Prior to 1848, Tộ had mastered the classical Vietnamese education through traditional means of study, although he had not earned any civil service degrees. Between 1848 and 1863 (the year in which he submitted his first petitions to Tự Đức advocating policy reform), he had been exposed to a broad range of Western ideas by reading European books in French and in Chinese translation and by studying under and discussing with European missionaries in Vietnam and in the Foreign Missions Society's Asian seminaries. According to Mark McLeod, "no other Vietnamese had so thoroughly combined study of these two traditions at such an early date."