Chapter 164 Let’s Build a School
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
How could one actually build up a nation’s strength? Most people—especially those who had zero interest in domestic policy—would probably just say, “Add more farmland.” It sounded simple enough. But the truth was, national power mostly came down to how productive each individual citizen was.
So yes, technically, raising the population itself wasn’t a wrong answer… except to make more farmland you had to clear land, and clearing land needed manpower.
And manpower was never lying around spare. Most people were already stuck in jobs that kept society running as it was.
Plus, growing grain demanded tons of water, and even then, bugs or weird weather could crush the harvest so badly you’d have to cut your population down, not grow it.
So how did you make the country wealthier and stronger—fukoku kyōhei [T/N: 富国強兵 = “enrich the nation, strengthen the army”]—without sacrificing people’s current quality of life?
…Okay, yeah. Honestly, if they had extra people lying around they wouldn’t *not* be clearing land already. He knew. He’d ignore that tsukkomi for now.
The answer was actually simple.
Raise how much each field produced.
Sure, you could try breeding better grain varieties or something, but the easiest, fastest way was obvious: build schools all across the nation and spread basic primary education everywhere.
Once the classrooms and equipment were set up, upkeep cost almost nothing compared to other investments. And even if they had no resources, they could grow human resources with education—that was the one thing you could always increase.
And people who learned could teach others, at least a little, so raising new talent would flow way smoother. That was why he—Ore—had been planning to build schools from the start.
* * *
”W-what are you even thinking, honestlyyyyyy ꐦ”
Of course, the people in the Rural Village division blew up at him. They used the kids’ hands in farm work just to keep crops growing, so the idea of sending them to school was… impossible. Ninim in particular had nearly thrown a chair at him.
Right. No wonder when he’d walked in all bright and said “we should send your sons and daughters to school,” they’d instantly gone “Get out ꐦ” and “You heartless monster ꐦ” and slammed the door in his face. (Okay. Fair. White-eyed faint.)
Yeah… they probably couldn’t even survive winter otherwise. (sweat)
It had seemed like a good plan, but fine. So he made a new one: he built a separate pilot school just for the adults so they could experience what school was, and started sending only city kids at first to make the adults see its importance. As for the Rural Village group, he had the administration issue food exchange tickets—if they sent their kids to primary school, the government guaranteed a year’s worth of food. And *finally*, it worked.
For the record, in his old world even nobles often couldn’t read or write, so he’d checked if his officers could do basic reading and math and—yeah. Most couldn’t. So now Knights, and especially squad captains (basically like NCOs in his old world’s army), were getting extra pay bonuses to study in shifts.
Eventually he wanted to spread it down to even the footsoldier level. The manuals he made were illustrated and carved in woodblock prints by the artists they sponsored, so even people who couldn’t read could follow them… kind of. Still, if they couldn’t even read numbers or letters, the manuals were useless, and raising skilled people would take forever.
It wasn’t like they were dumber than people back in his old world. They just never had the chance to be educated. He was sure they’d pick it up fast. So he wasn’t worried.
(Right now, he needed to focus on building the place for kids to learn.)
The school itself was finished. The equipment was all set. Teachers and textbooks were ready too.
The problem was…
—The first day of school.
”Ha-haaa ♪ you colorless little rat~”
”Are you from Yugan? No wonder you’re big but dumb ♪”
”We People of Birene are the chosen ones of the holy spirit Birene ꐦ So we can do anything we want to Elandric or Yugan people ꐦ Kneel to us ꐦ”
”You lowly Commoner People of Birene and Yugan brats ꐦ”
…Yeah. No. Nope. (dead eyes)
He’d thought kids wouldn’t be as soaked in nationalism as the adults, so he’d tried mixing them all in one class to see how it went—and, well.
At this rate it would turn into fistfights and full-on bullying born from pure discrimination. In a way, it was worse than the adults, who at least pretended to hide it. Even the teachers weren’t stopping them—they were joining in the chaos. Ayumu covered his eyes, peeking through his fingers at the disaster in horror.
[Okay. We’re splitting classes by ethnicity. And also… yeah. Looks like what they need to learn first isn’t just reading, writing, and math, but, sadly, basic morals too…] he thought, quietly weeping inside.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
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