequence is the practice of "study tours" and the recommendation of "celebrities", resulting in a mixed bag of imperial students who patronize "recommended masters" and associate with classmates, resulting in a decline in the quality of education. In the late Eastern Han Dynasty, there were more than 30,000 imperial students who were truly useful to the court.
But not many.
"Nowadays, it's not that there aren't more people studying, it's that the paths for selecting talents for the Imperial Academy seem to be many, but in fact they are getting narrower and narrower. As a result, the poor and poor people have no way to study and no way to serve the country. The only way is now.