Chapter 160 Innovation

Professor Anton Peruzzi’s ideas will be tested in East Africa in the next few years. However, while continuing his own scientific research, he must also take into account the important task of finding ways to increase agricultural production and improve crops in East Africa.

This is the task assigned by Ernst to Anton Peruzzi's team. Otherwise, who knows how far the research direction of these scientists will be distorted.

It is okay to engage in scientific research, but it is also necessary to contribute to the East African colonies. Ernst funded the Agricultural Research Institute. In the final analysis, he was serving his own colonies, and he did not really want to contribute to human science.

…

November 7, 1868.

Europe, Prussia, Hechingen.

Over time, the Hechingen Military Academy has become larger and larger, and its facilities and teaching staff have become increasingly complete.

There are currently more than 3,700 students on campus, with the main students coming from Europe, the Far East and South America.

When the Hechingen Military Academy was established, Ernst's original intention was to develop it into a professional military academy.

The result was counterproductive, because the development of the East African colonies required a large number of language translators and military technical talents, turning the Hechingen Military Academy into an accelerated German school.

With the development of the East African colonies, it is no longer necessary to equip immigrants with language translators to implement instructions and policies.

With the substantial increase in the number of European immigrants and the initial success of German-language education in East Africa, many non-German-speaking immigrants have learned to communicate in German, while forcing the remaining people to take the initiative to learn German.

In addition, in the past two years, the Hechingen Cultural School has begun to replace the Hechingen Military Academy to provide East Africa with professional low-educated talents, and the East African regular army has no desire to expand, so East Africa's demand for the Hechingen Military Academy has been greatly reduced.

These combined factors led Ernst to want to get the Hechingen Military Academy back on track and make it truly the cradle of cultivating professional military talents for his family.

In order to restore the Hechingen Military Academy to what it should have been, Ernst planned to start from four aspects.

The first is the academic system, cancel the crash course, restore the normal teaching order, and change it to a three-year system.

East African military talents are currently in a saturated state, and the enemies they fight are all indigenous, so there is no need for so many professional military talents.

In addition, the establishment of the Hechingen Cultural School began to provide German students for the Hechingen Military Academy, so the Hechingen Military Academy no longer needed to provide language education to non-German speaking students.

If the Hechingen Cultural School is the primary school, the Hechingen Military Academy is the middle school. The students adopted by Hechingen in the past two years have all been thrown into the Hechingen Cultural School for preliminary training.

Students who graduate from the Hechingen Cultural School can be divided into three grades. Those with particularly outstanding results in the first grade can apply or be assigned by Ernst to enter the German education system for further study. Generally, they are treated as true geniuses.

In the second category, students who have excellent academic performance but are only outstanding at the Hechingen Cultural School will enter the Hechingen Military Academy to study or intern at companies affiliated to the Hechingen Consortium.

In the third category, students with average or relatively poor grades were sent to the East African colonies to work in education, translation and other fields.

Students from the Hechingen Cultural School provided a relatively excellent source of students for the Hechingen Military Academy.

The second is to innovate teaching materials and find professionals to modify the teaching materials of Hechingen Military Academy and add more professional knowledge and courses.

The first edition of the Hechingen Military Academy textbook was compiled by Ernst himself, and it was not very professional. Naturally, the set of things he brainwashed students in the textbook could not be deleted, but the professional content could be modified.

The third is the teaching staff, hiring a group of professional retired non-commissioned officers from the Prussian army to teach at the school.

The current teaching staff of the Hechingen Military Academy is still too weak and it needs a group of senior teachers with real talents and practical knowledge.

The fourth is to build professional training venues.

A military academy naturally requires a lot of training. However, the Hechingen Military Academy is currently restricted to the campus and lacks professional training venues.

Ernst plans to coordinate the establishment of a training ground in a large area with relatively complex terrain in Hechingen for students to train.

The place was chosen in the west of Hechingen, where the population is relatively sparse, the hills and plains are intertwined, and there are large forests, which is very suitable.

As he said, Ernst, who had just returned from France, began to carry out reforms at the Hechingen Military Academy.

Let’s first sort out the students at the Hechingen Military Academy. Due to their age, some students at the Hechingen Military Academy were not promoted from the Hechingen Cultural School, so the quality of the students at the Hechingen Military Academy is uneven.

Ernst thoughtfully prepared a test for them. Those who passed the exam would stay, while those who failed would be dealt with in two batches.

The younger ones were sent back to the Hechingen Cultural School to be remade, while the older ones were sent directly to East Africa for employment.

The students left in this way basically have similar educational levels and are relatively healthy, which facilitates unified teaching in the future.

In terms of building materials and teachers, Ernst planned to start from various German countries. It would definitely be more difficult to poach Prussia.

However, some talents in small states can still be discovered, especially after Prussia integrated the military forces of the northern countries.

Some people with different philosophies from the Prussian army will definitely be eliminated from the army. Although the military philosophies are different, their military quality is still good. Ernst plans to mobilize connections to hire them to teach in Hechingen.

It doesn't matter if the military concepts are different. The Hechingen Military Academy is a school, not an army. It is a place where Ernst specializes in cultivating key military talents. As long as the military concepts do not involve the students' ideological fields, Ernst can tolerate them.

The training ground is the best solution. The entire Hechingen is nominally owned by the family, so there is no need to be polite and let your father allocate a piece of land for you.

Then, a cordon is put up and supporting facilities are provided, so students can practice with loaded guns and live ammunition.

No matter how much he trained in the school, Ernst would never have been able to build shooting ranges and other facilities at the Hechingen Military Academy, which were originally intended to facilitate supplies and construction.

The Hechingen Military Academy chose to be located on the outskirts of the town of Hechingen, not too far from the residential area, so it was impossible to issue weapons to them for free hands training.

Moreover, at that time, the focus was on becoming quick and not paying attention to the professional level of students. There was no need to engage in live-fire exercises and the like. If you had learned some textbook knowledge, you could shoot a gun and you were in good health, you could directly go to East Africa to find a job in the army. .

Now, Ernst wants to turn the Hechingen Military Academy into a professional military academy, so he naturally needs to conduct actual combat exercises.

Actual combat is always the only criterion for testing the military's combat effectiveness. Students at the Hechingen Military Academy naturally do not have the opportunity to be exposed to real wars, so they can only retreat to the next best thing and conduct some exercises to simulate the battlefield environment to improve students' military literacy.