Chapter 934 This is the vitality

Zhu Yijun and his delegation visited Baiyun Lake Middle School and No. 1 Primary School. The two schools are connected and share a large playground.

School went on as normal today. Most students were in the classroom and the sound of reading aloud could be heard from every classroom.

“Man is born good.”

“The solitary smoke is straight in the desert, and the sun sets over the long river.”

“The tadpole is looking for its mother. It turns out that the frog is the tadpole’s mother.”

The children’s reading voices drifted in the wind, strung together into strings of light and shadows by the sunlight, passing through the swaying leaves of poplar and elm trees.

Zhu Yijun held his breath, turned around, raised his finger, put it to his mouth, and hushed to everyone, signaling them not to make loud noises.

When going upstairs, Zhu Yijun walked cautiously and tiptoed.

Others also followed his example and were very careful when going up and down the stairs, for fear of making any noise and disturbing the sound of people reading.

They looked like a group of foxes coming to steal eggs. Wang Xuecheng, Yu Dafu and others found it funny and a little touching.

Standing in the corridor, you can hear the teachers giving lectures.

“Song of Water Melody. When Will the Bright Moon Appear?” This poem is a masterpiece by Su Shi, a famous writer, painter, calligrapher and politician in the early Song Dynasty. People in the Song Dynasty commented that after Su Shi wrote “Song of Water Melody”, all other Mid-Autumn poems were abandoned.”

“A square is a special kind of rectangle. The perimeter of a rectangle is equal to the sum of its four sides. So what is its area? Yes, it is equal to the length multiplied by the width.”

“Respecting the old and loving the young is a fine virtue of the Chinese nation.”

Zhu Yijun walked past the classroom window, his eyes sweeping across the childish faces that were full of thirst for knowledge. The sunlight shone through the glass window onto them, casting circles of halos.

Without saying a word along the way, Zhu Yijun looked at all the classrooms, then stood on the top floor of the teaching building, on the fourth-floor corridor, looking at the playground below.

In the southeast corner is the basketball court, where a group of children are playing basketball and chattering non-stop.

In the southwest corner is a volleyball court, where a group of children are playing volleyball. Their movements are not very good, and they spend less time playing than picking up the balls, but they never get tired of it.

In the middle is a miniature football field. A dozen children are running around a football, raising dust and scattered grass.

The cheerful calls and laughter are especially clear in the sunshine and breeze, like wind chimes.

As the rubber industry became increasingly mature, football was rapidly updated, and basketball and volleyball were soon introduced, becoming a favorite sport among the masses in the military, schools, factories, mines, farms and other places.

At the same time, you can also see children, both boys and girls, running happily.

Farms and factories of the Agricultural Reclamation Bureau were ahead of the curve in this regard. From primary school to junior high school, all boys and girls were co-ed to avoid wasting teaching resources. Only in high school, when people were more concerned, did they start to separate, either in separate girls’ schools or in separate classes for boys and girls, with separate education.

However, after completing the “free” compulsory education, girls rarely take the entrance exam for high school, which requires their families to pay for tuition and living expenses. Even if they continue their studies, they are mostly admitted to nursing schools or normal schools with separate classes for boys and girls.

On the contrary, universities do not take many measures to distinguish between men and women, because basically, most of the people who are admitted to universities are already married.

If you mess around, it will be considered adultery and the law will punish you severely.

Zhu Yijun looked up for a while, nodded, turned around, went down the teaching building, crossed the playground, and went to visit the student cafeteria.

He went straight into the cafeteria kitchen and looked at all the ingredients carefully before turning to Wang Xuecheng, Yu Dafu and others.

“The hygiene of the canteen is of utmost importance. It is a matter of life and death. The government health and epidemic prevention bureau cannot come to inspect every day. You must remember your responsibilities.

If anything happens to any student, you are the first person responsible. The people will not forgive you, and I will not forgive you either!”

“I’ll remember that.” Wang Xuecheng and others responded hurriedly and respectfully.

Zhu Yijun also inspected the student dormitories and teacher dormitories, which looked clean and tidy.

“Your Majesty, in accordance with the Ministry of Rites’ educational guidelines, we have invited nearby guard sergeants and officers to provide military training to students and teachers. Housekeeping is one of the tasks.”

“Well, the students here are all farm kids, but what about the teachers?”

“Your Majesty, we have a total of 82 teachers in Baiyun Lake Middle School, No. 1 Primary School, and No. 2 Primary School, 65 of whom graduated from Jinan Normal School and Shandong No. 1 Normal School.

There are also thirteen people who graduated from high school and passed the teacher examination, and four people who graduated from Shandong Normal University.

One third of the teachers of the first and second primary schools will be exchanged every year. The middle school will also rotate with the primary school every three years, strictly in accordance with the regulations of the Ministry of Rites and Education. “

Daming Normal School is similar to a technical secondary school. You can apply for it after graduating from junior high school. It is a vocational education school like a technical school.

Normal colleges belong to higher vocational education. High school graduates can apply for admission, and students from normal schools can also apply. Outstanding graduates will be directly admitted. It is one level lower than normal universities.

Each province has a separate special examination for the provincial examination, called the examination for recruiting primary and secondary school teachers.

High school students, normal school graduates and above can apply for the exam, and the admission rate is very high, especially graduates from normal schools, normal colleges and universities who are given extra points. As long as they can pass the graduation exam, they can basically pass the teacher recruitment exam and become a government-paid teacher.

In the new official system of the Ming Dynasty, teachers were called civil servants who were treated as civil servants. To put it simply, they were fully funded public servants and were included in the Ministry of Revenue’s annual salary appropriation budget for public servants.

However, their specific organization is not under the jurisdiction of the Guanglu Temple, but of the Ministry of Rites.

Guanglu Temple only controls a total number. For example, how many primary and secondary schools there are in Shandong Province, how many students there are, and how many teacher quotas there are.

The Guanglu Temple is only responsible for ensuring that the number of quotas in Shandong does not exceed so many. It has no control over how many teachers there are in a specific place or what their levels are.

It is only responsible for cooperating with the Ministry of Revenue to control the total personnel salary expenses of the court.

Therefore, many students know that their grades are average in junior high school and their chances of getting into high school are slim, so they simply apply to technical schools such as normal colleges and directly enter vocational education to get a job first.

In the education sequence of the Ming Dynasty, from low to high, there are primary school, high primary school, and junior high school, all of which belong to national education and are compulsory education that we are striving to achieve.

Then the first stream went to technical schools, which were vocational education, and the second stream went to high schools. In the Ming Dynasty today, high schools were not part of national education, but preparatory education for higher education.

Further up is higher vocational education and higher level higher education.

After listening to Wang Xuecheng’s explanation, Zhu Yijun nodded and asked again: “Just now I heard you say that the total population of Baiyun Lake Farm is 7,957, and the number of students in Baiyun Lake Junior High School is 717. So how many students are there in the first and second primary schools?”

“In reply to the emperor, there are 691 students in the first elementary school and 584 in the second elementary school.”

“There are 717 junior high school students, accounting for 9 percent of the total population. There are 1,275 primary school students, accounting for 16 percent of the total population.

If you add the children aged zero to five, there are probably 1,200 people.”

At this time, a deputy farm manager said, “Your Majesty, we have 1,432 children aged 0 to 5 at Baiyun Lake Farm.”

Yu Dafu quickly explained: “Deputy Director You is in charge of sanitation and epidemic prevention at our farm. He also serves as the director of the farm clinic.”

Zhu Yijun nodded, “Children and teenagers aged 0 to 15, totaling 3,434 people, accounting for 43% of the total population of the farm.

Well, this is what we call vibrant and prosperous! Deputy Director You, you have made an indelible contribution!”

Deputy Director You was so happy that his legs went limp.

“Keep up your efforts!”

After visiting Baiyun Lake Primary School, Zhu Yijun was about to leave the school gate. He turned around, looked back at the campus that looked like a painting in the sun, and sighed.

“Everyone, the future and hope of the Ming Dynasty lies here! They are the rising sun of the Ming Dynasty!”

On the way to the farmers’ houses, Zhu Yijun said to Xu Zhenming, Zhang Siwei and other cabinet members: “Farms, like factories and mines, have very high rates of children going to school. We also saw it today. It has almost reached 100%.

But this is not the case in towns and villages, especially in rural areas, where the primary school enrollment rate is less than 40%, and not all children, but only boys.

The Cabinet has a long way to go in terms of universal compulsory education.”

Zhu Yijun attached great importance to the compulsory education he proposed, and the ministers knew this.

They also knew that the emperor attached so much importance to universal compulsory education. In addition to the development of productivity such as the Industrial Revolution, it required a large number of workers and farmers with certain knowledge and culture. There was another point that everyone knew tacitly.

The emperor wants to break the monopoly of knowledge that has existed for the past two or three thousand years.

Led by Wang Xuecheng, Yu Dafu and others, the group came to where the farm workers lived.

There are four rows of bungalows, with about forty households.

Each household has four or three rooms, with a kitchen on the left, a toilet and a pigpen on the right, a small yard in front, a pressurized well in the corner of the kitchen, and a small vegetable garden at the back.

Each house is surrounded by a low fence covered with vines and green leaves.

The dug ditches circle around the residential area, and field roads more than one meter wide crisscross.

“Your Majesty, gentlemen, this is the first group of the seventh production team of Baiyun Lake Farm.”

Wang Xuecheng pointed to this residential area and introduced it.

“Our farm follows the emperor’s instructions in the first year of the Wanli reign regarding the reclamation and construction of agriculture, animal husbandry, fishery and forestry, and has fully implemented the household responsibility system.

Each household contracted a certain number of acres of farmland from the farm according to the amount of labor they had, and signed a contract for a period of thirty years. When the term expires, if both parties have no objection, it can be automatically renewed for another twenty years, and it can be extended indefinitely.

Wang Xuecheng pointed to the lake in the distance and said, “There is a pond over there, which belongs to the seventh production team. The team members built a pond with a radius of two miles there, and installed a fence in the middle, so that water can pass through, but fish cannot.

It’s specifically for fish farming.”

He pointed to a stretch of rice fields that stretched as far as the eye could see behind the residential area.

It is spring now. The ridges of the fields are covered with green grass, and on them are colorful, star-like flowers, which frame the fields like beautiful mirror frames.

There are countless swaying black shadows in the framed fields.

Some were driving oxen to plow the fields, while others were bending over to plant rice seedlings.

“Your Majesty, gentlemen, that area is the Seventh Production Team.”

Zhu Yijun and everyone else looked into the distance and vaguely heard someone singing. The singing voice drifted over with the wind, like willow catkins.

“The girl from the east wants to go to the west, and the woman from the north goes to the south”

“What a pastoral poem.” One attendant sighed, “It’s just that this folk song is a bit vulgar.”

“That’s because you don’t have to work in the fields. If you had to work in the fields, you wouldn’t be in such a good mood to say this after working all day.”

Zhu Yijun’s words made everyone laugh.

Zhang Siwei’s eyes turned, and he immediately agreed: “Your Majesty is right. The so-called elegance and vulgarity are actually the difference between the virtual and the real.

We stand by the fields, without getting our legs dirty and our fingers touching the water, and we can naturally utter elegant words like pastoral poetry.

But if one stands in the mud, bends over all day, faces the ground and back to the sky, and works hard, he will not be able to utter such elegant words. He can only sing some vulgar words to find joy in suffering and to dispel fatigue.

Your Majesty, I think this is not vulgarity, this is simplicity, returning to the original nature, this is the real elegance!”

Zhu Yijun pointed at him and laughed: “Mr. Feng Pan has understood it very thoroughly!”

Zhang Siwei’s face was smiling as brightly as the wild flowers on the distant field.

(End of this chapter)