Country of Eruchea:-

One month passed since then.

Snow had started somewhat melting.

It was still pretty cold.

But not that much for Robert.

Because today was the first day of school for him.

Notices had been put up and announcements had been made about the opening of the school a few weeks back.

Robert had been planning on joining one of the newly-opened factories when the schools were advertised.

And it’s common knowledge even on Etheldor that education leads to a better job, a better salary and a better life.

So, even though getting the education meant that he would need to become a teacher, Robert had jumped at the opportunity.

His friend John, on the other hand, was not that lucky.

The guy had joined the factory making military goods a few days before the school thing came up.

And he couldn’t exactly leave his new job so quickly, could he?

Actually, John’s job had sort of pushed Robert to get educated to become a teacher.

Just two days after John had joined the factory, his old impatient behaviour had vanished.

Robert had guessed that it was due to whatever they did in the military factory.

He had seen the discipline levels of the soldiers. (The terms “knight” and “alchemy”/”alchemist” had finally fallen out of use among the citizens.)

And it was easy to conclude from that that the factory’s life must be pretty tough for ordinary people.

Also, the workers of that military factory had to sign (or apply his left thumbprint) on a contract that prohibited them from leaking any secrets.

But Robert wanted no part of that.

He was a simple guy and didn’t want to carry the burden of having some important state secrets in his head.

Returning to the present, Robert stepped out of his house pretty well packed in clothes.

The fact that the snow had started to melt didn’t mean that all the cold had suddenly vanished.

That’s why people were still thoroughly covering themselves if they had to step out in the cold.

‘But at least with the new snow cleaning crew that his majesty made in December of last year has managed to keep the roads free of snow…’, thought Robert as he began walking on the brown unmetalled road that was bordered with piles of white and brown snow. (Brown due to the mixing of dirt from the road.)

He walked down the road while greeting his fellow neighbours and any other passersby.

After walking for about half an hour, he finally saw the school building appear at a distance.

Thankfully, he had shifted somewhat close to the inner district once the newer houses were built and the old ones were left vacant for others to use.

That’s why he could reach the school building after about an hour of walking.

The school was located near the edge of the royal garden, a place that commoners wouldn’t think of going normally.

The school was called “The Eruchean Public School”, as written above the entrance.

Robert couldn’t really read the signboard but knew what was probably written on it because of all the announcements that had been made recently.

The class was supposed to start at 9 in the morning, so he had started his journey around 7:30 in the morning.

When he got to the entrance, he found around two to three hundred people already crowding the area.

Everyone was talking amongst themselves.

And everyone, including Robert, had only two questions.

What were they going to be taught?

And who was going to teach them?

All that the advertisements had included was that a school was being opened near the royal palace and that people were invited to come and study there so that they could become teachers.

Since seemed to still be some time left before the class began, Robert ended up joining in the crowd to kill time.

After about half an hour, a soldier came in front of the crowd.

“Everyone, please step aside.”, said the soldier as he went to unlock the building’s doors.

Naturally, the crowd parted to give way.

And once the doors were open, everyone walked in in proper lines. (They did want to rush in but decided that it was better not to act disorderly in front of military personnel.)

Inside they found tables with several books and papers arranged nearby and some people sitting behind the tables.

“Everyone, please line up here to collect your curricular material!”, said one of the people sitting at the first table.

It took Robert about five minutes to get everything he needed.

They were giving out 4 books (Maths, Science, Social Sciences and English), 10 notebooks (two per subject), 2 quill sets (quill and ink bottles), an almanac and some sort of form. (This was the form asking if the person wanted to study the third language since not everyone would want to learn three languages at once.)

Once all this was done, everyone was guided towards classes.

There were only two classes.

It was quite surprising for Robert to see that the teachers planned on stuffing around 300 people into just two classes.

Robert had never received any formal education, so he had no way of knowing how big classes usually were.

He quickly rushed over to sit on one of the chairs that were arranged on what looked like large stairs.

The entire thing almost looked like one of those theatres where Robert had worked as a cleaner long back.

The only difference was that this place looked less “expensive”.

Theatres were supposed to have expensive-looking cushioned wooden chairs with gold and gems inlaid. At least that was the case with the one Robert worked in.

But this place didn’t have any of that luxury.

It was just black coloured metallic, cushion-less chairs kept on painted stone (concrete) stairs.

The chairs had these rotatable wooden boards attached which could be used as tables to write on.

Robert was just looking around the entire room in wonder, at the lights and other little things (like ceiling fans, etc.), when his eyes fell on the person standing on the little podium in front of all the chairs.

The others also looked in front and were equally shocked.

‘What!?

What is his majesty doing here!?’

He saw their king standing while waving (the “fingers moving around in a scraggly fashion” wave) at all the shocked faces in front of him.

This was unheard of!

When in history did the ruler of a country even personally meet the citizens, much less teach them!?

Robert heard the sound of heads hitting the tables as several people in the room had their heart almost give out from the shock.

Seeing this, their king spoke up, “Woah! You guys alright there?

Seeing your reactions, I think I forgot to mention that I’ll be teaching…

But no use crying over spilt milk now…

Anyways, I hope no more people end up fainting.

Now, coming to the real topic, I’ll be taking your classes from now on.

And this will continue until at least you guys graduate from this school. After that, it’s your job to teach the new students.

While I take your classes, you are to refer to me as ‘teacher Harry’ or ‘teacher’ or any other similar term. Here, I’m your teacher first and your king second.

Also, my fiancée, Jeanette will join this class as well. Please try to treat her like a normal student. Because, here, the only figure of authority are your teachers. Everyone else, no matter whoever they may be, is a student.

And discrimination among students will only lead to punishments.

Try to keep that in mind.”

When Robert heard these word, his eyes went to one of the many women in the room.

It really was their king’s fiancée, sitting there like any other student.

Jeanette simply looked around and waved at everyone with a very friendly smile on her face.

‘I guess I need to prepare myself for many such surprises…’, thought Robert.

Then the king continued, “If you guys look inside that little notebook you got, the almanac, you’ll notice your timetables and many other things.

Now, most of you won’t be able to read most of the content written in there, so you’ll just have to trust me on that one for now…

And speaking of not understanding the stuff written there, your first set of classes will be English.

We’ll be learning how to read and write first before we start anything else.

 

Also, on that topic, you guys must have received these form things.”

Robert looked at the single sheet of paper that was being referred to.

“This is to choose what other languages you want to learn.

Everyone will compulsorily be learning English.

But if you want to learn Chinese and/or Japanese, all you need to do is go to the stalls from earlier and tell them your choices and reasons and they will fill it out for you.”

‘Ah, so that’s what these were for!

I think I’ll be going for Japanese. The language of those from Wangxiu always sounds so difficult and confusing…’, thought Robert.

“Now, I’ll be the one teaching Japanese while teacher Shin from the other class will teach Chinese.

You guys will need to change classes when it’s the time for those classes.”, Robert heard his king say.

Instantly, a hand went up.

“Yes?”

“Yo- I mean, teacher Harry, I have a question!”, said one of the students from the last row.

“Wow, I didn’t even explain how to ask questions and stuff but you did it perfectly!

Anyways, ask away.”, replied the king.

“Teacher Harry, it’s fine if both teachers teach one other language.

But what if someone wants to study both languages?

If one class has Chinese and the other has Japanese going on at once, the ones studying both will not be able to learn properly!”, said the man.

“Great question!

I didn’t even finish explaining everything, and such nice questions are already coming my way.

Well, the thing is that those classes will happen both on Friday and Saturday of every week.

So, anyone who wants to study both will need to come on Saturday for their third language.

Otherwise, it will be an off for all the others on Saturdays and Sundays.

If you decide to study extra, you need to put in extra effort too!”

What he said made sense to Robert.

If one takes on ten different jobs but can only do two of them, there is no need to take on the other eight jobs.

“So, now that that’s out of the way, everyone can also ask questions, as long as they do so in a similar manner.

Also, I’d like to mention that most people would say that there are no ‘stupid’ or ‘dumb’ questions.

Though quite true, it still depends on the scenario.

You can’t go around asking something like ‘what’s two plus two’ in English class and expect yourself to be taken seriously.”

Robert nodded along with everyone else.

‘I have some knowledge of maths and English from daily work so I wouldn’t ask something that dumb at least!’, Robert thought to himself.

Similar thoughts were going on in others’ heads too.

No one in the room was born yesterday and everyone had some knowledge from all the work they had done.

That being said, Robert was sure that such characters must exist.

The sort of guys who would come to class after leaving their brains at home.

If they weren’t there in this batch of students, they would be there in future batches.

And Robert just might be the one who’d have to deal with such characters.

Just as Robert was thinking about his future, he noticed that the teaching was about to start.

Teacher Harry had started writing things on the blackboard with a piece of chalk. (These two were some recently introduced products in the market.)

And once he wrote a bunch of things on the board, teacher Harry began his explanations again.

“All right, everyone, please copy that heading on the first page of your English notebooks. Those would be the notebooks with a bunch of horizontal lines. Not the ones with blank pages or the ones with boxes.”

Robert took out the specified notebook and began copying down the heading written on the board.

The lines in all these notebooks were printed using printing presses.

It consumed too much time and labour to draw simple lines in notebooks.

That’s why steam engine driven presses were employed for this purpose instead of the regular scribes.

Once Robert and the others seemed to have copied the heading, teacher Harry began speaking again.

“Okay, so what you have just copied are the words ‘The English Alphabet’.

Because that is what we will be learning today.

Now, I must warn you, English can be a very weird language.

Many of the words will be pronounced or written very different from what you’d expect.

The main reason for this, you can say, is that it has many words that have been adapted from other existing or ancient languages.

Many of the words are spelt and/or pronounced exactly as in those languages.

I can assure you that it won’t be the easiest thing to learn this language.

You might even think that Japanese and Chinese are much easier to learn!

I have no idea how I learnt English in the first place when I look at all the confusing spellings and pronunciations that come to me naturally.”

Robert was confused.

What did teacher Harry mean by that?

How can a language that was used so commonly be more difficult than Chinese?

English sounded so simple compared to Chinese!

As if in response to everyone’s expressions, teacher Harry circled three letters on the board.

“I know what I said sounds pretty absurd.

How can such a common language be more difficult than Chinese?

Well, I would like you all to pay attention to the board.

This first letter that I have circled is called ‘C’.

The next circled letter is called ‘K’ and the one after that, in the next column is called ‘S’.

The ‘K’ is the first letter of the name ‘Kevin’.

The ‘S’ is the first letter of the word ‘size’.

Everyone understands this much?”

Everyone nodded.

“Now, the craziness happens with the letter ‘C’.”

Robert saw as teacher Harry drew a circle and wrote a word below that.

“This is a simple circle.

But please look at the spelling that I’ve written underneath.

Ignore the other letters and look at the first and the fourth letters.”

Robert casually took a peek at the word written below the circle.

‘First is a ‘C’ and the fourth is…

A ‘C’ as well!?

What!?’

Everyone else also had confusion written all over their faces.

The first letter made sense since “C” sounded like “see”, but what about the second?

Why was there a “C” and not a “K”!?

Then Robert heard his teacher speak.

“As I said, English is very confusing.

So, let’s keep this aside for the time being and begin class, shall we?”

And so began the first-ever class of the school.