Education

December 9, 1866.

Another school had opened in Hechingen today: Hechingen Cultural School. This school was actually a primary school. Unlike Hechingen Military Academy, it enrolled both Chinese students and local students from Hechingen.

After all, attending Hechingen Military Academy meant eventually going to East Africa. What German parents would rush to send their children off to Africa?

Thus, aside from Chinese students, most of Hechingen Military Academy's German cadets were orphans from across Germany.

Hechingen Cultural School was different. It was a proper school, while Hechingen Military Academy was really little more than a fly-by-night college.

Hechingen Military Academy was not part of the Prussian education system. Its students came entirely through independent recruitment by the academy, and their destinations after graduation were clearly defined.

Hechingen Cultural School, on the other hand, had been registered with the Prussian Government. The Chinese students here studied under the identity of "international students."

Ernst could issue students of Hechingen Military Academy household registration in the East African colony, while the Chinese cadets at Hechingen Cultural School were still recorded as Chinese in the Prussian Government's files.

After all, these Chinese students would later enter other German schools. Without government-issued identification, they were theoretically all undocumented, so it was simplest to use the status of international students as a cover, with Ernst acting as their guarantor.

Hechingen Military Academy could only meet the demand for military personnel, while Ernst would need specialists in every trade and profession in the future.

To make use of limited educational resources, those who excelled in their studies could continue on to German secondary schools, and Ernst also intended to establish a secondary school.

The very best among them would then be recommended by Ernst to audit classes and study at universities across Germany.

As for those who did poorly in school, they could only go tighten screws in Ernst's factories after graduation. Of course, they could also apply to Hechingen Military Academy and ultimately serve as soldiers in the East African colony, or become German teachers.

German education had now begun on a trial basis in the Upper Coastal Region. The first German primary school had been established in First Town, and the East African colony required every Chinese immigrant in First Town to send their children there.

The school's teachers were students who had graduated from Hechingen Military Academy, and the textbooks were the ones they themselves had once used.

When it came to educating immigrants, naturally it had to begin with the children. No one expected the older generation of immigrants to speak German; mastering a few commonly used words would be enough.

The thinking of these adult Chinese had long since taken shape, and they had passed the age best suited for learning. If they were directly taught literacy, the cost would be imaginable enough, while the results might still prove unsatisfactory.

As long as they realized that German was the future of the colony, the clever ones among them would take the initiative to learn it.

In fact, some quick-witted immigrants had long learned simple German through their interactions with colonial officials, and had consequently been assigned management positions.

For the colony's immigrants, sending their children to school came with no psychological burden at all. After all, as the saying went, all pursuits were base, and only study stood high.

Those Far Eastern bureaucrats had indeed monopolized knowledge and education to block paths upward. How well the folk operas put it: once one passed the imperial examination and became the top scholar, one could have anything one wanted. Ordinary people might never have eaten pork, but they had seen pigs run.

The benefits enjoyed by local Xiucai scholars, Juren scholars, and officials—those earned through study—were solid and real. Even a Xiucai scholar could escape manual labor by teaching others, not to mention the economic privilege of partial tax exemption and the rise in social status.

Education in the East African colony was naturally not the Far Eastern model of education that selected officials. It was simply meant to teach literacy to the children of ordinary immigrants.

Of course, those who received compulsory education earlier would enjoy greater dividends in the beginning. For instance, when better jobs in the colony were assigned, immigrants who had received colonial education would certainly receive priority consideration.

As compulsory education spread throughout the East African colony in the future, such dividends would grow fewer and fewer, until education became the most basic threshold.

The educational content of East Africa's first school was actually very simple. Aside from German education, there was only basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, followed by the ideology of "loyalty to the sovereign and patriotism."

Thus, these children only had classes for half the day. They studied at school in the morning and could return home to help out in the afternoon.

To improve their quality of life, immigrants would pursue small side earnings, such as growing vegetables near their homes or raising chickens and ducks. The colony did not interfere with such things.

So long as they completed the work assigned by the colony on time, they could arrange the rest of their time as they pleased. Because land was abundant, the East African colony had plenty of unused ground.

For example, the homes of colonial immigrants were not packed together as tightly as in the Far East. They were relatively dispersed, and during planning, two open plots were set aside before and behind each house: one for a garden and one for a drainage ditch.

Chinese immigrants had never even heard of gardens. Those plots would be better used for growing vegetables. The drainage ditch lay behind the house, and so much land was not needed there either; turn over the soil beside the channel, and crops could be planted there as well.

Any extra income gained from using this vacant land belonged entirely to the immigrants themselves and did not need to be handed over.

Only the residences of Germans truly had gardens and lawns in front, while the land beyond the drainage ditches behind them lay abandoned.

This merely represented the different attitudes toward life held by the two peoples. Besides, Germans truly earned higher wages and had more leisurely work.

The Germans also found it novel that Chinese immigrants grew vegetables in their gardens. Sometimes, they would take the initiative to ask the immigrants what kind of vegetable something was, or what a certain tool was used for.

The Chinese had not boarded ships for East Africa entirely empty-handed. The colony did not confiscate their belongings, though anything too large could not be brought aboard.

Some Chinese carried plant seeds tucked against their chests, and these were brought to East Africa, causing all sorts of Far Eastern vegetables to appear on African soil.

African land was the most suitable for growing vegetables. Vegetables were essentially a kind of grass, and Africa suited the growth of grass, which was why it possessed the world's largest savannas.

There was no winter here. As long as the water supply was ensured, plants could keep growing without end.

There were also ideological differences between Germans and Chinese immigrants. Germans valued their territory; without their permission, others could not step into their yards. Chinese immigrants, meanwhile, visited one another freely and had little sense of territorial boundaries.

The Chinese would not take the initiative to enter German yards either. Chinese immigrants instinctively felt themselves a head shorter than others. In truth, these Germans did not harbor such haughty ideas. After interacting with the Chinese, they had formed a fairly good impression of them. After all, both sides came from farming backgrounds, and after exchanging agricultural experience, they thought well of each other.

The Chinese immigrants had no queues, were fairly diligent, and paid attention to hygiene. All of this was the result of compulsory colonial regulations, but the Chinese were highly obedient, which concealed some of their shortcomings.

The Germans in the East African colony were also rough country folk from the Prussian region, and they did not care much about small details.

The only difference between the two sides was that the Germans had received compulsory education, so their cultural level was relatively higher. Yet they had only attended primary school, so there was a limit to how refined they could be.

In the eyes of these Germans from farming backgrounds, Chinese immigrants were fairly easy to deal with. Ordinary farmers generally thought simply, without so many twists and turns.

Unlike in later generations, when some people went abroad and casually picked flowers or snapped grass in other people's yards, then put on aggrieved faces and argued stubbornly after being criticized. Say they lacked education? They had gone abroad, and their qualifications generally were not low. Thus, academic credentials had little to do with personal quality.

This was how Chinese people would behave in developed countries in those days. When Ernst was in Africa, Chinese people could be said to be loathed by man and dog alike. There were many workers from his homeland at Ernst's construction site.

Their education levels were not high. At least, many of those Ernst knew had only attended high school or middle school, yet in Africa, they directly treated the natives like monkeys for amusement.

Every day, they strutted about like fools, gave native children a few snacks, taught them some "stupid words," filmed it on their phones, and posted it to Douyin, brimming with a sense of superiority.

But how were those natives not treating them as jokes in return? Some even regarded certain people as easy marks.

Although Ernst also looked down on the natives, the education of his homeland kept him from engaging in such rude behavior. Doing so was simply too degrading.

In this era, however, because the country was weak, the people's livelihoods were difficult, and they had been subjected to servile education, where would Chinese immigrants overseas dare put on the attitude of later generations—Heaven was first, and they were second?

Meekness and submission were the true picture. Thus, Chinese immigrants who willingly took a step back to find seas wide and skies vast got along rather harmoniously with the Germans.