Chapter 5 - Sung education: Schools, academies, and examinations

Summary

In treating Sung schools and examinations, this chapter deals with the political movements, institutional changes and historical vagaries that determined their development. The very existence of the Imperial University in the capital and the examination halls and government schools that could be found in most prefectural and county capitals, not to mention the academies located in cities and countryside, made education highly visible in Sung society. The organization, calendar, rules, procedures and rituals of those institutions were common knowledge and shaped the lives and aspirations of innumerable literati. They were to prove extremely durable, moreover, for as we have noted much of the organization and structure of schools and examinations in later dynasties could be traced to the Sung. In contrast to the Northern Sung, when many families, especially in the south, successfully pursued the mobility strategy and achieved social and political prominence for the first time, during the Southern Sung that was far rarer.