Because 1/2 of the government positions want people who did well on the
examinations and those people came from relatively humble backgrounds.
More futile societies and of those humbled people as [UNKNOWN] identified
ability is one of the reasons why they were able to break through the ceiling of
of futile status of past accomplishment. The other dimension that Vaber emphasized
was the importance of education in the examination system in terms of producing
a system of cultural reproduction where Vaber and this has been further
elaborated by work by Benjamin Elman at Princeton, by Liu Hifung at the Shaaman
University that the Chinese educational systems was also particularly good in
identifying and transmitting a certain kind of elite knowledge that defined a
sort of, the upper, upper bounds of society.
So, it's worth ending this lecture on educational and sociability.
By looking at the education and such cultural reproduction in the past, and
comparing it with today. Especially because the world is changing
very rapidly. While Chinese may become the global
language of the future, at the moment it is English.
And because, the whereas in the past The globally text that comprised Asian
civilization or Western Civilization are relatively fixed now there is a we're in
a period of transition, where there is no common agreement on what are the global
canonical texts. Of the 21st century, but we know that
there will probably be a mix of Western and Asian classics, which is show so
symbolically by the course enrollments last year of Harvard undergraduates,
where the most popular class last year at Harvard was not Michael Sandel's well
know online class on social justice But Michael Puett''s class on Classical
Chinese Ethical and Political Theory. In other words, the most popular teacher
at Harvard right now is a teacher of Chinese Philosophy from the last
millenium largely B.C. Now the, the irony here is that while the
transition from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy has increased the
need for cognitive skills. While the transition from a national
economy to a multinational economy has increased the need for language skills.
that contemporary education in fact does not do as good a job as education in the
past on this kind of cultural reproduction on helping us define and
transmitting the the global canon of the 21st Century.
And so while public education has replaced private education so, education
now no longer represents the, the best of the most able individuals of 10% of the
population but rather a 50, 60, 70, 80% of the population and many developed
societies. The focus of this education ironically
increasingly Is only about tests, because of the tremendous success of the Chinese
testing system, not about texts. Which are the, which define the cultural
elite. So, in the past The knowledge of
characters was the primary constituent of classical literacy.
And the knowledge of classical texts was the the primary constituent of elite
culture. So you had to read or write some all
together at least 10,000 such Chinese graphs or classics in order to qualify as
being examination literate. You had to memorize the four books and
parts of the five classics. And again, to achieve this kind of
knowledge. And so education was, was, was focused,
although it's around testing was focused therefore on not just sort of The,
testing, it was focused on language and texts.
The, the language was largely instilled before in primary school education.
Then from approximately eight to 14 or 15 years of age You focused largely on
reading original texts that defined elite culture.
The four books and the five classics. And you didn't start reading about
commentaries or sort of about examination sort of preparation texts based on the.
The Classics, until after you're age 14 or 15.
So, the the Four Books, the Analects, Mencius, the Great Learning, the
Zhongyong, was altogether required about 50,000 graphs.
The Five Classics, which were much longer, the book of Changes, the book of
Documents, the book of. Songs and Poetry.
The ah, [UNKNOWN] Spring and Autumn analects was much larger by 470,000
graphs altogether. These plus the other major Chinese
classics comprised in total of actually almost 640,000 Character text that you
had to read and familiarize yourself with.
Some of which, such as the Analects or the Mencius or the Great Learning or the
Zhongyong, you sort of committed to memory.