Education in the Spiral Empire

Every country in the Spiral Empire educates its citizens through different methods and to different degrees. While the Spiral Emperor dictates that all citizens should receive tattoos, it made no demand that they must be educated, only that each country must at all times have a cohort of trained spiromancers who can interpret data stored in towers and, when necessary, use the towers to bar all access to the spiral temporarily.

## Makkada Sultanate

In Makkada, all citizens are educated from age four to twelve at no cost, though wealthier families may opt to send their children to better, more distance schools or hire tutors and mentors to teach their children one-on-one or in small groups where they could receive more dedicated attention. Refusing to send a child to school, and refusing to educate them at home, is considered abuse and not tolerated. Even wealthy families may have their children taken away and given to better families, or kept as wards of the state, for disobeying education laws.

Foreigners who stay in the sultanate for more than a few months are not required to send young children to school, but they may do so, free of cost. While Makkadi schools teach a variety of important topics, most diplomats, immigrants, and members of religious minorities choose to educate their children themselves. Sultan Raqat attempted to ban religious minorities from educating their children outside the public schools, but resistance from Seprum and Kuan diplomats kept it from becoming a reality.

### Pedagogy

Makkadi believe children learn best by watching, reading, listening, and contemplating the words of wiser teachers and religious leaders. Their classrooms, inside and outside, feature places for children to sit or stand so they can read a book or take notes, all within sight of a teacher. Tests, generally written, to encourage literacy and to mimic the examinations, are common.

Students are ranked based on their understanding of the material. Faster students are expected to work with those who understand the material less well, as the ability to teach a concept suggests thorough understanding. Teachers may occasionally assign group work, but in general, students are expected to perform on their own.

### Curriculum

Students are expected to graduate with five abilities and an understanding of five key concepts. The necessary abilities are:

1. Reading fluently, to oneself and aloud
2. Writing, longhand and shorthand, as fast as a slow speaker, and legibly
3. Speaking with a volume proper to the hall and with a message tailored to the audience
4. Memorization of lists, numbers, and other complex material through the use of mental tricks and mnemonic devices
5. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division

The five concepts are:

1. Sudha principles and history
2. Makkada history and government
3. The Spiral Empire's history and geography, the spiral, and the spiral towers
4. Basics of the economy, including statistics
5. Languages, generally two or more Makkadi languages, Zakhesh, and Lingua

Students who study for more years, as many do, at minimal cost in cities besides opportunity cost of labor, will learn more specific skills, such as the intricacies of weaving, along with less applicable or more complex generalist skills: politics, government, geometry, calculus, advanced rhetoric, law, and so forth. All are expected knowledge on the examinations.

### Apprenticeships

Most Makkadi who do not follow in the family business after their schooling is finished will become apprentices and learn a specific craft. In general, masters come from the same town or are friends of the family. Some master crafters, or those who teach high demand arts, may open applications to a public at broad. Niyahi edj-Bakr, for instance, waited ten years before taking on an apprentice in carpet weaving because no one available had the attitude necessary to succeed.

Apprenticeships are not standardized and will take as long as the master desires. It is not a guarantee that apprentices will be given a job at the end, or certified in the craft, especially in areas like medicine, which the government regulates. However, in most cases, apprenticeships are more casual affairs—a blacksmith takes in their cousin's son, teaches him the basic principles, and works side by side with him in the smithy until they retire and the son takes over.

### Post-Examination

Those who pass the exams are given positions in government. Some may begin to work immediately in less important positions. Others may need additional training. For instance, newcomers into the administration of statistics, beneath the vizier of coin, may take between one and three years to learn the advanced mathematics, cartography, and polling science necessary to do the job. In rare cases, extremely gifted individuals—or, more likely, those with parents in a similar position—may already know how to perform the role are are promoted upon passing the exam.

Once inside the bureaucracy, education continues as needed. The development agency is responsible for finding needs and designing curricula to fulfill them.

## Seprum Republic

The military is the primary institution of education in Seprum. Patricians hire tutors to teach their children to read and write, letters and numbers; indentured servants are forbidden from learning to read and commoner families may not be able to afford to, either. Crafts are taught through traditional master-apprentice relationships. Because almost every child grows up to perform the same duty and job as their parents, institutionalized education is unnecessary.

### Academies

The three Seprum academies teach Alleatan children and teenagers how to be powerful soldiers, clever tacticians, and loyal, dedicated citizens. While classes emphasize weapons and fighting, older students learn civics and attend plays that commemorate important moments in Seprum history.

## Kuan Empire

Commoners in Kuan receive no official education from the state, but learn the skills they need to thrive from their family, friends, communities, and, in rare cases, rai. This includes felt making, yurt construction and deconstruction, cooking, riding, tending to sheep and goats, and archery. When conscripted into the army, soldiers are further taught how to maintain their equipment and fight with a sword and javelin. They also learn to to coordinate with comrades at arms and cymancers.

The wealthiest families send their first-born children to the capital in Aksai, where they are taught to defend the palace and spiral tower and how to interact with important representatives of the other empires, which often includes reading and writing in other languages, religious studies, and etiquette. Younger children may be sent to monasteries to learn, or out of the empire entirely. A few families have adopted the Makkadi tradition of a live-in tutor.

Sudha preachers often offer to educate children in reading, rhetoric, and mathematics in exchange for additional education in Sudhaism and its scriptures. This tactic rarely works in Kuan, where the spoken language has no written form, nor are citizens particularly concerned with writing or rhetoric. They have, after all, united a massive empire without a written language. As a result, Sudhaism has few followers in the Kuan Empire.

### Shamans

Shamans pick their own students based on internal negotiations within the guild. They almost exclusively recruit women, generally those who are ethnically Kuan, though in recent years, they have begun to accept other members, though none who are ethnically Diao, Ju, or Dhi. To prevent a surplus of shamans, which would devalue them, most only take on one apprentice, and education can take between five and ten years.

Through their training, shamans learn first how to access the spiral and basic rune mereology. While they continue to hone their spiromancy, they also learn important information about the natural world, how to read the future in the fall of snow or the entrails of an animal, and politics. Unlike members of the saj's guard, their political practice is mostly inward facing--shamans must be able to navigate the conflicting orders of multiple rais in order to best serve their own interests and the interests of the saj.

## Ju Kingdom

In Ju, most children in cities can expect at least a few years of education as child labor is banned, though the ban is not always enforced. In more rural areas, however, where families need even their youngest children to help with farming, most education occurs during off seasons, thanks to traveling teachers or Sudha preachers. Because examinations are open almost exclusively to children in noble families, it was never necessary that the whole society know how to read and write and a large percentage of poorer citizens, especially those in rural areas, are illiterate,

However, the Ju government recognizes great value in non-traditional skills, especially music, cooking, and folk wisdom. Famous scholar Gong Chae-won suggested the unifying theory of slow change after speaking with a farmer about different colored algae that took root in the pond every few years. After revealing her theory, Gong returned to the farm and offered to bring the woman to the provincial capital, where Gong could teach her to read and write. The woman pointed out that reading and writing would not make her a better farmer or mother and, in exchange, offered to teach Gong how to help a cow give birth, an offer Gong accepted, though later revealed in letters to her wife that she regretted the experience--"I have never seen so much blood, or imagined a cow could make that noise."

### Pedagogy

Ju teachers believe different people learn best in different ways. Some children may prefer to pace while someone explains a concept to them, others may prefer to see a problem and solution and work out in a small group how the answer was found, or something else entirely. No Ju teacher would claim to know better than their pupil, and their schools are designed to give everyone every opportunity to learn. Those who cannot learn sitting still may use the back of the classroom to knit, fiddle, or in some other way occupy themselves. In extreme cases, some children travel with traveling teachers, able to learn best while carrying a heavy pack and hiking through a bog.

That same trust in students makes tests rare. If they claim to understand a topic, that is their prerogative. After all, they are the ones who will be called upon to use those skills in the future, not their teacher. When it is necessary to measure the skills of a class, tests are open book, which means they often focus less on rote memorization and more on a deeper understanding of processes. Though Ju students often receive fewer years of mathematical education than their counterparts in Makkadi, they are often better equipped to explain *why* mathematics works the way it does and to design their own proofs. This has become a point of contention with Makkada in recent years, who have long prided themselves on--and enriched their coffers by--accepting outsourced mathematical grunt work from the other kingdoms.

### Curriculum

Proud of their newly-designed writing system, which recently celebrated its hundredth birthday, Ju education emphasizes reading and writing. Many students also learn basic calligraphy. In noble families, a good understanding of calligraphy is required. Noble children will also study the classics and classical art and music.

As park of Paekju's new plan to increase Ju's soft power abroad, schools have also begun to focus on math, not on the repetitive accounting Makkadi are known for, but on the more complex geometry and calculus required to to create accurate maps, calculate speeds and distances, and find the distance between the viewer and far off stars or planets. The queen sees a future where the other kingdoms rely on an educated Ju population as much or more than they do on Makkadi.

### Universities

This effort by the central government is slowly creating something of a middle class: wealthy commoners and aristocratic families who have fallen out of favor who see education as a way to lift their prospects and those of their family. They focus less on art and calligraphy, which cannot earn them the respect their family names lack, and more on the so-called hard arts: meteorology, mathematics, astronomy, botany, cooking, and biology. These areas have direct value to the upper crust and to foreigners, which increases the standing of Ju in the Spiral Empire. While few scientists learn enough to ever afford land, they may be granted some by the monarch or grateful aristocrats. In general, these land grants ate temporary and do not change the long-term standing of the family. However, many earn enough money and prestige to take care of family members, raising whole generations out of poverty and making it easier for the next to get an education as well.
This middle class has a vested interest in keeping an education in the hard arts exclusive to their children and others who they choose. Thus, many invest time and energy in first creating universities, often on donated land or land that belongs to a monastery, and designing complex, multi-year curricula for their students and then in preventing others from accessing those universities. Approximately half the seats at the most prestigious universities are reserved for wealthy foreigners. The other half generally go to those hand selected by administrators and professors. A few in each class are "outsiders," people from unproven families, generally crafters, not farmers, who are given the opportunity to join the middle class.

That foreigners wish to attend Ju universities is a point of pride for their administrators and the monarchy. It has reduced the power of the aristocracy, whose children they long trained to excel at the bureaucratic examinations, not entrance exams at elite, private universities. The two groups frequently clash, especially over the use of private land.

The most famous universities in Ju are:

* Jeon Dae and Myung, the two premier culinary universities in the Empire
* Gong Chae-won University of Botany
* Macau University of Weather

## Dhi

Dhi is unique because in Ma and Aleya, all children used to learn the spiromancy required to farm, Though the construction of spiral towers has greatly reduced the number of spiromancers in the Commonwealth, villages are still adamant in their dedication to educating children. Almost all of it happens orally.

### Pedagogy

Dhi teachers believe students learn best by doing. While their songs and and stories contain vital information about history, farming traditions, and signs of an avalanche, children are expected to play an active role in the day-to-day activities of the village. If a curious child asks the baker why he kneads the dough before he cooks it, the baker will most likely explain, and force the poor child to make a batch of roti before they go back to playing.

### Apprenticeships

The unique Dhi idea of *amadhi*, or a soup family, means that all adults in a village are expected to take care of all children, which includes feeding them if they are hungry, giving them a place to sleep if they need it, and boring them with stories of the olden days. As a result, the Ma and Aleya have few formalized processes for educating children (and also no concept of adoption). Children with an interest in one field may stumble into an accidental apprenticeship, if the adults are willing to help them, which is formalized when the teacher invites the learner to call them *khara,* or *mentor,* and they are bound until the teacher releases the student.

Masters take this responsibility very seriously. They may travel with their apprentice, including to other lands, and abandoning them without good reason could lead to social exile or even physical punishment. Even after the relationship is ended, apprentices are expected to care for their masters in old age, just as they aren their parents.

Not all masters feel their subject warrants an official apprenticeship, especially in Ma. However, healers, storytellers, and spiritual leaders are always trained through apprenticeships.

### Regional Differences

In the lowlands, education is becoming more standardized. Some students may learn in classrooms, like in Makkada or Ju, and read books or listen to lectures before engaging with the material, if they engage with it at all. Their influence on the Ma has reduced their emphasis on traditional master-apprentice relationships. In Aleyan villages, the traditions remain strong and they often look down upon lowlanders and the Ma for losing the way. Aleyan healers, a shrinking group of knowledge holders, may refuse to take non-Aleya apprentices.