Yawn. "Yeah, I'm on Education. I've got nothing against kids learning to read if they want to and anybody's figured out how to do it with just the part where you look at the books and not... most of the other parts."

“By the other parts you mean… light beatings?  Near death whippings?  Asmodean abuse of authority?  I’m sorry to ask for details, when I heard our chair Korva mention nearly dying to a cat-o-nine tails I realized I had no idea what normal schooling was like for people.”

"I think the cat o'nine tails is not universal but whippings certainly were. Every significant assessment in a given class the standard was for the highest scorer to put a few lashes on the lowest, on pain of same if they didn't. I've traveled around a lot and there's details that differ but that one's pretty conventional."

“The sisterhood of Eiseth didn’t care enough about academic learning to have us punish each other like that over it, and with the combat training and exercises, doing worse was usually its own punishment.”

She pauses to think.

“That doesn’t really seem like something that actually helps with learning much.  It sounds like bullshit Asmodean hierarchy and tyranny.  It seems easy enough to ban.  Ban having students punish each other and ban punishment based on overall performance (as opposed to minor punishments for direct disruptiveness or blatant inattention).”

"Blatant inattention will take about four minutes to become a synonym for doing badly on tests. And a beating hurts just the same whatever you say it's for."

“Korva wasn’t optimistic about banning all punishment except expulsion, but it seems like that would be preferable to no attempt at schools at all, even if it only left you with one in ten students remaining at school?”

“Also I’m not sure what motivates normal students to do better or worse on tests?  I didn’t care about academics when I was an acolyte of Eiseth, and now that I follow Irori I can’t get enough books about the topics I care about.”

"Some kids are just brighter than others. The beatings get the ones who are bright and timorous to spend their smarts on your bullshit instead of whatever they'd like to be doing. It doesn't make the dim ones any quicker. I'm glad Korva had her library, but I don't want to torture any number of children to get it for the kids who happen to be like her. Zero. I will spend zero child-torture on... well, anything, but that in particular is topical."

She nods at that.  She would take some child torture for them learning to read, but she can respect him setting a firm line and doing so openly.

“Does physically sitting a child in front of a desk count as torture?  It’s not workable with one teacher for 30 students.   But at the monastery, with just 4 kids learning to read, and myself or another sister teaching and one supervising, we haven’t needed to do any beatings to teach reading.”

"If you offer up a desk and a kid sits in it and wants to be taught their letters I haven't the slightest complaint about it. If the kid tries to do some thing that is not sitting at the desk, then someone you are paying to try to teach that child anyway will hurt them. I want to insist that kids never be compelled to appear or remain at school. That one wizard may have had a shit father, and I don't care what you want to do to fathers like that, but if the kid wants to go play in the sunshine - or work - or run away to sea - or pick up a fiddle and busk - or sleep all day and run around in the nighttime - I refuse to pay someone to stop them."

“So we do exactly that, we phrase the term in the constitution as a ‘right’ for the child to have a seat in a classroom and education which the child can accept or reject as they wish.  And that would be in addition to laws against punishing the kids and such.”

And hopefully the smarter and worthier kids can make use of that opportunity.

"Yeah, I'd vote for that."

That sounds good enough, but maybe Korva can find a better compromise?

“Thanks for talking with me.  Any questions for me?”

"Nothing leaps to mind."

“I’ll see you at the convention then.”