Going to school
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. She teaches reading and
writing, basic arithmetic, 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 she 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).
This results in people generally being able to write at least their name
and a few simple words, and read warnings and notices. Real literacy is for
the rich and for townspeople, who tend to stay on at school until their
early teens.
Really bright pupils may go 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", because of its insignificance) to Valdis at nine to become an
apprentice clerk.
Higher schooling
There are some schools for further education. Valdis, Essle and Veray have trade
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, advanced 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 eleven or
twelve and leave school for an apprentice job in their mid-teens.
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 learn 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 school has
an associated hospital where doctors and midwives are trained.
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.
Recently, Queen Raisse founded the School of Knowledge in Valdis, where
scholars from Iss-Peran, Aumen
Síth and elsewhere teach a wide range of subjects. The scholars
from Iss-Peran were given to her as slaves by the visiting Khandihan, the
envoy from the Enshah (king) of Albetire, but freed under
Valdyan law and employed by the school.
