Chapter 108 History Lesson
December 7, 1867.
Mlandizi Cultural School, Colonial East Africa.
Today the First Town (Mlandizi) Cultural School welcomed two special "students", Maximilian I and his wife Queen Carlota.
A month ago, Queen Carlota arrived in East Africa. At that time, for the safety of his future mother-in-law, Ernst personally arranged for his own ship, freed up a ship, and went to East Africa with the fleet.
Seeing Maximilian I safe and sound in Tanga, East Africa, Queen Carlota and Maximilian I hugged each other and cried.
As the person who had instigated Maximilian I, Queen Carlota cried every day and suffered greatly in Europe after Maximilian I was arrested and imprisoned in Mexico.
The disaster in Mexico made Queen Carlota abandon her fantasy of becoming a queen. Now she just wants to spend the rest of her life with her beloved.
After Tanga and Maximilian I showed their love for each other, Queen Carlota expressed her willingness to live in East Africa with Maximilian I for some time.
…
It was the first time that Maximilian I visited the First Town (Mlandizi), the seat of the central government of East Africa.
As the earliest developed city in East Africa (township, some European cities are very small, actually towns), the First Town is slightly smaller than Dar es Salaam, but its planning and facilities are obviously more complete, and its architecture and culture reflect the style of the German region everywhere.
What is slightly different from Europe is the local natural landscape, environmental climate and some East African urban supporting facilities planned by Ernst himself.
For example, roadside trees and green belts are rarely seen in European cities. Of course, the green belts in East African colonies are very simple, consisting of a piece of earthen space reserved in the middle or on both sides of the road for weeds to grow.
The last thing the East African colonies lack is land, so urban planning is very wild, pursuing bigger is better everywhere. Although the current road scale and level cannot be reached, the reserved space has been reserved and can be used directly to upgrade urban roads in the future.
Therefore, apart from the green belts, there are still large open spaces on both sides of the brick-paved streets, and the houses and buildings on both sides are separated far away by the roads, making the first town (Mlandizi), which already has a relatively small population, look even more empty.
As for the houses on both sides, they are mainly one-story buildings, and many of them are still civil structures. However, with the open space of about 100 square meters between the yard and the house, it is also convenient for subsequent renovation and upgrading.
The drainage channels are mainly behind the houses and are currently open-air. According to the strange laws in East Africa, residents are not allowed to discharge sewage into the public drainage channels behind the houses. The drainage channels are mainly used to deal with rainfall during the rainy season.
This is done to prevent the drainage canals from turning into stinking ditches. You have to know that in the environment of East Africa, especially in coastal plains like the First Town, the temperature is relatively high throughout the year. Once the sewage ferments, it can be washed away by rain in time during the rainy season, but in the dry season, the weather is dry and the sewage can only remain in the canals, breeding various bacteria and attracting flies.
Of course, in the future when development occurs, it won’t matter if the open-air canals are paved with cement pipes. But in East Africa at this time, hygiene must be put first. Being a hotbed of tropical diseases is no joke.
When Maximilian I and his wife first arrived in the First Town, they saw the First Town Cultural School. Because the First Town Cultural School was built late, it was built on the outskirts of the town.
Both husband and wife were interested in the educational content in the East African colonies. They wanted to know how the content taught in such a backward place (compared to Europe) was different from that in Europe.
In Mexico, Maximilian I had no time to realize his ambitions. The whole country was in chaos, so he had no energy to engage in education.
Although conditions in East Africa were relatively poor, compulsory education was still available, which naturally interested the couple, so Maximilian I took the initiative to ask to experience the schools in East Africa.
The East African colonial government sent someone to arrange for the two men to visit the First Town Cultural School.
The classroom of Grade One, Class One of the First Town Cultural School was full of students, while Maximilian I and his wife were arranged to sit in temporary seats at the back.
There were about thirty or forty students in the class, including children of Chinese immigrants and children of Austro-Hungarian immigrants (Paraguayan immigrants needed a separate Spanish teacher), and the teacher was a graduate of the Hechingen Military Academy.
As the seat of the central government of East Africa, the teaching staff of the First Town Cultural School is unrivalled in East Africa.
You should know that the Hexingen Military Academy and other schools run by the Hexingen royal family are actually crash courses, so the levels of the students vary.
Many students, by the time they graduate, can only converse in German and master some German words.
But there was a severe shortage of people in East Africa, so even those with the worst grades would be sent to teach in the East African colonies.
Those who are smart and learn a lot will teach the older grades, while those who are not so smart or learn poorly will teach the younger grades.
Fortunately, the textbooks in East African colonial schools had relatively low-level content, so most people only had to read the textbooks verbatim.
This section was a history class. Maximilian I opened the textbook on the East African colonies and read it with great interest, and kept complaining to Queen Carlota in a low voice.
The Hechingen graduates who were teaching there automatically ignored the small actions of Maximilian I and his wife. After all, they all knew that these two were distinguished guests invited by the government.
Due to the diversity of immigrants in the East African colonies, teachers are required to teach in bilingual languages in the first grade. Starting from the second grade, teaching will be completely switched to German. Therefore, if Chinese children want to achieve good results, they must overcome the language barrier.
The first chapter, unsurprisingly, is a eulogy to the Hohenzollern family, emphasizing the Hechingen royal family's status as rulers of the East African lands and the long history of the Hechingen royal family and the Hohenzollern family.
These young children naturally did not feel awkward watching it and just treated it as a story. History textbooks are actually extracurricular reading materials and there is not even an exam on them.
This is also a little trick played by Ernst. When a course requires an exam, there will always be a group of people who will become bored (dislike studying).
When reading extracurricular books (actually books that are not part of exams), the younger you are, the easier it is to get addicted. Just like novels, the more you read, the more addicted you become. However, treating novels as exam content will greatly frustrate the reader's enthusiasm.
Maximilian I and Queen Carlotta read the last part of the first chapter while trying not to laugh.
After all, in terms of history and heritage, many European families are more prominent than the Hohenzollern family. Especially compared with the Habsburg family, the Hohenzollern family still lacks some foundation.
Of course, every noble family in Europe publicizes its prominent status and long history, so this is not the reason why Maximilian I was defeated. If he were to brag about the Habsburg family, he would definitely be more exaggerated than what is written in this book.
What Maximilian I and his companions found funny was the final description of the Hechingen royal family, which was almost like a savior.
This is not unfair to Ernst. The final content adopts the method of religious narrative to deify the status of the Hechingen royal family.
It’s just that Ernst is more implicit and doesn’t explicitly mention any gods or Gods, such as the so-called descendants of Amaterasu of the Japanese royal family, the Egyptian pharaohs who call themselves the sons of the sun god, and the Far Eastern royal family who performed the Fengshan ceremony on Mount Tai...
Instead, they used rhetoric (yes, the same kind used in the Blue Sky Project) to make the Hechingen royal family appear solemn and majestic. The reason for this was to avoid religion.
The beliefs of East African immigrants today are diverse, but without churches or priests, so no matter whether they are Catholic or Orthodox, the residents can only rely on their ancestral experience to carry out spontaneous prayers and other activities.
Ernst was aiming for secularization. It was difficult to force these adults to give up their faith, but it was easy to change the minds of these children.
There is no need to go too far, as long as we do not implant religious colors into education and sports as is the case in Europe today (there are many religious schools in Europe).
Without learning and repetition, people's memory will slowly fade away. The spontaneous inheritance of religious traditions by the East African people will never be as good as the explanation and dissemination of a professional organization (referring to the church).
(End of this chapter)
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