Jiang Zhi readily agreed to build the house: "You three villages have learned well. There is gold in books, and the predecessors are not as good as the successors."
Therefore, our village has a scholar named Xia, who not only taught the children but also brought in a lot of money.
I'm willing to help you with the construction of your house, the purchase of tables and chairs, and even a slate for your children to write on, so that your village can have a few more literate and capable people.
Upon hearing that wealth was coming in, the three village chiefs all smiled. Who wouldn't be happy to hear about money? Building a school would make it a cash cow for their village.
“However!” Jiang Zhi changed the subject, “It’s not enough for your village to just have houses; you also have to pay for the teachers’ tuition, you know?”
Before she could finish speaking, the three village chiefs said, "We have been in Xujia Village for two years and know the rules of your village school. The whole village pays the teacher a monthly allowance, not just the children's families."
“Yes, we also went back to the village to discuss it. Our village has a large population, sixty households, and each family can afford one hundred coins a year. We can give more for children going to school, and they all agreed.”
It's always painful for people to spend money, but seeing Xujia Village changing day by day, they were extremely envious.
When I first came to study here, although each household in Xujia Village had built a new house, they all had thatched roofs and hardly any furniture.
This year, all the houses were replaced with tiled houses, and now a few households are still rebuilding their roofs.
In the first year, the school only had two rooms, and the students slept on straw mats when they came to study.
Although we still live in the schoolhouse this year, we now have several bamboo beds and new bedding.
What surprised them most was that there were people in the village who specialized in looking after infants, so that the children didn't have to be taken to the fields to be exposed to the sun or locked up in the house to cry.
I've never heard of such a thing before. Every family lets their children grow up day by day.
Every time I bring up the story of Xujia Village back to my own village, the villagers don't believe me, yet they have no choice but to believe me.
After learning the techniques in Xujia Village, they returned home and their grain production did increase, with each family earning an extra three to five hundred coins.
In this world, everyone tries to hide their new methods, but Xu Family Village openly lets people learn from them.
When the interns asked, the people of Xujia Village said that all these methods were from books.
Reading more books will teach you many things. Even a scholar like Xia, who can write poetry, can also be a fortune teller. Even a child who hasn't grown all his hair can do math.
Every time I come to Xujia Village, I not only hear the children's innocent voices reading in the school, but I can also see the children reciting their lessons while working in the fields.
With such a diligent and ambitious child, how could the village not prosper? As long as I learn everything from Xujia Village, I won't fall too far behind.
If there are no workshops, build schools; if this generation can't make it, there's always the next.
Jiang Zhi was very satisfied with the results. If you are willing to work hard, others will be willing to help you.
There's no such thing as a free lunch; what falls most often are stones and bird droppings.
Jiang Zhi agreed to repair houses and provide school supplies for the village, and would also subsidize them with a few taels of silver as tuition fees.
Hearing that they would also receive tuition subsidies for their village, the three village chiefs were even happier and thanked Jiang Zhi repeatedly: "We all say that Village Chief Jiang is a great philanthropist, a living bodhisattva, and he truly helps us make a living."
Jiang Zhi smiled and said, "I will keep your village's affairs in mind from now on. I can supply insecticides and rooting solutions, and I will be the first to collect medicinal herbs."
This year, the villages still sent herbs without paying.
Wang Xiaoju and her team will start paying for the acquisition next year.
For three consecutive years, he had been taking herbs for free, making a fortune from this risk-free business. At the end of the year, even Jiang Zhi received more than ten taels of silver as a bonus. He couldn't even get enough to eat and didn't know to put down his bowl.
In the future, villagers from various villages can come to Xujia Village to sell herbs for a few taels of silver, which is also a way for them to make money.
Those pesticides and rooting agents are beneficial to crops, but the quantity is limited. Combining them with tobacco leaf spray to kill pests can improve efficiency, so Jiangzhi naturally wants to give them to those positive and willing-to-learn villages.
Jiang Zhi promised to build a school in the village, and she naturally kept her word. Two people from Xujia Village went, and then each village contributed its own labor.
The timber and bricks that needed to be purchased were bought centrally by Xujia Village from the brickyard and then delivered to the various villages.
The classrooms were built in a uniform three-room layout, followed by separate toilets for boys and girls, and a water room for the children to drink water.
There are also whiteboards for teachers, charcoal sticks, slates for children, tables and benches.
Each village brings out a list of children who are ready to attend school to register and receive the necessary documents.
On the day the stone slabs were distributed to the children, the county magistrate, who was a scholar who had passed the imperial examinations and was in charge of managing the county's schools, academies and other educational institutions, the county school instructor, and Jiang Zhi, a philanthropist who had accumulated merit and donated money, were all present.
The budget for house repairs is never accurate. Jiang Zhi estimated five taels of silver, but the actual cost was ten to twelve taels of silver.
The reason is simple: two of the three villages originally had schools, which were ancestral halls. Jiangzhi didn't need to repair them; she only needed to add tables and whiteboards.
Only one village needed new houses built, but the biggest expense was actually on the children.
When registering school-age children, Jiang Zhi discovered that there were orphans in all three villages. The oldest was fourteen or fifteen years old, and the youngest was only one or two years old. In the dead of winter, they wore tattered clothes and broken shoes with their heels exposed. Their faces were blue from the cold, and their noses were constantly running.
Although he had relatives and elders to look after him, he still lived a very hard life, much more pitiful than the stone monkey.
After inquiring about the situation, Jiang Zhi decided to take care of these orphans.
The older children will stay in the original village. Jiang Zhi will help renovate the house and will regularly send them grain, oil, rice, and flour. They will learn to support themselves. She will take the children under seven years old back to Xujia Village.
So the money was spent on this.
With the schoolhouse built and teachers readily available, it's no surprise that in such a large village, there were already literate people if there had been a school before.
The teacher used to be an old scholar in the village. He charged each child three taels of silver for their tuition and also required seasonal gifts.
Many children in the village want to go to school, but fewer than three can afford to send their children to school with three taels of silver a year. Without children going to school, the school is run in a lax manner.
Now, villages are also learning from Qingquan Academy, and the teachers' tuition fees have been replaced with monthly allowances.
The children don't sit in the classroom to study every day; they only attend morning and evening classes. They still have to do chores as usual.
Those who wish to learn more will be paid extra by the teacher, with additional lessons in between.
By doing the math, the teacher could earn more money, and each household only needed a few hundred coins for their children to go to school and learn to read, without interfering with farm work.
At this time, the new school was completed, and dozens of children came, each with a stone slab for practicing calligraphy.
The children were all excited to see the twenty sets of brand-new desks and chairs in the classroom.
The county magistrate was a very strict man. He first gave the village chief and clan head a thorough dressing-down, and then he talked about the new school.
"With Qingquan Academy as an example, if you still can't learn it by following them, then you should dig your own graves and bury yourselves instead of coming out and making a fool of yourselves."
"At the end of the year, the instructors would go to various villages to inspect the children's studies. If the teachers were lazy and did not teach, and the children did not study, the teachers' monthly salary would be deducted."
The teachers' monthly salary is now partly raised by the village and partly supplemented by Jiang Zhi.
The teacher earns one tael of silver a month, and those who are willing to tutor others outside of class time can earn more.
But if the teacher is caught slacking off, Jiang Zhi will lose her allowance.
This novel and somewhat unforgiving way of paying monthly allowances made the old scholar very uncomfortable.
However, I will receive a fixed monthly allowance from now on, which is more interesting than teaching only two or three children before.
Jiangzhi's new school was indeed a method that no one had ever seen before.
Others donate money to help students for a good reputation, afraid of being called stingy. Jiang Zhi, on the other hand, always talks about deducting wages, and is both generous and stingy!
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