Chapter 1616 — The Source of Edification
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 5
Long Qilin said: "Cult Master, this is in truth unavoidable. The growth of the divine cities is bound to draw in the young and able; in the divine cities they have a way to live, they can labor, they can study, they can have greater chances to rise. But the divine cities have no need of the old and the young, and so the old and young can only remain in the countryside. This is the just way of things, not fairness.
" Shen Mu nodded: "I understand.
And it was I who taught you that reasoning. " Long Qilin breathed out and said with a smile: "Since the Cult Master understands this reasoning, you should know that the faster Jingping develops, the more different strata will arise. Some, by their own ability and their own gifts, earn great wealth, rise high and prosper, and hold eminent positions. Some, having fallen a step behind, may still thrive and want for neither food nor clothing nor shelter. And some, because they could not become divine ability users, can only remain in the countryside. Jingping: learning for the sake of use, raising up only the talented, the union of knowledge and action — only the useful may achieve.
Is this not the Cult Master's own ideal?
" Shen Mu nodded: "I understand that too.
And those reasonings were likewise taught you by me. " "Then why does the Cult Master's brow stay knit?
" Long Qilin said, perplexed: "Jingping's development these hundred-odd years has followed your ideals throughout, followed the way of the sages, that the common folk make use of it themselves.
Why then does the Cult Master still carry worry in his heart? " Shen Mu let out a breath of turbid air and said in a low voice: "Everything may run according to the just way of things — everything except education. " Long Qilin was taken aback, and said: "In Jingping's education there is no distinction: whether of a poor and lowly house or a rich and noble one, the peerless divine arts they may learn are the very best peerless divine arts; Jingping keeps nothing back.
Is that not the just way? " Shen Mu added a stick of firewood to the blaze; the flames lit his face, bright and dim by turns. "People differ in natural endowment, high and low; in comprehension, as far apart as cloud and mud; in temperament, too, they differ.
When they grow up, their achievements differ, their strata differ — this is right, this is as it should be. But education must not have strata. The parents are dull-witted and sink into poverty, but the child is not necessarily dull-witted. If a child of surpassing natural gifts is born into a poor house, and because the family is poor cannot receive a good education, and so wastes his talents and is lost among the common herd — that is the greatest injustice.
That he is lost among the common herd because his family is poor is fair, but it is not just! At present all is well in Jingping, but in education it is not just. Education divided, and in the long run the poor grow poorer, with never a chance to turn their fortunes — this is what makes my blood run cold.
That Jingping's reforms should move in this direction is not what I wanted. " Shen Mu mused: "Reform is to give people hope, not to ossify such strata. The Heavenly Sage Cult had three hundred and sixty halls, and among them all there was no hall of learning; after I became Cult Master of the Heavenly Sage Cult, I established the hall of learning. The students in that hall in those days all came from the poor and lowly at the very bottom.