 November 6, 2014 - 12:11am | I've been pondering how the general education of beings is done in the Frontier for zero level beings. I'm thinking about the equivelent of Earth High School / Secondary education, not college or university or suplemental trade schools. Dralasites: Dralasites get language training and early primary/elementary school education from their parent while budding. This is enough to allow them to take care of them selves in a world of adults which allows them to wander about for a few weeks after budding as they satisfy their curiosity and freedom from their parent. The adults give them food and shelter and advise them to pick a stoa to join. Stoas watch out for wandering buds and recruit them. A couple of months is about the extreem that dralasite society will tollerate of a wandering bud who has not found itself a home in a stoa. The Stoa then educates the dralasite throughout childhood and adolesence until it is mature enough to choose a career. This is the time that dralasites will then join another stoa that specializes in the career they desire. If the career requires university education then the stoa traditionally functions as the equivelent of the university. If the career does not require much additional education then the career stoa will function more as a fraternity where basic training is shared and tips and tricks are shared. Mostly this stoa provides comradere. Vrusk: Parents birth their young at the corporate nursery and the larvae are raised and educated in the nursery to a jounior high school level. After they pupate for the first time they are streemed into a corporate academy based primarily on their aptitute. Some allowance is made for the young vrusks interests but mostly the results of testing cause the placement of an individual. Young vrusk are often traded between corporate academies as each corporation specializes their academies to meet the needs for future employees needed in the company. Thus a large civil engineering corporation will trade young vrusks in its academy that do not test well to become construction workers and civil engineers to other corporations they have contracts with for their young vrusks who do test well to become construction workers or civil engineers. The corporations strive to have a wide network of corporate aliances in other trades who would seek their young vrusk that need to be traded to corporations that best match their tested aptitudes. Vrusk that finish this system are minimally educated to a high school level for trades or placed into internship education that results in the equivelent of a university degree. Vrusk are expected to pay the companies back for their education. This is commonly refered to as their nursery debt. For most this is not a burden as they stay with their company for life and it is taken out of their pay resulting in "paying off your nursery debt" bing just a bump in salery later in life. Most vrusk companies take pride in their employees being able to pay their nursery debts off sooner than other corporations. This is a vrusk measure of how healthy the company is. Yazirians: Yazirians are educated by the clan schools through high school equivelent. Yazirians are encouraged to succeed in education and seek advanced learning from honored elders. Strong clans individually sponser schools of honored elders which yazirian young adults compete to gain enrollment in. Many clans band together to sponser a common school of honored elders for their young adults to compete for membership in. The poorest clans just have their young adults compete for membership in clan schools with whom their clan has aceptance. There is a great degree of clan politics involved in which clans may be educated by which clans. Humans: The humans education system functions much like our Earth systems. The education systems are often government sponsered by the human citizens for children and teenagers. University and specialized trade schools are predominantly paid for by tuition systems. There are also private schools for children through university that have tighter membership policies sometimes involving non-academic membership criteria. Questions and Ponderings: What I would like to explore is how much education does the common being need? Does everone need a degree after highschool? What percentage of beings seek advanced education for a happy life? And mostly at what ages do each race commonly start taking on the roles of adulthood and begin paying their own way? How old are they when they finish their basic compulsary education (high school)? Are there other common expected duties of young adults post compulsary education such as military service or "humanitarian service"? Humans would be easy to make just like us, what about the other races? -iggy |
 November 6, 2014 - 3:30pm | One thing I'm experimenting with is a "Generic" skill that all characters get. It allows them access to certain basic subskills that I feel any citizen of the Frontier should be able to do. Operate Computer, Operate Machinery, First Aid, etc. It can't be increased above level 1, but it at least allows someone to drive a ground car without needing to know how to fix it or open locks, or use a computer for simple functions without being able to write programs. You could think of it as what the character learns by the time he or she graduates high school, or the Frontier equivalent. "Rome didn't build an empire by having meetings. They did it by killing those who stood in their way." |
 November 6, 2014 - 4:47pm | This is exactly the reason that I've toyed off and on of writing an alternate skill system along the lines of the Basic Role-playing system that has lots of "small" skills each of which has a base chance. Then for each of these skills, you simply provide a non-zero base chance. I.e. everyone starts with a 30% drive skill. In a non-stressful situation you automatically succeed but in a stressful one you make a skill check. And depending on the character's background it could be higher. Back to questions posed by the original post. My immediate response to age of "maturity" for the races actually have two values physical maturity and "educational readiness" to enter the workforce/society of the Frontier as independent players: Physical Maturity: Dralasites - 12 Vrusk - 10 Yazirians - 15 Humans - 18 Educational Maturity: Dralisites - 15 Vrusk - 16 Yazirians - 18 Humans - 18 I place the educational maturity at a higher age than the physcial one simply because I feel that the complexity of modern life in the Frontier simply requires more time for education than it takes to finish growing for the most part. The Dralisites and Vrusk get a head start because in my mind they develop faster that the other two races and can start their education sooner. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
 November 6, 2014 - 5:38pm | Based on the books it appears corporations like Pan-Galactic have multi-species schools. It seems youth are sent there sort of like boarding schools. You could have species specific traditional education systems but also mixed educational systems as well. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
 November 6, 2014 - 7:27pm | i would say humans reach physical maturity at age 15-16. ----------------------------------------------- |
 November 7, 2014 - 9:09am | I think there would need to be an overall system for all races - at least, once the individual has reached a certain age. This would ensure a commonality of educational standard from place to place. I think that this would have to kick in once the individual gets to any level similar to what we'd term as a degree, but perhaps it might also mean that there is a need for some commonality before that in terms of further education (i.e. between school and univeristy). Academies could ensure that this happens, so that there are a standard set of exams that all the races recognise as being legitimate. Non-academic skills could be learnt by other means, of course. |
November 7, 2014 - 10:07am | I think there would need to be an overall system for all races - at least, once the individual has reached a certain age. This would ensure a commonality of educational standard from place to place. I think that this would have to kick in once the individual gets to any level similar to what we'd term as a degree, but perhaps it might also mean that there is a need for some commonality before that in terms of further education (i.e. between school and univeristy). Academies could ensure that this happens, so that there are a standard set of exams that all the races recognise as being legitimate.
Non-academic skills could be learnt by other means, of course. I sort of disagree, but only in that the standards would be totally volentary. I think that some college level schools would grow to become giagantic intitutions that attract sentients from the whole of the frontier and it would be known what is required to be able to pass the entrance exams for those schools. But some planets... like mostly agricultural planets might not encourage that sort of higher learning, but instead only encourage the higher learning dedicated to agriculture. This is a very game specific area of detail really... but since the UPC is a confederation and not a governement you should assume that every planet is different. ----------------------------------------------- |
November 7, 2014 - 10:43am | I am thinking there are probably a variety of ways the youth are educated just like in real life... You have to look at the Colony, the Company/ies in charge of a Colony, the Governing Body if any (you know the guys who write laws that dictate how a child is educated) and Life Styles: Example Human Spacer families on a ships: What would be the viable options? Boarding School, One parent settles down on a Space Station, Send the child planetside with relatives, or Home School on ship. What would you do if you where a parent? I think it is probably a good start to have clear "traditional" race based ideas about how youth are educated but then you must also look at the wider options too. There are gender specific schools for children in the USA not all are co-ed. There are religious specific schools. There are schools for all races & race specific schools/programs. There are schools run by a religious group but open to students of other religions too. Military academies for very young children, mid range aged youth and latter for adults that are also boarding schools. Regular boarding schools which can be segergated or co-ed. Apprentiship still exists, guilds & unions still teach, older style methods of teaching are out there. Online schooling, home schooling and traveling teacher progams all exist. Often what a school can or can not do public or private is based on the source of all their funding. If any funding ever comes from the feds or a state they usually have to radically changes their policies. In the Frontier it seems to me the incharge culture of an area of space would have a huge impact on early education style and what is available to all, but special schools would exist too and the form they take would be shaped by need and desires of sub-cultures. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
November 7, 2014 - 2:18pm | I would assume you can buy computer based tutoring in SF that would be popular for small colonies or spacer families. Also... higher level robots could probably teach subjects, expecially in lower grades. ----------------------------------------------- |
November 7, 2014 - 2:20pm | Subspace Cyber schools could be a thing. I just don't see any standards being something universal. Leaders in education might be a model to follow for places and places might teach based on "the New Pale Curiculum" but it wouldn't be standarized. ----------------------------------------------- |
 November 8, 2014 - 4:01am | I've had gamers ask me about Dralasite reproduction. Several of them had wondered exactly how much information a Dralasite passes on to its offspring. They believed that some of the Dralasite parent's memories were passed down to its bud-child. I had never even thought about that until my players brought it up. Any thoughts? |
November 8, 2014 - 7:13am | I wrote up some stuff about dralasite reproduction a few years ago and posted it in the core four project. I have the bud and parent able to think to each other and share memories for a time during development. This is used by the parent to teach basic language and survival skills as well as pass on cherished memories. The link is broken a time before seperation and this stimulates the child to separate. I should go back and use the thread for a series of articles in one of the magazines. -iggy |
November 8, 2014 - 9:14am | That is logical for Drals a sort of "racial memory" thing, because each parent has some of the previous parents memories going back to the first budding, the first becoming of one to two... Dral subconscious might hold a wealth of info. if fully accessed. "As it was in the beginning and is forever. The One becomes the Two and the Two the many. The many forever in the beginning, the many forever in the now, the many forever in the future." - A Dralasite Budding Chant "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
November 10, 2014 - 1:23am | I sort of disagree, but only in that the standards would be totally volentary. I think that some college level schools would grow to become giagantic intitutions that attract sentients from the whole of the frontier and it would be known what is required to be able to pass the entrance exams for those schools. But some planets... like mostly agricultural planets might not encourage that sort of higher learning, but instead only encourage the higher learning dedicated to agriculture. This is a very game specific area of detail really... but since the UPC is a confederation and not a governement you should assume that every planet is different. If the standards were totally voluntary, you'd end up with a mish-mash of qualifications which may be of questionable or impractical general use. Even those in education on agricultural worlds would still need the same levels of standardised education as those on other worlds. Otherwise, those coming to the planet with a certain set of educational qualifications might find that what they know or have been taught doesn't line up with the standards of that planet. It would be too much of a headache. Put simply, there needs to be some overlap so that everyone knows that certain exams and educational qualifications ensure a knowledge base which is uniform from place to place. For example, I work in higher education here in the UK and many of my students are from various parts of Europe and elsewhere around the world. We can still assess their suitability for our course because we know that whatever exams they've passed in whatever country they're from means that they're educated up to a certain level. We can then ascertain how well they might get on with our course, on average. However, it would be even easier if there was a sort of universal standard. That said, there is enough uniformity around the world for things to mostly line up with what we need from them in terms of the academic standard they bring with them. It would be much more difficult if one place set it's standards at a certain level and other places varied around their own national outlook in terms of what that country makes, etc. Instead, what actually happens is that various educational establishments around the world try to work to a basic standard that has evolved over the years and try to keep parity with that. I think something similar would happen in Star Frontiers. There may be lots of planets with different economic and/or other outputs but at some point they'd need a general standard in different levels of education so that someone from one planet with X-level of education is pretty much the same as someone else with that level of education from another planet, perhaps a great distance away. If instead your education is skewed at the needs of the planet's economic output - i.e. agriculture - and nothing else, it would educationally doom your citizens to a life whereby their hard-earned educational qualifications aren't worth anything off of that planet. |
 November 10, 2014 - 5:52am | Actually you'd end up with boards of accretidation and accredited schools would have degree granting status based on this. Rather than have 2- or 3 generic boards for the setting I would say have 3 species centric boards. One that reflects human philosophies, one that reflects dralasite and vrusk philosophies, and one that reflects yazirian philosophies. There would still be schools out there with their own standard but they would not be recognized or claiming a degree from that school is almost certainly going to lose you a job once someone realizes its a joke school. there should be a fourth board that oversees hypno learning centers. Properly certified hypno learning centers usually implant permanent skills while the cheaper fly by nights implant skills which are likely to fade. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 10, 2014 - 8:30am | KR --- your view of the frontier is FAR more orderly and well, socialistic, then the way i see it. I see it as a confederation of planets who's only tying bind is the need for mutual protection from the Sathar. So yes, different games, different styles... In my view of the frontier... what you expereince would be the norm. Applicants have to test into schools and not every school's tests are the same. There may be similarities, and some schools might share testing materials or follow each other's leads.... but every planet, and possibly every school could have different standards. I think about it this way... we can't even get to your concept here... on one planet. As standardized the UK, USA or others are... still at least half the human population couldn't meet those standards. ----------------------------------------------- |
November 10, 2014 - 12:16pm | I like all th thought going into the posts on this subject. Thank you everyone. I see educational level standards developing as a product of need by employers. The educational institutions of the frontier are ultimately competing to have recognition and success through the students they graduate that become successful. The corporations start trusting institutions based on past experience hiring previous graduates. The educational institutions then meet together and set standards among themselves to protect their status and inflow of top notch students. I do not see a federation wide government body doing this but rather an educational industry standards body of their own making. The UPF does not have power or a need to try and control the Frontier Educational Standards Board thow they may lobby it from time to time to influence the educational level of officers they recruit from the universities and academies. The planetary governments of course are always trying to control the FESB for their own agendas and the desire for power and control. Think of how many things on the internet have self governed themselves and later governments have gotten in. Some have stayed in control and kept the power in the hands of the people, industry, creators, etc. Others have been taken over by governments and bureaucracies. I see the FESB as a success story of self regulation. Now I want to get more ponderings on the education of the beings that do not get advanced education in the frontier. What do the planetary educational systems do? Are they all planetary controlled or are some fractured? I know this starts to ask about the difference in each planetary government and society. -iggy |
November 10, 2014 - 3:06pm | KR --- your view of the frontier is FAR more orderly and well, socialistic, then the way i see it. I see it as a confederation of planets who's only tying bind is the need for mutual protection from the Sathar. So yes, different games, different styles... In my view of the frontier... what you expereince would be the norm. Applicants have to test into schools and not every school's tests are the same. There may be similarities, and some schools might share testing materials or follow each other's leads.... but every planet, and possibly every school could have different standards. I think about it this way... we can't even get to your concept here... on one planet. As standardized the UK, USA or others are... still at least half the human population couldn't meet those standards. I wouldn't say it's socialistic - it's merely a need to have standardisation from place to place. People would need to be confident that their academic knowledge base has a legitimate basis to a commonly recognised level, and those employing them need to know that they understand one or more areas of knowledge to a certain level. If your version of the Frontier is more disorderly, nothing can get done past very limiting points because no-one has confidence in other people's level of expertise. Even on Earth there are still various measures that allow someone with a degree in the US to work in the UK and give the UK employer the certainty that that person knows a subject up to a certain level. If there wasn't, people with very key, specialised skills and qualifications - doctors and surgeons, for example - would never be able to work abroad. Such systems break down if one party doesn't value the standards of another party, which is why degrees from some parts of the world are hard to verify and have confidence in. You'd have the same problem across the Frontier, and so the knowledge base from race to race would be highly compartmentalised and, like I said, nothing would get done. Sure, people could muddle along, but that's not all that ideal for any sort of dynamic progress - and you'd need such progress to effectively counter the Sathar. Trying to do that on a more ad hoc basis would be win-win for the Sathar, to the detriment of the Frontier races. |
November 10, 2014 - 6:06pm | What about people from Kenya, or Samolia. You are basically saying the 1st world might have that sort of thing in that they strive for, but when you multiply the numbers by many planets some of which are very small populations for a whole planet, you have more 2nd and 3rd world places then 1st world. Some of those small places are going to be corporate settlements, sure, so they might have a initial starting point of eduction. But after generations that isn't going to keep up automatically. In my game I'm planning/assuming there is always a tug-of-war that we see in modern times between centralization of power and distributed power. Educational standarizations are a form of power, or cultural subjugation. I would think many planets would reject it because their special and unique beliefs and priorities end up getting tampled out by wide spread standarization.... while others would seek out that sort of standarization. Is Pale the center of the Frontier culturally? I have to look it up honestly... but it is a really big and really important planet right? Sort of like Corosant in SW but without the direct line authority of a republic governement. I would see a big planet like that trying to export thier standards, and also other planets using Pale as a model... so it would make sense for something like you are saying growing from there. I guess I don't see the Frontier as a place where everybody gets along... conflict is where adventure comes from, so I want my Frontier to have the seeds of conflict around every corner. ----------------------------------------------- |
 November 10, 2014 - 8:52pm | i would say humans reach physical maturity at age 15-16.
If the human lifespan is 200 years, you need to double that. |
November 11, 2014 - 2:40am | What about people from Kenya, or Samolia. You are basically saying the 1st world might have that sort of thing in that they strive for, but when you multiply the numbers by many planets some of which are very small populations for a whole planet, you have more 2nd and 3rd world places then 1st world. Some of those small places are going to be corporate settlements, sure, so they might have a initial starting point of eduction. But after generations that isn't going to keep up automatically. In my game I'm planning/assuming there is always a tug-of-war that we see in modern times between centralization of power and distributed power. Educational standarizations are a form of power, or cultural subjugation. I would think many planets would reject it because their special and unique beliefs and priorities end up getting tampled out by wide spread standarization.... while others would seek out that sort of standarization. Is Pale the center of the Frontier culturally? I have to look it up honestly... but it is a really big and really important planet right? Sort of like Corosant in SW but without the direct line authority of a republic governement. I would see a big planet like that trying to export thier standards, and also other planets using Pale as a model... so it would make sense for something like you are saying growing from there. I guess I don't see the Frontier as a place where everybody gets along... conflict is where adventure comes from, so I want my Frontier to have the seeds of conflict around every corner. Actually, anyone who's had a certain level of education in Kenya or Somalia would still be able to do further study in, say, the UK. I've had at least one Somali student. This is because, despite what you might think about countries that are not '1st World', they still have educational standards. The Frontier doesn't have to be a place where everyone gets along. It's just that if many of the people living in the Frontier need to get anything done as a wider civilisation but don't have certain parities in certain aspects of their lives (in this case, education) they won't be able to get much done. This would make the Frontier much weaker. If you still think it's not a problem, think of it as being like having different standards from place to place for 1 SEU. If 1 SEU on one planet is equivalent to X amount of energy, but X is more or less energy per SEU on other planets, various weapons and equipment won't work from planet to planet. Sure, you could buy some sort of adapter to make things work, but what if you need such adapters for every planet you might need to visit? Worse still, what if 1 metre was a certain standard length on one planet, but that length for a metre varied from planet to planet?  I know previously you thought that ideas of stadardised education were socialistic, but those ideas actually stem from the industrial revolution in the UK - which was out and out naked capitalism If planets in the Frontier are more involved in such competition, they'd need and want to ensure that their population is educated up to certain standards. If another planets population start to become better educated, it would spark off competition between other planets to raise the bar to that level - and this process would keep going. Otherwise, one planet would lose out to another. Once that sort of process got going, sooner or later they'd all have to agree that 'X' levels of education would be widely accepted as being useful across the Frontier, in the same way that they agree on standard measurements of length, mass, energy, etc. |
November 11, 2014 - 9:29am | Maybe a person from a 3rd world country can "test in" to furture thier education... but they can't just start practicing medicine... we don't except thier education. and... for the record... I don't think any instituation accepts students's prior work based on country... it is based on particular schools within those countries. So in India, for example you have schools that are accepted broadly and schools that aren't. And I meant socialistic in that at some point standards stop being about cooperation, but they become a top down forced thing from some authority. That and captialism only caused the public school system to be created, but wide spread standards. I would not be surprized if in the early days of public schools the factories had a huge hand in exactly what was taught to produce people that can work better in the factory. I bet the Mega Corps all might run school in the frontier as a part of thier recruitment. I could totally see them taking in children who come from poor planets that don't have these good educational oppertunitied in return for a form of indentered servitude... like doctors residiecy requirements... where the kids maybe move to a nice boarding school in thier youth or teanage years and get trained in the 4r's as well as what ever specific corporate job they migrate into, or signed up for initially. Megacorps might be able to produce brainwashed employees by the thousands that way.... people willing to kill and die for the corporation. ----------------------------------------------- |
November 11, 2014 - 11:25am | On a corporate controlled planet its almost certainly a company school in a company town. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 11, 2014 - 11:39am | i'm suggesting they might want to actually run whole schools/universities to pull in people to program and train for thier use. Like they might have a big space on Pale where they run a boarding school. ----------------------------------------------- |
November 11, 2014 - 12:13pm | i'm suggesting they might want to actually run whole schools/universities to pull in people to program and train for thier use. Like they might have a big space on Pale where they run a boarding school.
I believe that I speculated something similar on Lossend: that Tachton mega corp would sponsor a summer camp progran in robotics but since the bulk of the population are farmers that it would have a focus on agricultural robots. Careers on Lossend are limited to farming, food processing, or working for the company. Careers in the militia are probably very competitive and hard to get into. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 11, 2014 - 12:20pm | I would like to point out I work with a lot of highly educated people from around the globe... but because of politics their degrees are considered null and void, and I say politics as these folks can run educational circles around the Americans with degrees. Based on what I have seen these people are just as if not better educated than many Americans with the same degree. It is like the Big Bang episode around here where it turns out the buildings janitor that Sheldon recruited to just sit and say nothing for the Physics Bowl was a Physicist in mother Russia "Go Polar Bears". I am just saying you might run into situations where one government not might recognize the educational backgrounds of another government's citizens. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
November 11, 2014 - 2:25pm | Yeah, you would Tchklinxa. And you would run into planets that reject "the Pale" way of doing things... because the fear it will invade thier culture. I think standards would exist but they wouldn't be universal... maybe only adopeded on larger planets. Anywho... everybody's games are different. It took me a while to get my player's minds wrapped around the idea that the UPF wasn't a governement or empire due to the bias they all have from Trek/StarWars. ----------------------------------------------- |
November 15, 2014 - 12:16am | I totally agree about Megacorps. They would absolutely "educate" (read: brainwash) as many young people as possible. I also agree with KRingway about standardization. The example about SEUs was a good one. If planets expect to do business with each other, certain things have to be agreed upon. Vrusk education may not be exactly the same as Yazirian education, but they can figure out what an equivalent degree would be. I saw the same thing when I went to a university in one state, and then transferred to a university in a different state. The new school had different standards, and only counted some of my credits as legit, but they both had a general sense of what was needed for a degree. Having said that, PAL tapes don't seem to play in my VCR for some reason... |
November 15, 2014 - 5:05am | It all depends on how your Frontier is set to be compatible over a wide scale. In my view of it, it's not so cut-throat, so megacorps would not be brainwashing anyone. Not because I think it's an icky premise nor because I have some sort of hippy-dippy view of the Frontier, but more because it seems counter-productive - and expensive. It seems to me that sooner or later the races across the Frontier decide that certain things have to have a modicum of standardisation, as without it the Frontier as a whole has various inherent weaknesses at basic important levels. Such weaknesses would make it vulnerable - and unwiedly as a general system. Cross-compatibility in various areas, be it legal frameworks and legal rights, SEUs, docking port sizes, education and various other things would have to be standardised in some way across the frontier just so that everything can interact smoothly. Perhaps before the first Sathar invasion, things were a little looser, but maybe after that the shock made the various races decide to co-opeate and standardised some things much more. |
November 15, 2014 - 5:24am | Right. My Frontier is standardized. If you go out and buy a part for your aircar, it shouldn't matter what planet you bought it on, it will still fit in your aircar. |
November 16, 2014 - 1:53am | Yes standardization is driven, in our world and would be in
the frontier, by the need to get things done. I was viewing this through
the need to make money by corporations and the educational institutions by
keeping their enrollment up. A university that does not produce
successful graduates does not get the opportunity to charge higher tuition for
students as their reputation rises. The successful universities
themselves will drive the standardization of education for two reasons, to
protect their positions and to justify tuff admission standards and high
tuitions.
-iggy |
