| Fan Zhongyan is a famous official in Northern Song Dynasty. During his lifetime, he has made remarkable achievements in such aspects as politics, economy, culture and education. As a great political reformer, while assuming the office as a magistrate, he deeply felt that"the officer should be responsible for the welfares of the local people; A magistrate should love his subjects as he loves his own children. Meanwhile, he should be very industrious in government affairs and serve for the people wholeheartedly. Since he is a granted official of the royal court, he must put forward as many feasible suggestions as possible for the benefits of the state and its people."Fan Zhongyan once said,"I would liker to dash ahead regardless of my individual interest to be involved in the public affaires". He is so upright and outspoken that even after three times of being demoted, he never changes his mind caring about the safety and prosperity of the state and living conditions of the populace. As is illustrated in his famous essay Thoughts on the Yueyang Tower,"If someone rises to a dignitary, he should always keep all the civilians in his mind. Even if he himself is a civilian, he should always care about the royal manipulators and their policies."When he was carrying out the reforms during Qingli period, instead of fearing to be hit back by the conservatives, he insisted on rectifying the official administration. In his opinion, a minister official should always"take the whole world as his own business; appoint and promote inferior officials by their abilities; and buck for stability and prosperity of his native land". In almost 40 years of his political life, Fan Zhongyan recommended and cultivated a great number of talents; quite a lot of remarkable characters like Hu Yuan, Fu Sun, Di Qing, zhong Shiheng,Fu Bi, etc., were once under the guidance or instructions of him. These people played an important role in politics, military affairs, culture and education and many other different fields of work in the history of Northern Song Dynasty.Fan Zhongyan is versed in both civil and military affairs. He received assignments at the critical moment when the Song Dynasty was in an inferior position in the dispute with the West Xia, another coexisting dynasty. When he was in charge of military and diplomatic affairs in Shaanxi, he demonstrated his remarkable courage, superb arts of command, far-reaching sight, judicious judgment, and spirit of marching ahead. He commanded all the military corps and border land people, with their combined efforts, to resist invasion and harassment of the West Xia Dynasty. On the one hand, he attached great importance to the recommendation, selection and promotion of the military geniuses, adopted correct strategies and tactics and finally turned the tables of war; on the other hand, he made great efforts on educational enlightening."We advocate reclaiming assarts and setting up fair to enable people to exchange what they have";"We should show care for the populace to be exempt from the moils of long-distance transportation";"Based on inspections of their population and possessions, we drafted rescripts to award the local people of the Qiang Nationality and made contracts with them". All these measures helped nurture and enlighten the populace of local minorities, and accordingly turned back the unfavorable situation of the Northern Song Dynasty in the war against the West Xia Dynasty, thus made great contributions to the stability and prosperity of the border area.Besides a military genius, Fan Zhongyan is also one of the advocates of new verse style revolution in the Song Dynasty. Being good at composing poem and odes, his writing style is so fresh and mellifluent. Being farsighted in his sentiment, his emotions are fully demonstrated in the description of sceneries. Being so skillful in incorporating the military life together with sceneries of the frontier fortress, social life as well as personal feelings in his writings, he has been labeled as a scholar with very high reputation. He left behind him a lot of beautiful lines such as"When autumn comes to the frontier, the scene looks drear, South-bound wild geese won't stay…"(See his Tune: Pride of Fishermen) etc. In his most famous essay Thoughts on the Yueyang Tower, Fan Zhongyan proclaimed that one should be the first to bear hardships, and the last to enjoy comforts. This great thinking is not only the portrayal of his noble characters but also the eternal motto to stimulate innumerable worthy people to go ahead and devote their lives for the benefits of the people.Fan Zhongyan knows well that education is the foundation of kingship. He believes that schooling is of great importance to the ruling of a country. School education is so essential that"a country with virtuous and outstanding personage can be well managed and cannot otherwise". He set up schools all over the country, popularized basic education, transformed social customs and trained large quantities of talents with both ability and political integrity. Thanks to his guidance and impelling measures, almost all eparchies throughout the country established schools. Hence establishment of various kinds of schools in the Northern Song Dynasty gradually became a fashion. In his late years, Fan Zhongyan bought with his savings a plot of fertile land in Suzhou, which was called"Yizhuang"with its literal meaning"righteous manor", to help the poverty-stricken populace. He also created a peculiar way of righteous learning to enlighten the clansman. Following his example, many other righteous manors emerged like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, which had far-reaching influence to clan-centered educational system in Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. Furthermore, his peculiar way of home education is also very successful. Having been taught by following their father's example and verbal instruction, his four sons are all outstanding either in scholarly work or in office work. In order to select talents with genuine ability and learning, he suggested that the contents of the imperial examinations should be altered and reformed. Imperial scholars should pay more attention to writing essays on current affairs as advice for government's policy instead of just composing meaningless poems and odes; meanwhile, they are requested to elaborate on the deep sense of the Confucian classics instead of just reciting their words and sentences. These measures were very effective to end the malpractice of selecting imperial scholars by consulting their flowery and meaningless verses only. Fan Zhongyan also plays an important role in the development of Confucianism. As we know, Confucianism has undergone several historic stages: in the Han Dynasty, it was widely accepted and solely respected; in the Tang Dynasty, Buddhism and Taoism began to make great impact on Confucianism and the three beliefs coexisted simultaneously; up to the Song Dynasty, some worthy talents at the time, influenced by Taoist School, advocated a new academic thought---Neo-Confucianism. In the course of Confucianism development, Fan Zhongyan is a very influential personage. He had brilliant attainments in the study of Confucianism due to his sturdy academic foundation he had laid when he was young. Despite so many busy government affairs he had to deal with, Fan Zhongyan went on with his extensive academic research and intensive study on Buddhism, Neo-Confucianism and so on. He is labeled in his biography as a versatile person who"knows well about the Six Classics and has a more comprehensive understanding of the Books of the Changes". His peculiar academic viewpoint that the three religious sects (Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism) should merge into one has a far-reaching influence to the three masters (Hu Yuan, Sun Fu and Shi Jie) in the early Song Dynasty. Embodied in him is the typical Confucian doctrine"Being an Inner Sage so as to Rule the Outer World". He bears courage, intelligence, benevolence, loyalty and faithfulness and many other noble characters the Confucians have advocated. In a way, he is an ideal person who is far-sighted in thinking and well-conceived in strategy, possessing high moral integrity and professional competence, and having both excellent civil and military skills. How remarkable a person he is! Fan Zhongyan devoted a lot to the education cause. His ideas on education and educational practice are important components of his political life. But apart from being once invited by Yan Shu in 1027 as an instructor in prefecture of Yingtian, he had in most of his life ranked high in social position and seldom assumed the duty of teaching or educational administration. Maybe this can account for the reason why it is difficult for us to make a clear division to what was his educational practice and what was his political activity, and why his ideas on education and his political views are often integrated. Actually, his literary talents and military achievements are so glorious that they seem to have dwarfed his contribution to China's educational cause. Many researchers commit themselves to the depiction of Fan Zhongyan only as the brilliant statesman and military genius, while his contribution to China's education cause has not yet received due attention for a long time and his educational thinking and activities are rarely brought into the study field in the learning of China's education history.Ever since the founding of the Northern Song Dynasty, the state has been adopting the imperial examinations as the only means to choose the so-called talents, but people with genuine ability and learning are actually in serious shortage to meet the needs of the society. In the mid-Song period, confronted by domestic troubles and foreign invasion, Fan Zhongyan, as one of the representatives of the ruling class, took steps to carry on political reforms, including some specific measures on education reform. Against the deteriorating morals of society reflected in the officialism writing style, Fan Zhongyan advocated innovating the existing system of school education and imperial examination. Imperial scholars should pay more attention to writing essays on current affairs as advice for government's policy instead of just reciting their words and sentences from Confucian classics. These measures were very effective to end the malpractice of selecting imperial scholars by consulting their flowery and meaningless verses only and ensured the selection and promotion of government officials with genuine learning and abilities. After the application of these reform policies, trend of running schools began to spring up in different parts of the country. The thriving of education in the Song Dynasty owed much to Fan Zhongyan's contributions. His great ideas on education and educational practice surely deserve our attention and interest to be further studied.This thesis attempts to make a comparatively systematic study and analysis on Fan Zhongyan's ideas on education and his educational practice, so as to affirm his brilliant achievements in the history of China's education development. The purpose of this writing is also intended to apply Fan Zhongyan's successful experiences in educational practice and his great enlightening ideology to the powerful current of contemporary educational reform in our country, so as to use them as a reference to the construction of educational modernization and a harmonious society.
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