宋代教育與科舉的幾個問題

On Some Problems in Sung Education and Examinations

李弘祺(Thomas H. C. Lee)

《中國文化研究所學報》 10卷上 (1979/01) Pp. 105-128

https://doi.org/10.29708/JCS.CUHK.197901_10(1).0005

並列摘要

The civil service examination system of the Sung, with its emphasis on literary studies, learning by rote of the classics and its enforcing anonymity of the candidates led to the rise of a rather new kind of people in China, the ＂tu-shu jen＂, A tu-shu jen, which literally means ＂one who reads books＂, was characterized by a lack of sufficient, political apprenticeship before he started service in the officialdom and a lack of adequate living skill if he could not pass the civil service examinations. His life depended so much on the few chances of going into officialdom that, once he could not make it, he was often pressed to live a miserable life. The reality of such a system of social ascent based on an extremely competitive contest playing in many cases such a decisive role created many psychological and social abnormities which haunted generations of examination candidates, the ＂tu-shu jen＂. The basic issue behind the debates on the validity of a civil service examination system which awarded so much to so few was whether the principle of impartiality should be given more emphasis than the principle of observing the candidates' moral performance. It was evident that, in order to have sufficient knowledge of the candidate's character, the government ought to abandon the practice of enforcing of the candidates in the examinations and instead, should require candidates to stay in schools for a sufficient length of time so that the government could observe their moral conduct. This seemed to imply that the principle of impartiality had to be jeopardized. Fan Chung-yen and his associates, nonetheless, sought to require periods of residence for candidates. Their attempts at reform failed. The failure of Fan in 1044 meant the victory of those who, for reason of technicality and balance of regional power structure (as reflected in the institution of regional quotas of successful candidates), advocated the impartiality principle. Impartiality nevertheless does not mean social justice. To award so much to so few, by way of creating only one meaningful route of social ascent, is to create an unequal society with its upper echelon consisting exclusively of unskilled scholars who had to depend entirely on the monarch for their own privileged existence. The examination system thus became a machinery for political control and social stability. Furthermore, the fluidity of the composition of the upper class was exactly a reflection of the uncertainty within officialdom. Every official was in practice as well as in theory, completely at the ruler's mercy. The reforms proposed and practiced by Wang An-shih and, particularly, Ts'ai Ching, aimmg at creating a school system to replace the examinations failed, precisely because there were so few chances for moving up. Very few, especially the poor, were lured to register in schools to launch on the long and tedious route to officialdom. There was very little, indeed if any, guarantee after the investment of money and years of study, that a young man could eventually succeed in the examinations. The risk involved was such that few-mostly those who in any case would have taken the examinations-would go to schools. The program of building schools for the masses consequently failed. The social structure dictated the failure of the reforms and this social structure was shaped by the determination on the part of the ruling class to limit the privileged social status to a very selected few. The social structure being what it was it was difficult to initiate reforms and the neo-Confucians therefore became convinced that reform of existing society was unlikely to succeed, and that it should be directed against the individual. Academies (shu-yuan) were their answers to this frustrating social reality.