Every village has something like a school, usually run by the local priestess of Naigha who is also the undertaker, midwife, herb-woman and village clerk (luchan so galan, "reader and writer"). The curriculum consists of reading and writing, some history, knowledge of the gods, valein ilain ("the king's language", standard spoken Ilaini) and usually a smattering of other subjects depending on what the teacher happens to know.
Most children go to school for at least a year or two between the ages of five and eight (after which a peasant child is indispensable at home) resulting in people generally being able to write their name and a few simple words, and read warnings and notices. Real literacy is for the rich and for townspeople, who usually stay on at school until their early teens.
In a village, really bright pupils may be sent to town for proper schooling, or be discovered by a Guild of Anshen runner if they're bright that way as well. Mailei Halla, reputed to have invented or at least consolidated the common script, was sent from her native village somewhere in the north (in her memoirs she calls it Valdie Sali, "Thingy-on-the-Valda") to Valdis at the age of nine to become an apprentice clerk.
There are some schools for further education. Valdis and Essle have commercial schools where young people are groomed for a position in a trading-house or the Temple of Mizran. The students learn to write in a scribe's hand, arithmetic, bookkeeping, commercial practice and correspondence, merchant law and the Iss-Peran trade language that is used in all overseas trading. Typically, they arrive at about eleven and leave school for an apprentice job at fourteen or fifteen.
The Guild of Anshen runs a school in Turenay, where young (and occasionally older) people are schooled in the use of their semsin skills. It is not only a centre of education, but also of research into new applications of psychic gifts. Students are encouraged to have an occupation outside the school. There's a scholarship fund, but many of the poorer students pay for their tuition by doing some work for the maintenance of the school (for instance, one student used to be a chandler's apprentice and now earns her keep by making the school's candles).
The Academy at Ildis produces real scholars. Many young people of good family study general subjects there for a year or two to round out their education, but there's also quite a large contingent of students who go on to become astronomers, alchemists, apothecaries, historians, lawyers or mathematicians. Ordinary lectures are public and free; teachers earn their keep by holding private classes.
Last updated: 06-Sep-2002