The “common” school for the training of official in the Chunqiu Period (771-453 BC): Part 1. The history of emerging in the context of the biography of Kung Tzu (552-479 BC)

The article centres upon the emergence in the second half of the VI century BC in the kingdom of Lu a new school, which was intended for the training of officials and was of a mass character. It replaced the “temple” and “palace” schools. Confucius (552–479) is considered its founder.

The emergence of such a school is a manifestation of a cultural process. Since it was intended for the training of “men of service” (“servitors”), its appearance was caused by a social process — the formation of this new social group. In turn, this process was caused by the growth of contradictions in the struggle for supreme power between the monarchs and their relatives in the male line, the clans of the descendants of the monarchs of previous generations. These contradictions are a manifestation of the political process. Since the new school was not elite, but was available to people from various social groups and natives of other kingdoms, it can be called “mass school”. The most important and most complete source of information about this is his biography, which is contained in chapter 47 of Sima Qian’s Shiji.