On Aid To Study In Song Dynasty

Respecting the confusion and regarding highly of the learned intellectuals, the Song government admitted scholar by means of imperial examination. The qualification of participation was not exclusive and books were easy to obtain owe to the spread and exploitation of typography. Meanwhile, the Song government adopted a serious of preferential policy to the Confucian scholars who took part in the examination, and the success story of "humble in hub today, noble in the palace tomorrow" in real life was widespread. All these had stimulated the men to study and take part in the examinations in schools. As a selective examination, the imperial examination cannot admit all scholars in the exam. In addition, study and scholarly research cost huge amount of time and money, while due to the fierce competition in the examination, the students were involved in the study and don't spend any time to earn their life, consequently, most students were living in a poor condition. Even the students in affluent family turned poor if they failed in several exams. Therefore, there were numerous scholars who were poor in Song dynasty; some even needed the aid from the society. Scholars in Song fell into the needy class in the society. How was the living condition of the needy class? How did the Song government subsidize the class, and how did the society regard and financially aid them? What was the relationship between sponsors and the sponsored? In what why and what form did the subsidy and financial aid work? And what were the successful experiences and failure lessons? All these questions require further thinking. Moreover, study-supporting activities in Song was and essential part of education system in Song, and is an important part in the study of the education system in Song. Employing the research means and view of social history, practicing full use of historical documents, the paper tries to present and study the supporting activity of both the Song government and the society, on purpose of conducting thinking, and analyzing of the questions, then tries to give solutions to those questions. Starting from the perspective of the mass promoting the history, the paper tries to take a bottom-up view, and take the means and view of economic history and education history to conduct a comprehensive study on the aid activities in Song.Meanwhile, the paper tries to interpret the features of the study-supporting activities in Song through the holding of overall perspective of the activities, so as to lay fundamental for further study.There are seven parts in the whole paper. The first part is introduction. It gives brief introduction of the reason for writing the paper. It reviews monographs and thesis on the study-supporting activities in Song in recent decades. The significance of research and the research methods come after.The second part introduces briefly the educational institute and the scholar condition in Song, states the situation of schools of all kinds and students in school then. The analysis to the students in all kinds of schools clarifies the situation that students in Song were of huge amount and were in poor living condition; furthermore, the impoverished need aid from the government and the society.In the third part, it reveals that the Song government raised educational funds in many ways. They spent the funds in school construction, and some for exercising study-supporting activity, namely, to maintain scholars. And special subsidy was issued to the impoverished scholars. E.g. Touzi Qian. Through the reading of the case"the developed official study-supporting activity in Siming, Zhejiang", the writer tries to reveal the feature of official study-supporting activity in Song through the study and research on the activities of the government.The paper tells the features of social study-supporting activity through the study and research on the activity on the basis of following facts: the needy scholars were offered tuition fees, accommodations and stationary by schools and sponsors; they were also provided other fees like the examination fee; and the research on the social supporting case: the Charity School of Master Fan.The fifth part is a summary. It analyses firstly the subject of the study-supporting activity in Song, namely, the Song Government, officials, affluent intellectuals, squires, rich people and so on. Further more, the part reveals that with the advocacy of the government and the traditional merit of philanthropicminde across the nation, people of all backgrounds aided the needy students in kinds of methods, and consequently secured the stability of the society and strengthened the development of the education in Song.For another, the relatively popularity of the study-supporting activity in Song helped a large amount of impoverished students to make their achievement, while the study support activity also featured instability and unsystematic. Some officials even committed corruption under the shield of assistantship.What comes last in the paper is the impact of study support in Song. The improving and developing in the study-support activity stimulated the progress of education and the spread of knowledge as well. It had brought another climax of educational and cultural undertaking. Besides, either the official aid or the social aid was of originality, having profound influence for the education in later times!...