Zhang Zhidong, one of the four famous ministers of the late Qing Dynasty, was a representative figure of the Western school. He advocated the application of the world, vigorously promoted the reform of the education system, and made outstanding contributions to the education cause of the late Qing Dynasty and even the new China.
In his early years, Zhang Zhidong was talented and studious, and received an orthodox Confucian education from an early age, laying the foundation for future academic achievements. In the course of his political career as an official, he advocated that education is the foundation of the rejuvenation of the country. Through the establishment of new-style schools, the introduction of international students, the expansion of the teaching team while ensuring the quality of teachers, step by step for the country to cultivate the pillars of talent. Although the Western affairs movement eventually failed, he devoted himself to building a self-reliant and self-reliant country, and still played a certain role in promoting and civilizing China, which was closed and conservative at that time.
However, it was such a hero who wholeheartedly made great contributions to the development of the nation that the name of the first emperor was tarnished by two sons.
Zhang Zhidong had thirteen sons, the eldest of whom was 38 years older than the youngest. Among them, the eleventh son Zhang Renle and the thirteenth son Zhang Renli were born at the age of 61 and 63 respectively, because they had children in old age, so Zhang Zhidong doted on them.
The eleventh son, Zhang Renle, with his father's desire for advanced Western ideas, traveled thousands of miles to Japan to study military affairs, but during his study abroad, he coveted pleasure and spent a lot of money. Even seduced by the extreme factions of Japan, it was gradually eroded by militarist ideas. After returning to China, he worked in the police station, but he used his official position to have close private contacts with the Japanese, laying the foundation for future defections. After the outbreak of the September 18 Incident, the three eastern provinces fell in an all-round way, and Zhang Renle immediately defected to Japan in order to seek fame and fortune, and became the director of the Industrial Department of Jilin Province, regardless of the current situation, extending his hand to the people, becoming a veritable Japanese hypocrite.
The thirteenth son, Zhang Renli, died before he was 10 years old, and then he took his brother as his father. In his early years, Zhang Renli studied at Peking University and had a good education, but unfortunately he lacked restraint and contracted many vices. After graduation, after the events in North China, in the turbulent era, he did not take it as his duty to defend his family and defend the country, but under the "care" of his brother Zhang Renle, he embarked on the road of desperately serving the Japanese. Under the protection of the Japanese puppet regime, Zhang Renli, who served as the director of the Civil Affairs Department of the puppet Hebei Eastern Defense Autonomous Government, lived an even more absurd life, indulging in drunken dreams and dying all day.
"Knowing the hardships of the crops, do their duty to study."
When Zhang Zhidong was alive, he repeatedly taught his sons: spend money to be frugal, study hard, and have gains. Letters to my son's family were filled with expectations for them. However, the world is always lamentable, and the Zhang Renle brothers will not only achieve nothing in the end, but will also pay the price they deserve for all the crimes they have committed.
In 1945, after the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Zhang Renle was arrested, and his wife, Tuo lian, spent a lot of money to rescue him from prison, fled to Japan and never returned, and died in 1971; Zhang Renli was imprisoned in prison for 6 years, and was sentenced to death after the founding of New China, and died in 1951.
Zhang Zhidong has the happiness of having a son in his old age, but he also loses the opportunity to discipline his two children. Before their deaths, the exhortation of "humility and honesty, and not to be arrogant and arrogant" could not stop their yearning for a life of fine clothes and jade food. The honest and honest family style has long been forgotten by the sons. His whole life was for the country and the people, but the idea of education failed to become a beacon for the two children to guide the way, so that they were notorious and spurned by future generations, which was really regrettable.
Marx said that "education is by no means a simple cultural transmission." Good education is not something that can be obtained by a simple stack of cognition or knowledge, but a spark that can really enable the educated person to burst out of the process of knowledge and shape the truth, goodness, and beauty of the personality. To achieve this goal, we must take history as a mirror and look at the world with a positive vision, in order to export powerful forces to promote the development of the world, to lead the world in urban, humanistic, legal, economic and other aspects, and to promote our country to move towards a new future.