Cultivating merit: The Three Hall System in late Northern Song, 1070--1121.

摘要

This dissertation studies the Three Hall System (sanshefa), the world's first statewide government school system, in late eleventh- and early twelfth-century China. It mainly uses accounts in local histories and funerary inscriptions to show a bold experiment in spreading education and shaping elite culture in the Song period. As a comprehensive package of educational reforms, the Three Hall System has received only scant attention from historians. This study rescues this important political and educational institution from that neglect, restores a more complete picture of the school building movements in the late Northern Song period, and identifies several inspiring characteristics of the system. Not only did it introduce a number of institutional innovations to school education, it also represented an attempt of the state to penetrate local society. At the same time, different political factions and intellectual camps actively utilized this opportunity to bring their own agenda into the system, making the school to be a site for cultural competition and negotiation.