Thea would like to ensure a role for Irori’s faith in education, but doesn’t have many personal goals here besides that.  For the sake of the country as a whole, she would like something better than what she has heard of the old schools.  So she just needs to ensure the chair isn’t actively hostile to herself.

Dia is watching faces and taking notes. 

Lluïsa has graduated from a few schools in her day.

She actually thrived fairly well in them. Sort of. The less said about law school and the less visible skin, the better.

But, it's good that there are wizard schools. She doesn't have many object-level opinions and was surprised to find herself having that one.

Imperia is here to see that Cheliax's best and brightest continue being shaped into useful tools of the new state, instead of languishing uselessly on their parents' farms, or being wasted for lack of direction.

Her imp familiar is not present, useful as it is for note taking. The new teachers are so sensitive.

Cheliax should find a way to teach every child to read, and also not whip them half to death with a fucking cat for not doing their homework in middle school. Except apparently they weren't even successfully doing that first thing?? Literacy rates seem way lower in Cheliax as a whole than she thought they were before attending the convention. But also way higher than the fucking resurrected nobles seem to assume.

Whatever. Schools without cats. It's a platform.

He is also here. 

Molochio is several years past his formal schooling, but is a good deal closer to it than most other delegates. Despite his obvious academic talents, school was a living hell for him, and he still has more than a bit of a grudge against the Chelish education system because of it.

Also, while the floor debate centered around wizard schools, Molochio himself is more interested in the status of primary schools. (Like many educated non-wizards in Cheliax, even under the old regime, he resents the extent to which the Thrunes seemed to view childhood schooling as a way to stripmine the nation for children to throw into meat grinders (sorry, wizard academies) effectiveness at any other sort of education be dammed.)

All this to say, he really thinks the committee should have someone who thinks that children should get to learn things and not get beaten for no good reason, whether they have a native talent for wizardry or not. 

He signed up for this committee after seeing the sorts of people who were signing up already. Idealists who think the crown can enlighten the masses, and diabolists who want to bring the old new order back. Nowhere near enough people who have had an unbiased look at "public education" from the outside to see it for the horror it is.

...Apart from the problems inherent to the concept, Alfons-Valentí suspects these fools will have put no thought into financing this damned endeavor and will happily strip the crown of funds it needs for more worthy projects. Or call for new taxes. They will need a voice of reason.

Just close the fucking torture-factories, this isn't complicated.

It literally has not occurred to Nuria that anyone might be in favor of continuing public education. Obviously that's a bad idea. But learning to read is still good, you should probably have at least one person who can read in any given community, and a good selection of books to read aloud from. She's not sure if that's practical? But this seems like a good place to find out. 

Lluïsa, to great internal embarrassment, makes a mental connection about Korva Tallandria! Due to some coincidences at a cafe and the particular way her mnemonic techniques organize things, she'd been holding two mental Korvas until just this instant.

"I would nominate the Archduke," she says.

She absolutely does not want the Archduke who wants to keep the schools chairing the committee. "I think it should be someone who's actually had to go to the schools."

This is going to be a headache. His hope that the committee would be populated entirely by people who at least think that education, in the abstract, is good, seems to have failed. At least the Desnan likes romances and so will probably agree that people should be able to read.

"I accept Delegate Oriol's nomination."

"I nominate Raimon Pages." 

"Really? All right, if you want."

Well, it would be weird to nominate herself, and he is, you know, also a chaotic cleric, they probably have some overlapping priorities! 

That's... Calistria's symbol, right? Why does the butterfly girl want a whore to lead the committee?

Not another fucking Calistrian. "If experience with the education system under the old regime is a necessary qualification then I can withdraw myself and nominate Delegate Tallandria in my place."

Korva was in favor of Theopho right?  And surprisingly capable for a commoner.

“I second that nomination.”

He's not going to win the chair so he won't even try... He doesn't want a calistrian running this committee but it's not like he wants the archduke or the lawyer or the archduke's proxy or any of the professors running it either.

"I nominate delegate - " squint " - Quintana." He has no idea who she is, besides presumably having been drawn by lot, but she seems to have the right mindset.

Mmm. Imperia did, of course, attend public school as a child, and she did, of course, excel. But pride is double-edged sword, in politics. The archduke recognizes the value of education, and selected Tallandria. As did the Irorite, who can be expected to see the value of perfection. The others, she expects, would burn the institution to the ground for hurting their feelings. 

"I support delegate Tallandria as chair."

"I'll do it if people want," she says to the person who nominated her. She doesn't know how you run a committee, but how hard can it really be?

"Delegate Tallandria should, I trust, satisfy any Objections."

"She's also fine."

Shrug. "Sure."

What the fuck, guys.

" - fine. I've never chaired anything, so feel free to demand another vote and change your mind if you all decide you're very unhappy with your choices. I went to school in Egorian from ages six to fifteen, at which point I was expelled for failure to do my work, whipped half to death, and didn't get up again for three weeks."

"I have been getting the the impression that the convention has wildly different impressions of what the educational situation in Cheliax is, without getting into what it can be or should be. So I want to begin by going around the room and saying - how you were educated, what you got out of it, what you think your peers with similar educations got out of theirs - what you think most people like you do and don't know, academically - and then what you think education ought to look like, if you want to. Everyone goes, I want everyone to hear everyone else. Archduke, you first."

This is going to make him look out of touch. Tallandria probably isn't making him do it specifically for that reason, but—well, to the extent that he is actually out of touch, he wants to know, but his opinion doesn't actually have much to do with his personal experience and it'll be unfortunate when people act like it does anyway.

"Of course. I should clarify, first, that I was born more than seven hundred years ago. I have spent most of the intervening centuries a statue, and was rescued recently by the Archmage Naima—I was educated by tutors, as most noble children are. At a young age I learned to read, write, and do figures; when I was older I was educated in history, religion, and matters of governance, as well as an apprenticeship in wizardry. The chief flaw in my education, I think, is that it is seven hundred years out of date. The chief benefit is—well, I absolutely could not do my job without it. No nobleman could. But I don't think that the education of nobles is what this committee was formed to discuss. Even if the old regime has made a mess of it, it's not a matter for the constitution."

"Few people will get precisely the same things out of an education that I did, and it would be inconceivable to educate every child in the same manner that I was. But I think that being able to use one's letters and numbers, at least, has a great value to everyone. I can hardly imagine what it would be like not to be able, and so I would forgive someone for not realizing the value of their education, if it was forced upon them by servants of Hell with blood and pain. But the wisdom of holy Aroden attests that an educated society is a prosperous one, and—one of the things that I bring to this table is the memory of a time when widespread schooling was a thing that virtuous people wanted to do, and could not for lack of wealth, not an imposition by the tyrants of the Pit. I do not actually know that we have the wealth now, the progress of the centuries before the Thrune empire notwithstanding, with our country so in need of other repairs and no coffers of the Outer Planes to feed our own. But I do think that education is a worthy enough goal that this committee ought to investigate whether we do."