Chapter 160 Innovation

Professor Anton Peruzzi's ideas will be verified in East Africa in the next few years. However, while continuing his scientific research, he must also balance the task of finding ways to increase agricultural production and improve crops in East Africa.

This was the task Ernst assigned to Anton Peruzzi's team, otherwise who knows to what extent the research direction of these scientists would go astray.

It is okay to conduct scientific research, but it is also necessary to contribute to the East African colonies. Ernst funded the Agricultural Research Institute, which was ultimately to serve his own colonies, not to contribute to the cause of human science.

…

November 7, 1868.

Hechingen, Prussia, Europe.

As time went by, the scale of the Hechingen Military Academy became larger and larger, and its facilities and teaching staff became increasingly complete.

The current enrollment is more than 3,700 people, with the majority of students coming from Europe, the Far East and South America.

When Ernst established the Hechingen Military Academy, his original intention was to develop it into a professional military academy.

The result was contrary to expectations, because the development of the East African colonies required a large number of language translators and military technical talents, which turned the Hechingen Military Academy into a crash course in German.

As the East African colonies developed, there was no longer a need to provide language translators for immigrants to implement instructions and policies.

With the substantial increase in the number of European immigrants and the initial success of German education in East Africa, many non-German-speaking immigrants have learned to communicate in German, forcing the rest to take the initiative to learn German.

In addition, in the past two years, the Hechingen Cultural School has begun to replace the Hechingen Military Academy to provide East Africa with professional low-educated talents, and the East African regular army has no desire to expand, so East Africa's demand for the Hechingen Military Academy has been greatly reduced.

These combined factors led Ernst to want to get the Hechingen Military Academy back on track and make it a true cradle for training professional military talents for his own country.

In order to restore the Hechingen Military Academy to its original appearance, Ernst planned to start from four aspects.

The first is the school system. The crash courses will be cancelled, normal teaching order will be restored, and it will be changed to a three-year system.

East Africa’s military talent is currently at saturation, and the enemies are all indigenous people, so there is no need for so many professional military talents.

In addition, with the establishment of the Hechingen Cultural School, it began to provide German-speaking students for the Hechingen Military Academy, so the Hechingen Military Academy no longer needed to provide language education for non-German-speaking students.

If the Heixingen Cultural School is the primary school, the Heixingen Military Academy is the middle school. In the past two years, all the students adopted by Heixingen were first thrown into the Heixingen Cultural School for initial training.

Students graduating from the Hechingen Cultural School can be divided into three levels. Those in the first level with particularly outstanding grades can apply or be assigned by Ernst to enter the German education system for further study, which is generally a treatment only for true geniuses.

The second tier is students with excellent academic performance, but who are only outstanding in the Heixingen Cultural School. They can enter the Heixingen Military Academy to study or intern in companies under the Heixingen Group.

The third category, students with average or poor academic performance, were sent to the East African colonies to engage in teaching and translation work.

The students of Heixingen Cultural School provided relatively excellent students for the Heixingen Military Academy.

The second is to innovate the teaching materials and find professionals to modify the teaching materials of the Hechingen Military Academy and add more professional knowledge and courses.

The first edition of the textbooks for the Hechingen Military Academy was compiled by Ernst himself. It was not very professional, and the things that he used to brainwash his students in the textbooks naturally could not be deleted, but the professional content could be modified.

The third is the teaching staff. A group of professional retired non-commissioned officers from the Prussian army were hired to teach at the school.

The current faculty of the Heixingen Military Academy is still too weak and needs a group of senior teachers with real talents and knowledge.

The fourth is to build professional training facilities.

A military academy naturally requires a lot of training, but currently the Heixingen Military Academy is confined to the campus and lacks professional training grounds.

Ernst planned to coordinate a large area with relatively complex terrain in Hechingen to build a training ground for student training.

The location chosen was in the west of Hechingen, where the population was relatively sparse, and there were alternating hills and plains, as well as large tracts of jungle, which was very suitable.

Ernst, who had just returned from France, started to carry out reforms at the Hechingen Military Academy.

Let's first review the students of Heixingen Military Academy. Due to age reasons, some students of Heixingen Military Academy are not promoted from Heixingen Cultural School, so the quality of students of Heixingen Military Academy is uneven.

Ernst thoughtfully prepared an exam for them. Those who passed the exam continued to stay, while those who failed were divided into two batches.

Those who are younger are sent back to Heixingen Cultural School for retraining, while those who are older are directly sent to East Africa for employment.

The students who stay in this way basically have similar cultural levels and are in better physical condition, which facilitates the subsequent unified teaching.

In terms of building materials and teachers, Ernst planned to start with the German states. It would definitely be more difficult to poach from Prussia.

However, some talents in small states can still be discovered, especially after Prussia integrated the military forces of the northern countries.

Some people whose ideas are different from the Prussian army will definitely be eliminated from the army. Although their military ideas are different, their military qualities are still good. Ernst plans to use his connections to hire them to teach in Hechingen.

It doesn't matter if the military concepts are different. The Hechingen Military Academy is a school, not the army. It is a place where Ernst specializes in training key military talents. As long as the military concepts do not involve the students' ideological areas, Ernst can tolerate them.

The training ground is the easiest to solve. The entire Heixingen is nominally theirs, so there is no need to be polite. Just ask your father to allocate a piece of land to you.

Then, by setting up a cordon and equipping the area with supporting facilities, students can conduct drills with live ammunition.

No matter how much training he received in school, it was impossible for Ernst to build facilities such as a shooting range at the Hechingen Military Academy. This was originally done to facilitate supplies and construction.

The Heichingen Military Academy was located in the suburbs of Heichingen Town, not too far from the residential area, so it was impossible to provide them with weapons and allow them to train freely.

Moreover, the main focus at that time was on quick success, and students' professional level was not valued, so there was no need to conduct live-fire exercises or the like. As long as one had learned enough textbook knowledge, could shoot a gun, and had a healthy physique, one could go directly to East Africa to find a job in the army.

Now, Ernst wants to turn the Hechingen Military Academy into a professional military academy, so naturally he has to conduct actual combat exercises.

Actual combat will always be the only criterion for testing the combat effectiveness of an army. Naturally, students at the Heixingen Military Academy now have no chance to come into contact with a real war, so they can only do some exercises as a second best option to simulate the battlefield environment to improve students' military literacy.

(End of this chapter)