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12-22-2008, 05:02 PM #1
Education in Anuire
It occurred to me recently that I'd made an assumption in BR that was invalid. I'd just assumed that nobles were taught by private tutors - an idea with limited game potential so readily overlooked in play.
However in England we had private schools Winchester (1382) and Eton (1440) and universities like Cambridge Uni (1284) and Oxford (1598) a fair while ago.
While these schools/univeristies had religious starts, an education was often seen as a religious issue in medieval times, Anuirean religion would be based on Haelynite philosophy / the entire pantheon so very different to our education.
If wealthy young nobles get educated at colleges then you can have unlikely rivals/bands of brothers based on common schooling, opposed schools, plots involving mass attacks on youths, etc. an approach with far more gaming potential than 'tutor X is a depraved sadist' and so on.
Schools provide prestige to their patron/realm - Diemed may be a shadow of its former self, but it could easily have a major school / university dating back to when it was the center of Anuirean religion - that could have game-play options for the regent of Diemed, i.e. diplomacy on the school could influence regents of later realms, the regent could lean on the school to accept this child / bar another, etc.
The City of Anuire is another obvious site for a school/university, Boeruine might have more of a military academy (Sandhurst only opened recently but given Haelyn's martial aspect an equivalent is not unrealistic), Avanil might have an academy of arts, etc.
Mostly an interesting bit of fluff for a campaign but I figure some adventures could come of such a location.
Any ideas?
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12-22-2008, 07:36 PM #2
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If Haelyn's churches are running schools for nobles/scions, then I assume the Avani-ites will have their own, too, and so on for at least some other churches.
You'll want to address the question why wizards only have the one college, though. Maybe so that really dangerous magic could be monitored by the Empire, I suppose.
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12-22-2008, 09:56 PM #3
I would image the College of Sorcery is only the most prestigious of the schools for wizards.
The Renaissance is also the time when the Church lost its monopoly as humanists began to start schools with a curriculum that alternately appealed to the merchant class (more math overall and more arithmetic and less geometry specifically) and the noble classes (rhetoric usurped the dominance of logic in the trivium, more history, more biography, more classical works).
Given the assumed curriculum of a religious school, there are probably one or two alternative curriculum schools as well. If we include a pre-magical or magical curriculum, we might get as far as one to three alternatives.
While schooling was rising in the renaissance, the climb is very slow.
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12-22-2008, 10:39 PM #4
Military academies opened mostly to serve the mathematics involved in artillery.
There are already mention of some universities on the wiki.
A school of Haelyn would almost certainly be about law and government, not warfare. War didn't become an academic subject in Germany until the 19th century, and in places like America and Britain until the 20th.
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12-22-2008, 10:55 PM #5
The BR wiki gives reference (I think) to the Royal/Imperial College of Sorcery/Magic in Anuire, an ex-college of Magic in Ciliene and I think a magical college in Khinasi.
IMC we played with a Conservatory/Bardic College near Cariele and I imagine there to be more in Anuire and maybe Brechtur. (cf User:Trevyr/Bardic Colleges, White Hall Bardic College).
As for old real-world institute, don't forget the Universite de Paris. It started around 1257 and had faculties and nations. The faculties were Arts, Medicine, Law, and Theology. The nations were institutionalised divisions of students, according to their "area of origin" - French, English (later German), Normans, and Picard. And not surprisingly, there was great rivalry and fighting between groups. I can see something similar happening at the University of Anuire.
The BR wiki also mentions a College of Dhoesone, Avanese College of Heralds (probably not educational), Imperial War College, temple of Grimsay in the College of Justice, and probably more. I suspect some of these are campaign specific and need expanding.
Sorontar
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12-23-2008, 10:15 AM #6
Haelyn is god of just war - not just law, in RL christian schools were at least notionally following a religion dedicated to peace - I'd expect Haelynite teachings to be more aimed at directing students into 'just wars' than to peaceful pursuits.
Another point is that the empire was forged long ago so schools would have been about rulership and other imperial matters with the intent of producing students who could become governors and civil servants, etc.
Could be quite a varied curriculum
Once you have a few early 'core' schools you then et the copies - I wonder what the schools run by Cureacen teach about war?
I can see Khinasi universities being very prestigious - possibly even gaining a few rare students from Anuire.
Wizards incidentally are probably rare enough that they only need the one school, interestingly we know about the school in Anuire and maybe Khinasi (temple of Rilni?) but have nothing on a mage school in Brechtur which I would expect to be all over education.
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12-23-2008, 01:19 PM #7
The problem is that war is really only learned by doing. Even today, armies that spend a generation without a war see a serious decline in readiness.
Given that there are armies in being, its just much easier to train nobles by service as ensigns and then junior officers in actual armies doing real military activities than it is to put them in a school and read about how such and such is done.
Likewise with crafts. We can imagine schools for shoemaking. But its actually easier to apprentice as a shoemaker than it is to study the craft and then start fresh as a shoemaker.
So it is with war. Machiavelli, himself quite bookish, describes the ideal training of officers in his treatise on war, and its an extension of the natural noble lifestyle: "when on the hunt, consider if an enemy detachment emerged there, what would be the best response,"
Right off, if tutors didn't teach it, neither will schools. If instead there was a program of apprenticeship, this method will be used. When it comes to Haelyn, I would go even further, and say that the Haelynite ideal of nobility is knighthood, and knighthood its a classical apprenticeship program in which one is first a page in one noble's house and then a squire in a second noble's house.
As for a means to develop conflict, the school by its nature, diminishes the old conflicts of family on family and replaces them with other rivalries, and I don't think that's a desirable move. On the other hand, the apprenticeship model allows for the continuation of ancient grudges and factions, because the same faction of nobles passes their children around within their group as pages and squires.
Who went to schools in the late middle ages? Almost entirely people destined for clergy. This need not apply directly in Birthright, but its not going to be practical people who do things, but bookish people who advise. In the Renaissance, new people started going to school, but it still wasn't men of action, like regents or sub-regents, but people of a lower sort who began to displace the great men in the service of the king. Men from the gentry or even the middle class, might, through schooling, become a great officer of the king. Nobles became displaced from politics.
The medieval model takes great nobles and puts them into the direct household service of the regent. You are steward (and serve my food), or chamberlain (and make my bed) or boutalliere (and serve my drinks) and because I know and trust you, can you run the state as well.
Switching from these relationships to schools, undermines the personal ties of dependence and replaces them with expertise through education. We have started down the road in which merit replaces birthright as a claim to office. This concerns me because it clashes with the spirit of the setting.
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