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On February 10, 1651, on the sandy road outside the Linxi Branch of the General Development Bureau, a group of more than 10 children was lining up in a long line, walking along the side of the road towards the front. The children, who all looked to be less than ten years old, were in the midst of a lively and active time, so they were so angry that the older kid in the lead asked them all to stop and sort out the queue several times. However, it didn't take long for the queue to be sorted out, and it was messed up again in the children's laughter, which made the eldest child in the lead helpless.

"They're all kids from the lumberyard school, right?" Ma Wenqiang, the son of Chairman Ma Qianzuma, the second-generation and former chairman of the Executive Committee, who actually presided over the work of the General Bureau of Local Development, took a puff of his pipe and asked slowly.

"Yes, it is indeed a child from the Linxi Forest Children's School." The assistant immediately replied, "Other schools are not in this direction." By the way, in the morning, someone from the direction of Tieling Town came to me and told me that he was going to set up some schools in Linxibao, and when you went out to make a round, I asked him to wait. Now you look at it......"

Ma Wenqiang was stunned when he heard this, and after asking the assistant in detail to understand the inside story, he agreed without hesitation, and only heard him say: "They don't want to build schools in Tieling? That's a surprise! Forget it, they will give them the land they want, anyway, Linxi, Majiawan, Jinshui, and Daoye will be handed over to Tieling sooner or later, and the foundation of Tieling County will be here in the future. Well, you can do it. and they were given to them whatever land they liked. The mountains and rivers here are beautiful. It's a good place to build a school. ”

It turned out that in the morning, Tieling Town sent several staff members with letters of introduction to Linxibao, which had been fully taken over by the General Development Bureau, and asked the General Development Bureau to grant them a piece of land (generally rotten land with poor texture that is not suitable for farming) to be used to build a normal college. This kind of thing is a piece of cake for the General Development Bureau, and it does not violate the principle, so Ma Wenqiang happily agreed to this matter just now. And let his assistant accompany the group of Tieling people to select the school site and measure the land.

It is said that with the opening of the Northwest Railway, there are more and more people in Tieling and its vicinity, and there are more than 6,500 official residents in Tieling Town (black household laborers are not counted), which is the largest; The neighboring forts of Linxi, Majiawan, Jinshui, and Daoye also have 1,000 or 2,000 inhabitants each, all of which have a total population of more than 13,000, which is more than the population of Jingjiang County, which was newly established last year (about 9,500 people in the county).

As the population increases, the education of so many school-age children is gradually on the agenda. In the beginning, when the town of Tieling had only been developed for a long time, and the Northwest Railway had not yet been built here, the education of the few children here at that time had to be found by the local government - the Eastern Coast Republic had to spend a lot of money on military expenditures (60% of the total fiscal expenditure). The education funds are insufficient, so the coastal areas are still understaffed. There is simply no spare capacity to support the interior. Even though Tieling is the second heavy industry base that the Executive Committee focuses on, it can't grab any teachers.

In desperation, the Tieling town government can only select people with a high level of education from various departments and enterprises—usually junior high school graduates, Bingtuan Fort students, etc.—to serve as temporary teachers to teach students. As for the textbooks, the people in Tieling unanimously agreed that the textbooks in the coastal areas should not be copied, because there is a big difference between the inland areas and the coastal areas in all aspects, and it is very inappropriate to continue to use the old textbooks. Therefore, Tieling requested the Ministry of Education to compile a more superficial textbook for them, so that they could adapt to the actual local situation and achieve better teaching results.

For example, Tieling Primary School, the only primary school in Tieling Town, uses teachers who are halfway home, as well as relatively simple teaching materials, to teach the children of local workers. In order to motivate these teachers who are halfway monks to improve their professional level, Tieling has also formulated many incentive measures, such as their stipulation: teachers in all schools, including Tieling Primary School, enjoy a higher level of treatment than the corresponding level of civil officials; In addition, teachers in schools and civil servants in their respective departments can be transferred to each other according to the latest policy. These policies have undoubtedly greatly stimulated the enthusiasm of the teachers, so that they spend a lot of their spare time on improving their professional level, and the quality of teaching has indeed been improved to a certain extent.

Primary education is undoubtedly the most important for the East Coast Republic today, as it produces a large number of literate people, which is more important than junior and senior secondary education. You must know that there are only six junior high schools in the entire East Coast, which are located in Dongfang County, Ping'an County, Zhenhai County, Qingdao County, Meilin County and Luoqia County, and the number of students enrolled is also limited; There is only one high school, that is, the High School Affiliated to the Academy of Natural Sciences.

With such a narrow coverage of secondary education, as well as inconvenient transportation and natural conditions, the seven-year compulsory education stipulated by the state has become an empty word. From a practical point of view, in the reality that education funds are heavily squeezed out by military spending, it is quite good to be able to complete the primary education of most school-age children (at least 70 percent) in the whole country to the greatest extent.

The main purpose of primary education, in the words of some in the Ministry of Education, is: "...... The church can read and write simple practical essays, and can read and understand official documents; Strengthen the body and enhance the resistance to diseases, so that when they grow up, they can undertake the more arduous work of national and overseas colonial construction, and take on the backbone of national development; Attaching importance to cultivating the concept of the country, each school distributes an atlas of national historical events and hangs portraits of the current national leaders......"

It can be seen that the requirements of the Ministry of Education and local governments for primary school education are to cultivate a large number of qualified and physically strong "cannon fodder talents" -- including both "combat cannon fodder" and "construction cannon fodder". To this end, all primary schools under the Ministry of Education, whether inland or coastal areas, have uniformly implemented the training plan for primary school students formulated by the Ministry of Education.

The plan generally includes: 1. Organize outdoor group camping activities in summer, according to different local conditions, there are seaside camping, forest camping, grassland camping, mountain camping, hot springs and other popular camping sites. These camping activities can greatly exercise the children's physique, courage and teamwork ability, and the effect is quite good; 2. Male and female students are trained separately in specialized courses, such as military ranks, agricultural knowledge, and gymnastics classes for boys; Girls are expected to take courses such as health care, hygiene knowledge, tailoring and housekeeping, all of which are very practical courses that students are more willing to take, because parents will take the trouble to tell them that these are all essential skills for later society.

Considering that some parents are reluctant to send their children to school for a variety of reasons – some have misunderstood, some have heavy housework (children are also laborers), and some are long distances – both the central Ministry of Education and the local governments in the settlements have put in place various measures to encourage parents to send their children to primary school.

For example, in addition to retaining the original school subsidy of two yuan a year issued by the Ministry of Education to parents, they have also formulated various additional scholarship measures. For example, Tieling Town has the "Iron and Steel Scholarship" jointly set up by various enterprises, the "Southern Railway Scholarship" funded and sponsored by the Southern Railway Company in the affiliated areas of the Southern Railway, and many primary schools in Zhenhai County have the "Ship Scholarship" and so on. In addition, some wealthy families have also contributed a lot in this process, for example, when the son of Liu Weimin, the former chairman of the executive committee, got married, he donated a scholarship of 2,000 yuan to a primary school in Miannong Township, Dongfang County, the capital.

In principle, these scholarships are distributed to students with better academic performance or outstanding progress, but in practice, some students with heavier family burdens (need children to help with work) will also receive subsidies, and students who have a long way to go to school will also receive subsidies.

Of course, for children in rural areas, even with all the scholarships, there is still no guarantee that they will be 100 percent enrolled, or even if they do, they will not be able to attend classes every day or complete all classes from grades 1 to 5. At present, there are 222 students in the five grades of the school, including 18 government employees, 96 factory workers, 13 businessmen (including shopkeepers and hawkers), 3 doctors, 8 soldiers, and 29 technical engineers, and only 55 parents are farmers, accounting for 24.8 percent, which is extremely inconsistent with the proportion of more than 70 percent of the local agricultural population.

The low school enrollment rate of rural children is certainly related to the heavy workload of household chores and inconvenient transportation, but it is also related to personal ideology. Therefore, how to drive the peasant children to the classroom, instead of wasting their precious childhood life on mowing pigweed, herding sheep and cattle, taking care of younger siblings, helping the family cook, going to the construction site to earn money, taking care of livestock and other messy household chores, is definitely a very important task at present.

At present, this work is mainly carried out by people from the Army, who call on veterans (often important figures in the countryside) to set an example in sending their children to school through organizations such as the Township Servicemen's Association. I believe that under their leadership, the farmers will definitely follow suit. Of course, if this kind of measure does not work again, then the local government may have to consider taking a certain amount of coercive measures! (A good event for pie in the sky, cool mobile phones are waiting for you!) Follow from ~ Dian/Chinese network public account (WeChat add friends - add public account - enter ddxiaoshuo), participate now! Everyone has a prize, now pay attention to ddxiaoshuo WeChat public account! (To be continued......)