What is education

[themink]

I don;t think that I understand what education is in an environment of prior history.

The way I understand the edu stat, it is a mix of general knowledge and actual education.

Given that is the case, shouldn't everyone who leaves school at 14 have a penalty against it. The bulk of your education arrives in the late high school period and that is what they are missing out on.

In fact, wouldn't you just give everyone a "base" education (say 6) and they get bonuses based on how long they stay in school.

If you want to add a "general knowledge" component to it, an extra d6 is probably reasonable. (so everyone starts with 5+1D6 - then gets plus 3 for staying in school till 18, more if they go on to university)

If, instead Education is heavily based on general knowledge, why do high tech homeworlds get an advantage. Surely there isn;t a suggestion that people from high tech environments pick up general facts more easily than low tech people.

Basically, I trust that the game has been well worked out, I just don;t understand it. WOuld someone please enlighten my ignorance.

 

[endwarde]

I understand EDU to be more about life experience than formal education (schooling). The way I see higher tech worlds having a bonus for EDU comes from the idea that when you are of higher tech, you aren't just worrying about your survival any longer. When you are working out in the fields from sunup to sundown just to survive, learning much else in your life is a luxury. At higher tech, not only are you surrounded by more information about more things every day, you are usually more free to pursue any types of interests you have in your free time. Look at our lives now, with the internet and the mass of information available at any public library, the many informational channels of cable, etc... Then think back to 200 years ago, and how many people would have had the opportunities to explore their own ideas and to encounter anything outside their limited range of normal experience.
That's how I see it anyhow.

 

[themink]

So low tech worlds should get bonus professional skills?

 

[PapaGolfWhiskey]

There was a time when literacy (of the sort we now call functional ILLiteracy) was an amazing thing. "he knows what the marks on the paper say"

Now the fact that any percentage of persons are illiterate. even with illiteracy redefined to include many people who can read as illiterate, is considered a shame.

this is a cultural as well as technological thing but...

 

[PapaGolfWhiskey]

There was a time when literacy (of the sort we now call functional ILLiteracy) was an amazing thing. "he knows what the marks on the paper say"

Now the fact that any percentage of persons are illiterate. even with illiteracy redefined to include many people who can read as illiterate, is considered a shame.

this is a cultural as well as technological thing but...

Also it's a definition thing. EDU factors into technical and knowledge skills book learning Scientific facts, histories, citations etc.

Some things that we in the real world might call 'knowledge' have been arbitrarily classed in the game world as 'Wisdom'

 

[themink]

I can accept that up until the 1960s (to pull an arbitary date from the air) your education was limited by access - However from then onwards, people have access to as much education as they like. Now the limits to education is desire.

Unfortunately very very few people believe in continuing education. They would rather have fun than learn. Yes having fun may result in some learning, but not to the same degree (pun intended).

Does the increase by tech level posit some way of "advanced" learning to pipe information into the learner faster (not unreasonable - but we would need to know what it is because it has other game effects). Alternatively do high tech worlds have an approach to education such that people do study for fun (In which case the roleplayers need to know that their high tech rogue spends more time studying than going water skiing - for instance)

 

[xloop]

It could just be that a higher tech level provides a person with the free time to study. Its difficult to go to the university when you are working on the farm all day and since the community is poor the university is 500 miles away.

 

[themink]

That sounds more like an arguement to have edu based on whether the world is rich or poor rather than on tech level.

 

[notagoodusername]

A higher tech level would promote both access to the educational opportunities, and likely the desire too. On a very high technology world the learning curve required to simply live and work is higher than on a low tech one.

Look at contempory children, they have learned far more about computers than my parent's generation because they have grown up with exposure to them, prompting them to learn about them to undertake recreational and learning activities.

The presence of high tech in all aspects of life, especially on say a vacumn world where tech=survival, would lead to a basic 'osmosis'-style learning effect (learn just by living, or make a mess-up and get people killed), and make other learning more logical/palatable. Not to mention the low percentage of low-tech jobs in the market making learning a nessecity.

Shane

 

[themink]

That arguement is true only if modern people are more educated than people from the 60s.

Yes they are more skilled at using high tech equipment, but as far as "total facts learnt" goes, I would guess there has been a reduction in actual education, particularly in the "upper" brackets - ie highschool. Even over the last 15 years (ie since I left) there has been a reduction in the maths requirement, technical english and science standards.

Yes modern children have more easy access to school - but that is related to the GDP (ie whether the planet is rich or poor) not the tech level. In truth, richness increases by tech level - but that isn;t canon and that isn;t what the "+ Edu if from high tech" implies.

I'm still looking for "high tech gives a means of teaching people which is better". That is the only way the mod is justified.

There are lots of ways that statement can be true - Sleep-learning, RNA injection, simulators, neural simulations etc etc - but we need to know what the canon answer is - because they have other effects.

An example - if eductaion is increased because children are given "neural booster" injections over a four year period, this is a big plot source (- the source five years ago was a genius psychopath - the problem has only been identified because "lots" of 22 year olds are starting to go nutso - one of the characters is the right age bracket)

 

[notagoodusername]

Remember, though, that EDU on its own is used mainly for general knowledge rolls, and any specific knowledge is still skill-based.

The higher EDU for higher tech could also be looked at both the availibilty of mass-media (TV programs, books, etc) in a knowledge-giving role, and the lower EDU at lower tech representing the incomplete, or flawed, knowledge form lower TLs.

Shane

 

[Commonman]

The education stat, like all stats, is a way to qauntify an abstract idea.Comparing role playing stats to real world traits always get fuzzy, especially when dealing with things like intelligence and wisdom. The education stat is a tool used by the designer.