Re: CHAT: Conlang/Concultural education was Re: CHAT: University Advice (was Re: A bit of advice)

On Sat, Sep 09, 2000 at 12:05:12AM -0400, Padraic Brown wrote:
> On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> >ObConLang: *education* in concultures/conlangs?  Education in mine is
> >associated with the magistrates, who form the scholarly elite, in Qenar,
> >though the word for "knowledge" connotes more wisdom/enlightenment (in a
> >vaguely Zen-ish sense) than book-learning.  Education in Qenar is a
> >privilege of the wealthy, and there "knowledge" connotes more
> >philosophy/ethics.
[snip]

*Grabs the ObConlang chance to show off his conlang/conculture yet again
;-P*

Education in my conculture/conlang varies depending on which era of my
con-universe you're looking at.

In the Kingdom Era, which speaks the version of the conlang I'm working on
now, there is an elite class called the Experts, who are basically
philosopher-physicist-adventurer-heroes.  Kinda like the Samurai in Japan.
Esp. at the start and toward the end of the Kingdom Era, the Experts enjoy
a widespread popularity and are involved in the politics of the time.
Because they are considered as the educated elite, their philosophies are
very much integrated into the formal form of the language. Over time, the
education system brought this philosophy through the teaching of the
language and it became part of the culture. In fact, the inner structure
of the language is almost completely built upon the philosophical tenets
of the Experts -- the influence of Expert philosophy through the education
system has unconsciously excluded whatever original languages or other
philosophies there might have been.  (There are still traces left, but
insignificant.)

With regards to the education itself, the Experts run their own schools,
which are pretty elitist and pedantic; only "qualified" students get very
far through the system, which is basically targeted at producing the next
generation of Experts. In general, only higher-class people send their
kids to Expert schools (and even then, not many make it all the way
through); others just settle for local schools. Towards the later Kingdom
Era, Expert philosophy has integrated itself with the culture so much that
even local schools teach the language forms that originally only the
Expert schools taught. However, besides teaching language and elementary
technical skills, local schools don't do much else.

After the unfortunate fall of the Kingdom, which brought the Kingdom Era
to a close, and which involved massive widespread destruction, education
was almost completely wiped out. In the Era of Scattering which follows,
the only form of education left is homeschooling and/or crude remnants of
local schools -- Expert schools completely disappeared throughout most of
this Era. The fall of the Kingdom is also the point where communication
between the three main sections of the con-universe ceased; and the
original language diverged along three totally different paths as time
goes on. And yes, this is just my perfect excuse to experiment with
descendant languages which can take three paths completely isolated from
each other... :-) And yes, this is also my chance to write history three
times in case I feel like re-writing what really happened "back then" :-)

Later in the history of my con-universe, though, communication between the
three sections of the universe was restored, and the coming together of
three deeply ingrained languages cause rather interesting reactions. I'll
probably put in a few "interesting characters" who try to invent IAL's to
resolve language differences(!): so much time has passed since the time of
the original, common ancestor language that the three languages bear
practically no resemblance to each other at all. In fact, due to poor
education in the Era of Scattering, the original language was almost
completely lost. It would be the work of the Expert movement (a movement
attempting to revive the ancient Expert philosophies and language) that
would recover the old, lost documents, reconstruct the original language,
etc..

Hmm... I seem to have ranted on and on for nothing at all... How many
people actually bother to read this? :-P OK, better stop now... this stuff
probably belongs more to my upcoming webpage for my conlang/conculture
than to this list! ;-)


T