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 The chief flaw in my education, I think, is that it is seven hundred years out of date.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."

"I went to school right here in Westcrown from when I was five till I was nearly sixteen. I learned to read and add. Those are good things to know. I learned that if you trap a lot of children in a room where reading and adding are the order of the day you will wind up with a suspicious fraction of your class growing up to be zombies that breathe. Less good to know." And his teachers are lucky that he doesn't know where they live yet, but he's not going to say that part aloud.

"I was raised and taught by the Hellish cult the Sisterhood of Eiseth.  I learned unarmed combat (including grappling, punching, and kicking), armed combat (including the use of short sword, longbow, and various nonstandard weapons), the basics of reading and writing, catechism of the Hellgod Eiseth and various related Gods, stealth, disguise, meditation intended to eventually develop monkish abilities such as the usage of Ki, and assassination related lore.  My sisters formerly of the cult were similarly raised and educated.  Since being free of the cult, I've attempted to expand my and their education, mostly focusing on reading holy texts of the major non-evil Gods.  My understanding is that reading and writing are standard among Chelish people that attended school, but that the rest of my education is unique.  I've also heard smarter Chelish kids get the foundations of wizardry which seems useful."  

"Anyway, I am absolutely sure education ought to include reading and writing, writing is extremely useful and with reading you can expand your education on your own later.  I think the pain and tortures which I've heard were used regularly in normal schools are unnecessary and probably even detrimental for learning... once a student has started to appreciate the value of education they shouldn't need pain for motivation.  I think meditation and some physical exercise are useful to mix in with reading and writing to counteract boredom and restlessness and balance the development of the mind with the body."

She'll hold off on trying to elaborate on the exact distinction between sparring or intense exercise and tortures.  She is still kind of figuring it out herself. 

"My education began with perhaps fifty years of tutelage under my mother. My studies then encompassed not only the arcane arts but also philosophy, history, the principles of magic, the upper and lower planes, geography, history, mechanical and architectural skills, as well as many other arts By my eightieth year, I had already immersed myself in magical studies, particular spellcraft and the metaphysical principles of arcane energy manipulation. This comprehensive education culminated in my embrace of Arodenite philosophy at age ninety. Because of my convictions, upon reaching my centennial, I concluded my familial education and set out for Cheliax to contribute to the building of the Age of Glory.  At the Westcrown University of Wizardry, I furthered my arcane studies, and began to truly contribute to the Great Work, by contributing my own research, as well as and teaching others, as well as being appointed a minor Professorship.  

Coeliaris frowns.  "The age of glory did not happen, but the Great Work continues. Over the past century, I've participated in numerous colloquies and symposia, presenting my findings and engaging in scholarly debates with fellow wizards. These intellectual exchanges have been crucial in advancing our collective understanding of Spell-Topology. I take pride in the substantial contributions I've made, particularly in reducing the Primary Circle Requirements of several spells, and in training many generations of talented mages who have gone on to make their own marks on the arcane world."

"I grew up in the Heartlands, closer to Egorian than anything else you've heard of but not really that close to anything you could call a city. I can do letters and figures and recite probably dozens of reasons why Asmodeus is the greatest of the gods and we should all worship him." The last part is said sarcastically.

"Some of my classmates were slower than me, and can't even do figures. Jasó couldn't do much of anything but he was always a little funny in the head. Some of them were quicker than me, and can do some figures that I can't. My first daughter was a lot quicker, and they packed her off to wizard school in Egorian. I don't know what happened to her after that, and none of my other children made the same mistake.

We weren't allowed to skip even for the harvest, but they couldn't very well enforce that so mostly we all got beaten a lot afterwards. Not like they weren't doing plenty of that anyway.

I think we should burn every one of the schools to the ground. ...Not literally, the fire might catch."

You know, that's a great idea. Maybe tonight.

"I went to school in Laekastle from the ages of six to fifteen and got whipped what I think was a basically usual amount for my school. I don't know how that compares to other schools but I think probably this committee is not best served by everyone--from this century, I mean, and not a noble--taking off their shirts to compare the severity of our whipping scars. I learned to read and write, which is good, and do basic sums, which I did find useful later in life, and I met the friend who bribed me with my first foreign book, which was excellent but obviously can't be credited to the school. Anyway, public school was obviously hot garbage but I do think it would be good to teach enough people to read that any given community has someone who can read aloud to everyone else." 

Most of Thea’s injuries got healed before they could scar,  but she had a lot more variety than just whip injuries.  

Also, she would have thought Nuria of all people would appreciate everyone knowing how to read, but maybe the schools were just that bad.  That’s a depressing thought.  

Apparently she has to go be on some random committee or the archduke will decide to piss away all of Cheliax's finances on his own vanity projects. She hates every part of this, but she was never foolish enough to think that making the army actually work for once would be fun.

"I grew up in Sirmium. I was a good student, as they go - I learned to read and do figures, didn't disrespect the teacher despite his rampant idiocy, and only occasionally got the whip. And then I grew up and went to work for real, and just like anyone could have told you none of it mattered worth a damn. I could count on one hand the times that wasting years of my life like that was useful and still have fingers left over, and obviously none of the whippings they use to convince people to ignore that and stick around actually instills anyone with any discipline."

She claps.

From the ages of six to eleven I, uh went to school in Corentyn, It was one of the schools specifically for rich people and nobles, so I learned a lot there, reading, writing, calculation, and the foundations of wizardry like most other schools, but also, uh, history and rhetoric and politics and, uh, theology. I did well in my lessons, but, uh, I wasn’t very good at being Asmodean, and the teachers and other kids hurt me a lot. When I was, uh, eleven my parents realized I wouldn’t make it if I had to go to wizard school and, uh, managed to get me apprenticed to an alchemist, and I haven’t been back to school since. My master died shortly before the war, Nethys chose me, around that time, and now I am here, I guess. 

"For my own Part, I was Born in this very City of Westcrown, some thirty-seven years ago and hence my Schooling was wholly within the Span of the Infernal Regime. My Father while not Prominent among the Burghers was yet of some Means, and I attended a Private Academy first, excelling there, and next studied Wizardry at the Academy for that Discipline also here in Westcrown. Being directed upon the Track of Law early, I followed a Preparatory Course for, and then attended, the Lodge, and graduated it also, being Licensed and Barred."

And grievously indebted. And estranged from her father, although she would have been grievously indebted regardless. It's not that kind of estrangement.

"All the Schools aforementioned, I would note, had their Establishment well before the years of the Tyrant Thrunes, and in the years when holy Aroden was the Established Deity, were not Bent to serve Hell. Though I recognize I am Atypical, there were many Students like me, and I confess myself Unaware of which Rigors of Advanced Schooling are of Hell, and which are of Schooling."

Well, not entirely; being at the mercy of a called devil is definitely of Hell. When Nuria mentions it, some small part of her does want to show off her scars; she would win.

This hardly seems the most productive opening exercise, but ah well.

"Going to school in Cheliax was, frankly, the best thing that ever happened to me. In Taldor, a man decides what happens to his daughters, and may marry or indenture them as he chooses. But I was born to a farmer in Cheliax, and I did not belong to my father. I belonged to Asmodeus. And under Asmodeus, the best and brightest girls and boys born to farmers were selected for routes that made full use of their talents. When I was twelve, I went to the preparatory academy in Macini, and whatever I suffered there was much less than my father would have inflicted on me, had it been his decision. When I was sixteen, I had the marks to attend the magical academy in Corentyn. Instead of farming, cooking, and sewing, I studied geometry, topology, geography, history, planar languages, and, above all, the arcane arts. I stand before you a wizard of the fourth circle, and I am of far greater use to her Majesty than a farmer's wife could ever be. The peers that I remember from my academy days were desperate to remain in school, and not be sent back home to their farms."

"I am told that the archmage Naima was also born a farmer's daughter, and didn't learn to read until the age of twenty-one. What a waste, for the world, if she had never met a man educated by our own public school system, and capable of recognizing and unlocking her potential. I see no reason that, now that we are not of Asmodeus, we should be like Taldor, or Osirion, in this respect, and condemn the greater part of our national genius to plow the fields at the behest of their fathers. And it is the greater part of every country's genius, make no mistake. Far more of our accomplished wizards were born to farmers and tradesmen than to nobles."

"Does Iomedae have no need of wizards?  No need for theologians? I doubt it. So I say, let us channel our schools, and our students, towards good. Let us reform the primary schools, in particular, not to demand of future farmers what they have no need for. But let us not allow a return to even more wasteful petty tyrannies, in our rush to be free of the great one."

This lady thought belonging to Asmodeus was great fun because she likes math. Nobody should listen to her about channeling anything towards Good.

...Delegate Caballé can't literally be Delegate Quintana's missing daughter; names aside, the young Ms. Quintana was brought to Egorian, not Macini. 

But she sounds a very similar story. Nuria is pretty sure Delegate Caballé is just wrong about the life an ordinary farmer's daughter lives and would have been better off that way. 

She's a little rusty at hiding her true thoughts, but old habits die hard and she doesn't let a flicker of her pity cross her face. 

Being an ordinary peasant farmer’s daughter sounds like it would be horrible for Thea personally, but maybe other people would find it tolerable or somehow even enjoyable.  Maybe that’s the key to finding a compromise here, voting for a system that allows kids to make their own path.

"I dare say that the story of my education is less dramatic than that. Like the archduke, I was tutored in literacy, in numbers, in morals and in governance and in history. I was given thorough but hardly comprehensive instruction in the theory of magic, but not the practice - I did not have the aptitude. I certainly benefited from my education, but I do not imagine I would have if I had been a farmer, rather than a lord, and I think if there would have been any benefit to a farmer, it would not have been one great enough so as to justify the costs, nor the torments that so many of you have described."

Well, that was less constructive than she was hoping, but maybe it's too much to ask people who sign up for an education committee to have more specific feelings about their own. Maybe she should have gone first. Whatever.

"All right. As I said, I attended school in Egorian. My mother was a clerk. My father was a lead worker. Every night, exhausted from the day's work, my mother would sit beside me and check that I was working. If I stopped, my mother would dig her nails into my shoulder, until I began to work again. Because she wanted so badly for me to have a better life than she did. I was tracked to be a wizard at twelve, and obviously I was in the half that didn't make it. My mother didn't even pick me up, when they expelled me, just left me bleeding in the street until my sister got there."

"I learned reading, writing, mathematics, history, Asmodean catechism, infernal, and practical arcana. History was the wildest, because every year they would take all of our old books and burn them, and replace them with new books that said completely different things, and of course you had to always act as if nothing at all had changed. Not just the new things, the old ones, too. I remember thinking - what is it, in here, that they have to do this? What deadly thing have they given us, year after year, so powerful that every year they must destroy their own tools?"

"But I tell you what else Egorian had, before the fire burned it down. Egorian had a library, theoretically for the school. Packed to the gills with propaganda, everything censored to hell and back, but if you were quiet and didn't cause any trouble, you could walk right in and read. I spent so many hours in that library. And the thing is, there were a handful of foreign books, and old books, and most of those had only been through two or three rounds of cuts, not eighty. When I was fourteen, I found a book in there about reading Skald, and I tell you, I was obsessed. If anything got me expelled, it was that book. There were six Skald books in the library, and I read them cover to cover three or four times."

"There was a poem - in Skald - about this wildly sprawling cast of barbarians, who keep killing each other at the slightest provocation. It concerns the wisest and best of men, who is brutally murdered by some other guys, at which point the whole countryside descends into chaos and bloodshed. It's very depressing, I'm sure that's why it was in there. But it has these moments. At one point this man discovers that his adopted son has been killed by his other sons. The censor cannot have spent more than thirty seconds on it, because the meter and alliteration were very lazily broken, so I knew that they had changed it. And I puzzled over the surrounding lines, until I realized that the only thing which fits at all is the word 'love'. I love my son. I wish that he had lived, and I had died. Somewhere, somewhen, the wisest of men had loved his son, not even his by blood, and had been unafraid to say so, and others had been unafraid to write it down. And sure, they were crazy and violent, but you couldn't call them weak."

"And once you see it it's everywhere, if not always quite so obvious. Parents who love their children. Children who love their parents. Codes of honor, standards of conduct. Loyalty! Chastity! Courtesy! The shadows of good, broken and confused, but never fully purged. And these things - the nature of men, the shape of their hearts, what things about them stay or change regardless of their setting - these things are relevant to everyone. Every farmer, every maid, every wizard, and every cleric. They tell us what we can be."

"So I have to say that I actually got quite a lot out of my education. The Prince of Hell gave me my letters, and with them I have robbed him half his riches. The Thrunes gave us our lockpicks, and then tried to break our fingers, they feared the tool so much. And half the nobles in that room out there? They don't realize we have it. They think they can pull whatever tricks they want, and the people of Cheliax won't even notice. But we will. We were trained on Hell's lies, and we know a mortal's just as well."

"I want every child in Cheliax to keep their lockpicks. I want to set before them a thousand chests to raid, with all their mysteries intact. I don't know how to do it without devils. I don't know if anyone knows how to do it without devils. But I think that's what we're here to discuss. How much we build, how much we salvage, and how much we pitch into the sea."

"So that's where we are. Where do you guys wanna go? - and does anyone have paper to write it down, because I sure don't."

Wow, she's actually a really compelling speaker, he kind of thought the time on the floor was a fluke.

He feels extremely vindicated in nominating her for the chair.

She wants that for every child that can take it.

It feels silly with such a small audience, but she claps anyway when Korva finishes.

And if the old schools would fail and brutally beat this woman, they were broken in all but the most basic of aspects.

"...But now that Asmodeus is gone we could just bring up children to be good without beating them into learning foreign poetry. I don't see why we need schools to tell people that parents should love their children."

"If there is one thing that was made apparent from hearing this variety of perspectives, it is that education should not be compulsory. Any child that needs to be beaten to remain at school simply should not be there. But we also have, here, people who willingly endured beatings to remain there. There would surely be many more children who would willingly attend a school that was not Asmodean."

"If you don't beat children who try to leave they'll just leave. No one wants to sit in a dusty classroom for hours on end being lectured about letters and figures and Iomedae. No one here willingly endured beatings, they'd beat you worse if you ran away."