Fang Yun's actions met with opposition from officials of the Literary Academies. Many believed he had no authority to decide that a book should be introduced into the schools; that decision belonged to the Minister of Literature or the Grand Academician in charge of the academy.
Apart from the Classics of the Sages, which were compulsory, the local Literary Academies decided whether other books taught in the schools were required or elective reading.
The Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars had different versions in different kingdoms, since each sought to promote its own distinguished figures rather than those of other kingdoms.
For instance, none of the versions of the Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars used throughout the Jing Kingdom included burying his son to support his mother, because the place where Guo Ju later served as an official lay within the present borders of the Qing Kingdom. The Qing Kingdom also had different versions of the Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars, and the former Xiang Prefecture version had included this story.
When he had served as governor-general of the two prefectures, Fang Yun had removed the story of burying his son to support his mother from Xiang Prefecture's version of the Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars. Yet this time, when adapting the work into Illustrated Tales of the Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars, he had added the story back in.
Back then, even the Qing Kingdom's Literary Palace had feared provoking controversy and allowed each prefecture to decide whether to include burying his son to support his mother. This time, however, Fang Yun had stubbornly gone his own way, adapting it and even seeking to promote it nationwide. That was what had intensified the dispute.
Soon, some officials recalled how Fang Yun had removed burying his son to support his mother from Xiang Prefecture's version of the Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars. His