REMOLDING THE RULING CLASS 147dynasty, but his overall assessment of the system was negative, couched in the
critical phraseology of the Sung writers.93 Nowhere did he give credit to the exam-
inations for weakening the exclusive power of inherited status by introducing
standards of performance in passing impersonal examinations. On the contrary,
he denigrated the examinations because they were the only route to office and
had encouraged a mechanical approach to learning that substituted form for sub-
stance. Students learned only how to select relevant sections from the classics
that would be useful in answering the examination questions, and they assem-
bled them in composing their essays, "but with regard to the original meaning
of the classics or histories, they are not concerned at all."94
The classics portion of the examinations was even worse because it placed a
premium on memorization and induced students to devise mnemonic ditties to
aid them in recollecting pertinent portions of texts. They, too, were "completely
in the dark" when it came to understanding the greater meaning of the classics.
Literary legerdemain was thus not an evil confined to the Sung dynasty alone,
and the quality of the men obtained through the examinations, both civil and
military was poor - not an unusual conclusion for a man who had himself decided
to drop out of the examination rat race.^95
Private Academies after the Sixteenth Century. Yu had also deplored the neglect
and abandonment of the much of the system of official schools established early
in the Choson dynasty.9^6 He blamed this development on the examination sys-
tem because educated men had decided to tum to private elementary schools
(sodang), private tutors, and private academies (sowon) for higher level educa-
tion, not just to maintain high standards for the education of their sons, but also
to prepare them for the civil service examinations that were so crucial to suc-
cess in a bureaucratic career:
Scholars with the will to learn had no ehoice but to build rude huts in separate,
out-of-the-way places, which they used as plaees for study. This was the reason
that the siill'iin arose. If what the state wants to teach is once restored to rectitude
and the district schools r iiplzakl and local schools [hyallgsangi are all repaired
and restored, there will be no need for the private academies.^97Furthermore, the practice of establishing shrines to eminent scholars at the
private academies had involved the academies in the political factionalism of
the time. Originally shrines had been a good idea because they held local wor-
thy scholars up to emulation, but in recent times the shrines had become ances-
tral shrines associated with specific families rather than meritorious individuals.
"And when factional disputation became the custom, there were many cases
where people competed to establish private academies as shrines to people who
did not deserve them. "yX
The first of the private academies in Korea, the Paeg'undong sc'iwc'in, created
around 1542-43, was named after the one created by Chu Hsi and based on the
regulations that Yu cited in his own work. They were designed to function as