Our Family Has Fallen

This brings us back to Hamlet’s unique education system.

In the end, it was because at the beginning, 99% were illiterate, and Hamlet’s teaching force was too weak. The teachers were not much better than the students, and the learning progress management among them was chaotic.

So, back then, Lance directly made it clear that the current stage of education was mainly to eliminate illiteracy, concentrate efforts, and use those real teachers to provide short-term training for some with a foundation.

This part of the teachers would learn about a hundred words and focus on that.

First-grade teachers would teach those hundred words, second-grade another hundred, and third-grade another hundred.

Simply put, originally you needed a thousand words to be a teacher, now a hundred would do, and by repeatedly teaching these hundred, you would become even more proficient than with a thousand.

An educational assembly line was directly established, with teachers for each grade responsible for only part of it, breaking down the original complex problem to solve the weak teaching force.

The three-grade illiteracy classes would finish in two to three months, and some smart ones could learn to read and write these words in one month.

At this point, a vocabulary of five hundred words was enough to support their daily reading, and being able to read meant being able to self-learn, which meant the end of illiteracy and the beginning of the next stage.

Among these people, it’s not just minors, it’s just that most minors lived in the school dormitory. It actually included some adults, mainly young adults.

Workers and farmers who performed well were selected from the workshops and farms and sent to learn, mainly young adults under twenty-five because their learning abilities had not completely declined. The tuition was covered by the Lord.

In this matter, one of Lance’s measures was fairness, and women were admitted just the same. Don’t think women couldn’t go to school. In fact, those with a bit of money paid more attention to this aspect of education.

The most direct examples were Tiffany, Margaret, and Audrey’s backgrounds. They were both wealthy merchants and nobility, all receiving a good education, with the former having learned arithmetic, and the latter two having even learned advanced courses like equestrianism.

However, it was very difficult for women from ordinary families to have the opportunity to learn, with an average life expectancy of less than thirty years, marrying early at twelve or thirteen.

This wasn’t gender discrimination but a survival dilemma. Those people didn’t need to labor and had superior living conditions, with plenty of time for learning and entertainment, while you would starve if you didn’t work.

Families struggling to survive couldn’t invest in their children because even men in ordinary families had few opportunities for education, becoming workhorses early.

So, the true root was the conflict arising from the different occupation of social resources between classes, unrelated to gender.

Lance straightforwardly enforced a ban: no marriage for those under sixteen years old in the territory, educating people about human development and making them realize that certain situations were normal.

He also warned of the negative effects of underage childbirth. In fact, it’s not just about women; early maturity in men could also have leftover effects.

There was no energy to promote free love in Hamlet because it didn’t align with Lance’s interests. He also needed more population and families.

However, Lance still provided opportunities, using schools to protect minors and recruiting those teenagers for work in factories and farms, giving them the ability to live independently.

Then, he selected some capable, well-performing ones to train, allocating some resources that originally belonged to the upper class so that the working class could also have educational opportunities.

A batch was selected, studied for a month, and then replaced by another batch. This way, there was a monthly rotation of role models, giving more people opportunities.

Because there was also a night school further study plan, those who finished studying would return to workshops and farms and teach more people through night school.

It’s actually similar to the three-step process in schools, further promoting the literacy movement.

And the grassroots management abilities of these people could also develop, after all, teaching wasn’t simple and dealing with those at the bottom was quite challenging.

Lance also encouraged them to self-learn; the more they learn, the better, and those who excel would be prioritized for promotion and rewards given.

As for learning materials, those were compiled announcements and official documents. After learning, they would gain an understanding of Hamlet’s systems and policies, and their literacy would reach the thousands.

This was the upward channel Lance paved for them, also for cultivating grassroots management personnel. Otherwise, if they were illiterate, they couldn’t understand official announcements or policies, and without knowing how to write reports, handling related affairs would be difficult.

In fact, this was a preparation for discovering talent, cultivating talent, liberating productive forces, and seizing grassroots power.

A very important reason Lance wasn’t in a hurry to reclaim lost territory was that he had no people at hand; even if he reclaimed the territory, he wouldn’t be able to control the grassroots, and it would still be given over to the Church, Gang, and local clans as gifts, right?

If he were to fight, it would definitely be to sweep all the trash into the garbage dump at once. Otherwise, needing to employ a large batch of the original bureaucrats, like Ovando, wouldn’t that be a waste?

So, in Lance’s eyes, there was no male or female, just consumables, but he needed some high-quality consumables.

These three grades were very basic, even considered low-quality and laughable in the eyes of those big figures, but they formed the foundation of the school.

The people who left from here would also form the foundation of Hamlet’s territory.

And from the third grade and up, it departed from the illiteracy stage and began real systematic learning. The corresponding course types gradually increased, and the level of those teachers rapidly improved, all talents Lance could gather.