For the three hundred and sixty-five teenagers who were selected to attend the preparatory school, they certainly felt that all this was like a dream. Before this, they might have been apprentices in factories or workers on farms, but what is certain is that
Yes, they can only earn five or six silver dollars a month at most.
But now, in the school, they have a monthly allowance of five silver dollars!
All they need is to learn and learn English. Of course, this learning process is not easy. If they cannot memorize the newly learned English words and sentences, they are not allowed to eat, and they are not even allowed to speak a word of Mandarin in school.
Can only speak English.
All this is to enable them to master simple conversations in English as soon as possible and be able to study abroad as soon as possible.
In fact, long before the arrival of the first batch of immigrants, Zhu Xianhai deliberately asked to count the immigrant teenagers aged 12 to 17 who had studied privately. According to his original plan, some of these teenagers would go to technical schools to learn skills.
Some of them will be sent to study abroad in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States.
Talent!
Whether it is a company or a country, talent is the most important thing.
In fact, opportunities do not only belong to those children. For adults, they also have their own opportunities. Those adults who study English in night schools can also pass the exam to obtain the qualification to study abroad, just like Li Qingen.
A seemingly simple decision has changed the fate of many people and allowed many people to see opportunities.
For 23-year-old Zhao Tianfeng, what opportunities does he see?
go home!
What does it mean to study abroad?
It means that you can leave Nanhua, whether it is to England, the United States, or France, then you have the opportunity to return to the Qing Dynasty.
"Brother Chen, we don't even have a chance to build a boat here, but as long as we go to a foreign country, we can leave Nanhua and go back to our hometown. By then, brother Chen, you will still be the second young master of the Chen family. There will be like now, with a bunch of people
Mud legs are mixed together."
When persuading Chen Jie to sign up with him, Zhao Tianfeng sounded a little excited.
How can he not be excited? He is an official candidate, and he won the examination at the age of 20! Even if he is a deputy candidate, he will be promoted to the central government in the future. In his hometown in Zhejiang, who doesn't know this?
But what about here?
In other words, what is the difference between a teacher and an ordinary mud-legged person?
The only difference was that he got a single room dormitory and could earn fifteen or six yuan a month. But such a life was not what he had thought about. He had also thought about entering a company and becoming a senior employee of the company. This was also what he wanted.
Reasons to study English hard.
But the problem is, this is not what he wants. He wants to be an official in the court and want to honor his ancestors.
But here, even if you are successful, what can you do?
"Actually, this place is like a paradise, so why bother thinking about going home?"
Chen Jie shook his head.
"My hometown is in chaos. Even if you and I go back, what will happen?"
Seeing that Chen Jie refused to listen, Zhao Tianfeng just sighed and said.
"You have to think clearly, after passing this village, there will be no such store! And now when the country is hiring people, if you and I have studied in the West, we will definitely be reused by the court after returning to the country, and we will become famous by then.
It’s even more natural.”
In fact, even Zhao Tianfeng knows that studying abroad is not an opportunity to escape, but an opportunity to learn. In the more than half a year since he came to Nanhua, like many people, he has also been shocked by the power of the machine. Although he was surprised, of course he also
Aware of the changes in the world.
Faced with the impact of steam engines and various machines, Zhao Tianfeng realized the crisis as well as the opportunity! This was not his chance to become famous! How many people in the Qing Dynasty knew about machines? Understand science, study abroad, and then escape back.
How could the Qing Dynasty not be reused by the imperial court?
After all, the imperial court needs guns and cannons to suppress bandits, and machines can make guns and cannons. To defend against foreigners, it needs to build warships. No one in the imperial court can do these things! But he can! After studying abroad, he will naturally be able to do this!
"Why……"
With a long sigh, Chen Jie didn't say anything. Some people couldn't persuade him. Of course, he wouldn't miss the opportunity to study abroad. This is indeed a rare opportunity!
Besides, he really wanted to see what England and France were like, having fought all the way to the capital of the Qing Dynasty and even burned down the emperor's garden.
A total of 737 people applied for the exam to study abroad, and there were even 12 women among them. The two sisters Song Bing and Song Yu were naturally among them. Compared with other people, their foreign language skills were better, so passing the exam was almost natural.
.
On January 27, 1862, among the adults who took the exam, a total of 412 passed the exam, including ten women. The English proficiency of the vast majority of them was almost equivalent to...the third or fourth grade of elementary school.
.
It is definitely not possible to study abroad at this level. However, when they signed up, the return of the "Flying Cloud" brought 37 missionaries from the Southern American Church. These missionaries who knew Chinese naturally shouldered the responsibility of teachers.
In addition to the missionaries, there were even two Chinese professors. Their arrival finally put Nanhua's English education on the right track.
In the following days, they learned English and mathematics at the same time. For scholars who are good at memorizing, they learned English by rote memorization, which was a good way to get twice the result with half the effort.
In fact, this is not only true for adults, but also for students in preparatory schools for studying abroad. They have to recite poetry every morning when they get up. In the morning, they practice writing and listen to the teacher's lectures. In the afternoon, they basically recite the texts. The requirements for reciting the texts are very strict, and if you fail to complete them, you will be punished.
.
"...Everyone has to recite English novels and one or two essays every day. Every time he makes a mistake in reading, the professor will draw it with a pencil and correct the pronunciation. In class the next day, he has to review the old lesson. Only by reciting it completely can he
Start teaching a new class. The teaching time should be two or three hours every day, and the other time should be spent studying mathematics and geography."
Zhu Xianhai just nodded slightly to the preparatory school teaching methods mentioned by Li Weizhi. He didn't know what was scientific or unscientific. The important thing was to let them learn English quickly, lay a good language foundation, and then select the best ones to study abroad.
.
The late Qing Dynasty suffered several attacks from foreign countries in 1840, and even though they had to cede territories and pay indemnities, they did not wake up to the fact that if they wanted to catch up with the Western powers, they had to learn foreign languages, especially English. Still immersed in my dream of a "Tatar Qing Dynasty", I finally sent a hundred
Many young children in the United States, but because they were influenced by foreign culture and became "unruly", they categorically withdrew. It was not until they were defeated by the Japanese in 1894, they lost hundreds of millions of taels of silver, ceded Taiwan, and lost Korea that they finally understood
The following year, in 1895, Yang Shenxiu, the imperial censor, reported that Japanese Meiji Restoration students studying abroad should be sent to Japan to study. Even so, the door to studying abroad would not really open until the Eight-Power Allied Forces captured the capital, but this
It's time...it's too late!
What Zhu Xianhai needs now is to seize the time, seize this window period, send overseas students to learn from the West, and achieve independent training of talents in about 20 years, and in the process, seize the opportunity of the second industrial revolution and realize South China's
leapfrog development, this is the most important thing.
Those who are backward may not necessarily be beaten often, but those who are backward and do not learn will definitely be beaten often. Just like Japan, which "seeks knowledge from the world" in history, took away Taiwan, demanded hundreds of millions of taels in compensation, and then defeated Russia. On the other hand, that
"The Qing Dynasty is the most knowledgeable in the world." What about the "Tatars" who are constantly debating whether "Chinese learning or Western learning is more important?" It's just meat on the board.
While lamenting the changes in history, Zhu Xianhai couldn't help but feel a sense of urgency. It seemed that history did not leave him much time. After all, compared to Japan, the current external environment of South China is really too harsh, and South America is their territory.
!
Developing on other people's territory...isn't it dangerous?