The Revolt of the Three Feudatories: All-in at the start in Beijing

Chapter 156 Tianjin Prefecture New-Style School

After Tianjin was designated as the capital of the Han Dynasty, the original small garrison town seemed as insignificant as a strong man compared to a child in the face of the new city.

The new Tianjin city had no city walls; instead, residences were built along the river, and the population reached 180,000.

Furthermore, the population continues to increase, absorbing all the landless people from the surrounding areas of Hebei.

This place practically monopolized the production of winter and summer uniforms for the entire Han army, as well as fur coats, combat boots and belts, and red-tasseled helmets.

In fact, there is still a lot of land in Hebei, but Liu Mu did not develop it at all. He only preserved the land owned by the gentry and rich peasants from the late Ming Dynasty for the common people to cultivate.

To keep the people from finding out, Liu Mu specially sent people to fence off the farmland that wasn't exactly wasteland to raise horses.

As for why this is the case.

I haven't seen so much land on the frontier, but no people have migrated there to cultivate it. If they knew there was land right at their doorstep, who would be willing to travel across mountains and rivers to the frontier?

However, even though they are both acquiring land, their purposes are different!

Liu Mu soon arrived at the seaside. There were three places nearby: the Great Han Military Academy, a modern school, and the Tianjin Garrison.

There stood a college, covering an area of ​​more than a hundred football fields, right by the sea, in what will later become the Tianjin Binhai New Area, roughly one-tenth the size of Tsinghua University.

This area used to be farmland, planted with wheat, but now it has all been filled in, and more than a hundred houses have been built on top, most of them three stories high.

The roofs are all made of wood, the main body is made of earthen bricks, and they are arranged in a circle, similar to the Hakka Tulou in Fujian.

A circular building has more than 100 rooms, each room can accommodate seven or eight people, and the key is that it is warm in winter and cool in summer.

As for cement, Datong is already in production, but the college is a slow-growing sector, so it's far from being a top contender.

Around the Tulou were factory-like schools, each capable of accommodating 300 students. There were ten large buildings in total, accommodating a total of 3,000 students.

The main reason for its construction is that there are too few teachers to provide adequate support.

Because the teachers in the new-style schools learn a wide variety of things, the current teachers are all given official positions of the seventh rank in the Han Dynasty.

However, before taking office, they all had to study these miscellaneous subjects at full speed, and only those who passed the assessment were qualified to teach.

This college is divided into three phases.

One was an elementary school, which was established by the Ministry of Education in cooperation with the Ministry of Revenue. It selected 3,000 boys from good families aged six to ten from various northern provinces, and provided them with food and lodging to study at the school.

They also gave his parents ten taels of silver, which was considered a buyout of his five years of labor, and this was already the most preferential treatment they could offer.

Why not just pick one on the spot?

Naturally, this was to prevent the situation in the early Ming Dynasty, where powerful forces clustered together, and talented people all came from one place, which was very dangerous. Forming a group could even bring down the emperor.

However, this problem is unlikely to occur after selecting an average number of samples.

These 3,000 students are now in their second year of study. When they reach their fifth year, they will be admitted to schools that administer the unified examinations.

Once you enter a school that administers the unified examination, you will take an exam every year.

If you don't pass the exam, leave the school.

These people won't be useless either. Even if they are sent back home to farm, they will still be literate farmers who can help improve the local literacy rate.

If they were to be relocated to the frontier, they would become entry-level officials, well-educated and capable of handling many tasks.

As for those who pass the exam, they can take it again the following year. Once they have passed all three years of exams, they will be only fifteen years old and can then enter the Imperial Academy for further study.

After three years of systematic training at the Imperial Academy, they would take an exam. Those who passed would become prospective officials or researchers of the Han Dynasty.

This system is extremely cruel; it was the result of discussions between Liu Mu, seven ministers, and Xie Bo'an.

That is, firmly believing in the theory of genius.

There's no point in training someone who can't learn the basics in five years and can't pass the exams.

Entering the Imperial Academy makes one a true genius; once exposed to advanced knowledge, their thoughts will explode.

Therefore, under such a fierce elimination mechanism, unlike the heated competition in the south, this place is full of a reading atmosphere, with the sound of reading aloud never ceasing.

They only learned three things: reading the Thousand Character Classic and learning characters from the Hundred Family Surnames, and they used simplified characters.

Yes, starting from the Han Dynasty, there has been a deliberate effort to simplify the script. For example, when the Small Seal script was changed to the Clerical script, the rounded characters and complicated strokes were eliminated.

Later, clerical script evolved into regular script, making the strokes easier to write. During the Tang and Song dynasties, the simplification of characters became the mainstream. However, the Qing dynasty reverted to this.

Secondly, learn basic Chinese herbal medicine, just enough to treat fever and colds. It doesn't matter if you can't concentrate on your studies later; you can go home and become a folk healer or a veterinarian.

Thirdly, students should learn various miscellaneous subjects, such as the books compiled by Li Zheng in Datong, which gather the experience of craftsmen. These books contain a large amount of academic material that can be studied. For example, the book only provides a simple description of why fire generates thrust when boiling water, requiring students to think about it themselves.

Having mastered these three skills, one is already far more capable than a junior high school student in later generations, and is more than capable of using them.

After all, how could a junior high school student make paper? And recognize medicinal herbs?

Liu Mu was dressed as a scholar this time, with only Liu Dingbian guarding him and Li Zheng accompanying him, so he didn't stand out in the academy.

Looking at the eight-year-old children training in martial arts, Liu Mu nodded with satisfaction. As he always said, children who graduate from modern schools should know a little about everything and then become leaders among the people.

Afterwards, Liu Mu inspected the canteen and the bedroom, and only after confirming that Li Zheng had not compromised on anything did he feel relieved and prepare to leave.

Just then, Li Zheng looked at the six-meter-high wall to the side, revealing a hint of interest.

"Your Majesty, beyond this wall lies the Military Academy of our Great Han Dynasty. Would you like to go in and take a look?"

Liu Mu looked surprised upon hearing this.

"Hasn't the enrollment process not been completed yet?"

"I'll go on the first day of school!"

This military academy, which Liu Mu modeled after the Whampoa Military Academy, required students to be selected through multiple rounds of screening. First, their family background had to be acceptable; second, they had to be physically fit; and third, they had to be young people who had passed the imperial examinations at the county level or above.

It's not about the quantity of soldiers, but their quality!

In the first phase, Liu Mu only needs three hundred men. Once they have proven their loyalty, they will be assigned to the Han army as officers.

This way, the army can be firmly controlled.

After leaving the school, Liu Mu, along with Liu Dingbian and the Imperial Guards, rushed to Tianjin Garrison. More than two years had passed, and he wanted to see how the families of the guards were doing.

This is the root of the Han Dynasty.

It's never too much to value it.

……

It was just noon, and even though it was already the beginning of spring, Tianjin was still quite cold.

Smoke was already rising from a small farmhouse, and a large group of children around ten years old were running wildly along the river, but the clothes they wore were even simpler than those worn during the Qing Dynasty.