Chapter 270 A few things about pilot education (Part 1)

At this time, several missionary schools in Tyrol had been open for nearly three years. As the number of schools increased, the problems exposed became more and more obvious.

Because of religious beliefs, the church has irreplaceable appeal in the local area. Coupled with the vigorous publicity by local government agencies, especially highlighting the "free nature", it attracted the attention of a large number of poor people.

The educational work carried out in Tyrol at the beginning can be described as "hot", which can be seen from the various people who filled the various missionary schools.

But soon a series of problems emerged. The first was the uneven quality of this group of educated people. Some people even chose to receive education only because they could earn a living.

In order to do its best to educate more Tyrolean mountain people, the church added many welfare measures to the school's outline, such as no age limit for enrollees and free lunches, etc. This was also based on Franz's suggestions. .

But it is precisely because of this that some guys who are greedy for petty gains came up with the idea of ​​harvesting wool. Soon, after their processing and exaggerated descriptions, they spread the word from one to ten and spread it to hundreds, causing many Tyroleans to be bewitched. He also became a member of the army of food lovers.

Soon the church was forced to introduce new rules and regulations to strictly guard against these speculators who only came to the school for the purpose of making money.

To be fair, free lunches are very attractive to mountain people who are struggling to make ends meet, so they cannot be rashly classified as "speculators".

But it is true that some of them only focus on the free food and do not want to study in school. They take advantage of the school's initial provision of unlimited food to make profits for themselves, and even bring sacks and baskets with them every time for the convenience of transportation. .

These people bring a large amount of food home almost every day to feed pigs and use as fertilizer. Some people who don't know how to cherish it even throw it away on the roadside and let it rot.

This forced the church to make changes and promulgated new measures such as "no food can be taken out of the school, one free lunch per person, and no one will be allowed to receive it if the class is less than four periods a day."

As a result, within a month of the new regulations being introduced, three schools were set on fire, more than 100 faculty and staff were beaten or abused, and 11 priests were tortured to death.

This time, the church joined forces with the Tyrolean government and the army and vowed to catch all the thugs who caused the trouble. However, the local people were fierce and fierce. Instead of arresting a few thugs, the military police lost nearly a hundred people, including several excellent hunters.

Moreover, this operation also caused a negative consequence, that is, the vigilant mountain residents no longer stepped into the school gate, and the students who really wanted to learn knowledge also disappeared.

For a time, the front doors of these missionary schools changed from crowded to deserted. Finally, Franz, who learned of the situation, had to write to the local defense force headquarters in Tyrol to ask for help in resolving the crisis.

In view of the lofty status of the royal family in the hearts of the Tyroleans, the matter went very smoothly, and soon more than a hundred thugs were detained on Innsbruck's Golden Square.

(Innsbruck is the capital of Tyrol and the former capital of the Austrian Empire.)

In fact, according to the church's own records, the real number of thugs was far higher than this number. But Franz ignored him because he didn't want to retaliate at all.

If these mountain people could really be frightened by hundreds of corpses, so many great conquerors would not have troubled themselves with this problem.

Archbishop Rauscher went to Innsbruck in the early stage and read out the emperor's edict. The principle was naturally to "kill only the culprits and never ask questions about threats." Soon the five initiators of the atrocity were sentenced to hanging and executed immediately.

Before their death, the thugs sincerely carried out the priests' request for repentance.

However, this did not serve as a warning to others, and soon the same evil incident occurred again. Only then did Franz understand that the traditional regret + punishment model did not seem to work well.

So in the end, he had to use Archbishop Rauscher to have the royal flag planted on the local church school, and also ordered the local garrison to guard it, so that the atrocities could be quelled.

After that, the church once again issued the rule that "adults are not allowed to enroll in the church's schools for minors."

At the same time, a number of specialized adult schools were opened in the Tyrol region. Although education was still free on the surface, the free lunches were cancelled. Naturally, it was difficult to attract people. In the end, most of these schools were closed. Forced to close.

Who would have thought that it would be difficult to eliminate some of the local snakes who led the trouble, but new problems followed one after another. That is the weak educational concept of local people.

It's okay for city dwellers like Innsbruck, but in the countryside, especially in the mountains, it's a different scene. Some villages don’t even have a single person who has read a book, so naturally they don’t understand the true meaning of going to school.

In the eyes of these country children, as long as they can earn a living, they will actively set an example with practical actions. Under the guidance of this idea, rural students who come to class are very attentive to handicraft classes, and they will make handicrafts with an extremely serious attitude.

This made the teachers who wanted to use handicraft classes to promote education dumbfounded. These simple children made them both moved and helpless.

In order to change the local backward thinking, Franz hoped that Archbishop Rauscher could mobilize local priests to educate the local people by telling stories and giving examples.

However, the real problem is that the residences of these mountain people are often very remote and it is very inconvenient to get around. Those local priests who have long been accustomed to it can still accept it, but the priests selected from other areas would rather take off their robes than go into the ravine every day.

This resulted in diminishing incentives throughout the Diocese of Tyrol to maintain local parochial schools, until one day Archbishop Rauscher doubled the salaries of those priests involved in educational work.

(In fact, it should be called "clergy allowance", but some people may find it unintuitive.)

The income of the clergy directly reached the level of three times the local average salary. If the goals set by the church can be achieved, another reward equivalent to the local average salary will be given.

Sure enough, there must be brave men under the heavy rewards. Those priests instantly turned into God's apostles who were not afraid of hardships and dangers, traveling over mountains and ridges, teaching people tirelessly.

To be fair, priests are not all greedy for money. It's just that after the clergy allowance was increased, they felt that they were respected and were more willing to fulfill their vows.

However, this also brings about a problem, that is, the cost of education becomes higher.

At the same time, the unemployed college students Franz recruited from Vienna began to protest publicly because they felt they were being left out.

They claimed that it was unreasonable for priests with less academic qualifications to receive much higher salaries than they did. In fact, the wages of these people are 50% higher than the local average.

However, because they were accustomed to the prosperity of the imperial capital, the sense of gap caused by being suddenly sent to teach in Tirol was difficult for them to accept for a while.

So Franz gave this group of people the same promise. They could also engage in the work of priests and get the same remuneration as long as they met or reached the same level.

But most of this group of people did not buy it. They always compared the living standards of Vienna with Tyrol, one of the poorest provinces in Austria. Then Franz could only fire those who were not satisfied with the status quo. .

In fact, if they are only engaged in basic education work, the level of these non-education major college students may not be as good as those of priests who have been exposed to all kinds of people all year round.

Of course, the upper limit of these college students is higher than that of the clergy, so Franz provides them with a lot of room for advancement, such as some public offices that are neither salty nor light.

Regardless of salary and benefits, public employment had an unparalleled attraction for college students at that time. This special status can greatly satisfy the vanity of those people.

And Franz himself is happy to do this because he can recruit more talents.

After a lot of practice, many deficiencies in Tirol’s church schools have been improved, including school rules and disciplines, as well as publicity and education.