Empire Rising: Spain

Chapter 107: Chapter 98: Higher Education, Higher Income

In order to reduce the illiteracy rate in Spain as soon as possible, Carlo really spared no effort.

On the first day of 1871, Carlo had several royal family-owned newspaper offices publish articles on how education determines income and vigorously promoted the concept of high education leading to high income.

The examples used were simple. The average income of university graduates far exceeded the per capita income of Spain. Particularly, some specially employed university graduates had incomes several times that of ordinary people.

Besides the examples of university graduates, the newspapers also provided examples of ordinary people with elementary and secondary education, whose incomes were higher than those without education after entering factories.

Entering a factory requires the operation of equipment. Educated people often understand the operation procedures of equipment better, adapt faster, and have a lower probability of making mistakes.

Carlo’s purpose in doing this was naturally to stimulate the public’s willingness to improve their education through income, thereby popularizing literacy education in Spain.

Although literacy education in Spain was in full swing, it could not force all Spaniards to participate.

Even though it was free, under the voluntary participation policy, the results of literacy education were not as good as imagined.

Most of those attending literacy education were school-age children or young people, with very few men over the age of 25 participating.

Actually, this is easy to understand. While literacy education is free, attending it delays their time to earn money by entering factories.

This rise and fall of circumstances equates to losing money. Although Spaniards also understand the importance of education, each family would usually choose to let the younger children attend literacy education, while adults work to earn income to support the entire family.

The key is to make all Spaniards understand that the time they spend attending literacy education will not be in vain, and will ultimately result in higher wage returns in the future.

Only by doing so can more people be attracted to participate in literacy education, thereby significantly and effectively reducing Spain’s illiteracy rate.

Fortunately, there are already dozens of royal family-owned newspapers spread across more than ten regions and colonies in Spain.

Especially in the capital city of Madrid, besides the Spanish Sun, specialized newspapers such as the Madrid Workers’ Newspaper and Agricultural Newspaper with different target audiences were created to expand the audience that newspapers can influence.

In the top five largest cities in Spain, there are at least two newspaper offices. Under such extensive newspaper promotion, it is believed that many people will accept the concept of high education leading to high income, and thus take the initiative to improve their and their family’s education.

To conceal the fact that there were dozens or even hundreds of these newspapers under him, Steward Luo Lun really racked his brains. Besides the Spanish Sun being an overt royal family-owned industry, other newspapers were mostly disguised to look like private enterprises.

It wasn’t that Carlo was overly cautious. It’s just that some newspapers, to maintain their market scale and sell their newspapers, often published some tabloid news or even relatively provocative pictures.

These news and pictures are warmly welcomed by Spaniards, and the lower classes are also willing to feast their eyes on the glamorous women in these newspapers.

But if the royal family’s industry were to publish these news stories, it would inevitably leave the public with the impression that the royal family and the king favored tabloids and glamorous women.

Although most of the public is happy to see such newspapers, if the newspaper was a royal family-owned industry, some moralists would inevitably come out to condemn the royal family.

Carlo had long been prepared for this aspect. Industries like steel mills, which create a large number of jobs in Spain and do not exploit the workers, are openly declared to the public as royal family-owned enterprises.

To accelerate the promotion of literacy education, Carlo thought of a method, and after calculating it, considered it feasible.

After confirming the calculations were accurate, Carlo called Prime Minister Prim and proposed his idea, which was for the government to provide a free dinner for all participants of literacy education on the day they attend.

Literacy education is completely different from primary education. Primary education requires six years, while literacy education can be completed in as short as three months.

Generally speaking, it only requires teaching those receiving literacy education some commonly used Spanish words and some simple cultural and scientific knowledge to complete most of the literacy education work.

If classes are held twice a week for more than three hours each, literacy education can usually be completed within five months.

If it involves children and teenagers who do not need to work, tasks of literacy education can even be completed within a month if they receive education every day.

No matter how you look at it, Carlo’s proposal is quite bold.

According to last year, over a million people received literacy education. Providing them with a dinner whenever they attend literacy education equates to providing at least 50 meals per person, totaling 50 million meals.

This large-scale dinner provision would not be too luxurious. But even if it’s just relatively cheap whole grain bread and vegetables, with a small amount of meat, it would still cost over 5 million Pessetas.

When Prime Minister Prim heard Carlo’s proposal, he was first taken aback, but after careful consideration and calculation, he suddenly felt that the method was still feasible.