Chapter 2021: Chapter 1806: Two Choices
"Marquis Chen is indeed cautious," Xun Youi glanced at Chen Xi and spoke casually.
"Oh, oh? What are you talking about? I don’t understand," Chen Xi looked around, wanting to grab someone to take the blame.
Xun Youi shook his head and seeing Chen Xi like this, didn’t press further. In fact, the top strategists in the world are generally aware of Li Youu’s identity; it’s just that the situation is understood but cannot be exposed. Li Youu never comes to Chang’an, giving no chance for others to expose him.
"Let’s talk about something else," Chen Xi said with a laugh, thinking that even if Xun Youi did guess, it wouldn’t help; where’s the evidence? The strongest evidence has already been retrieved by Chen Xi. Why did he go to Yingchuan to stir things up at Lady Tang’s place? It was meant to become irrefutable proof.
And now the situation is basically solid proof. Everyone knows Lady Tang’s identity, and since Li Youu can swagger around in front of her and she hasn’t spoken up about Li Youu being Li Ru, what are these baseless guesses worth?
As long as Lady Tang denies that Li Youu is Li Ru, the only person left in the world who can expose him is Liu Xie, and as long as Li Youu isn’t out of his mind, he definitely won’t give Liu Xie a chance to unmask him.
Thus, by confusing right and wrong, Chen Xi can basically ensure that later, after Lady Tang speaks up, Li Youu has a good chance of being vindicated.
"Does Marquis Chen have any advice?" Xun Youi asked calmly, looking at Chen Xi.
"Not really, I just have a few questions I’d like to ask," Chen Xi tried to chat, while pondering what question to ask, thinking that when interacting with people like Xun Youi, he must not resort to ordinary questions but ones with caliber.
"Let’s hear them," Xun Youi hadn’t responded yet when Fan Qin, Xun Yu, Chen Qun, Liu Ba, Du Xi, and others leaned in, clearly interested in any question that might stump Chen Xi.
"It’s like this; you all know how I pull Lord Xuande into promoting education," Chen Xi said with annoyance, glancing at the civil officials who had gathered around him, while Sima Lang couldn’t help but blush upon hearing this. His distant cousin had left then because of Chen Xi’s excessive idealism.
"The current situation is this: I guess you haven’t investigated other things, but you’re all aware of the education I’m managing, initially proposing a three to five-year plan, now we’re basically at three years," said Chen Xi with a sigh.
After all these years, with so many things done, education is the only endeavor not yet achieved; all other tasks Chen Xi sets his mind to were completed and astound everyone.
"We’ve all heard about this matter too," Xun Yu nodded. In fact, Chen Xi’s educational promotion was not just heard about; everyone above middle level in the Han Dynasty understood it thoroughly, and many were waiting to see it fail, but so far, haven’t caught any fun.
"It’s like this; the initial purpose of my educational promotion was literacy among the people. You’ve seen the Thousand Character Classic too, aiming for everyone to know these words and understand life principles, so we prepared several books back then, but eventually..." Chen Xi coughed twice and stopped, everyone knew the situation.
Chen Xi’s idea was six months to master all common characters, then six months for math below third-grade level, followed by supplementing social knowledge, leaving nearly two years, with more than a year on the Book of Virtue, Cai Gen Tan, Disciples’ Regulations, Classic of Filial Piety.
In the final half-year, teaching students some social skills, such as scientific farming, beginner masons, junior tileworkers, junior blacksmiths, entry-level carpenters; in short, learning a trade to survive after leaving school.
Anyway, Chen Xi’s goal isn’t for everyone to become officials; it’s for the populace to live better. Those with talent, teachers will naturally instruct accordingly, those without will live better through school education. Chen Xi believes he’s done well.
Fairness can’t be guaranteed by Chen Xi, but he is confident that his efforts will improve people’s lives compared to before; other than that, he can’t guarantee, won’t guarantee, this education is funded by this group of people, if dissatisfied, drop out, he won’t stop you.
"Alright, those books of yours; come off it, only you could fully master them in three years; you really think everyone is like you?" Chen Qun scoffed, giving such material to students, even in eighty years, chewing on it until eighty, might not digest it fully.
"Ultimately, most got abolished, leaving only extremely basic numerology, Thousand Character Classic, and Book of Virtue, certainly can’t complete, afterward still needing to learn social survival skills," Chen Xi shrugged and said.
"Abolishing was inevitable, start us back at age five in Mengxue within your educational system and see if by age eight we can master what you intend to teach," Fan Qin exclaimed in annoyance, this was utter nonsense.
"Alright, let’s not mention this; anyhow, I certainly believe I can master it, so I revised some and used them as textbooks, and in the end, everyone turned out to be slackers," Chen Xi replied in frustration, seeing everyone glaring at him, quickly changed his tune, "The next step is most important."
"It’s like this; since the educational promotion is entirely subsidy-based, the people didn’t spend money, truth is, neither did we, we just provide a meal, the classroom is built by locals, and now the issue is how to promote it," Chen Xi quietly surveyed everyone, asking, this path was tough to tread back then, now it barely becomes feasible.
