Hi there

>
> "Proper" articles on the topics that I've posted for worldbuilding/
> culturebuilding would require more research than I have the time and
> inclination for;

Fair enough.

Although to be honest I hadn't imagined very much more than what you wrote simply as an inspiration for those of us who hadn't given it much thought and background for those of us who aren't so familiar with some of the forms you included.  Perhaps with any additional thoughts TMLers contributed.  Almost like library data entries.  But no worries.

> moreover, I don't really see how they would impact a
> game beyond "local color",

Hmmmm now, there's a challenge!

> and I'd thus argue that an in-depth treatment
> wouldn't be appropriate.

See above.  'In depth' not required just to trigger ideas which you've already done... :-)
>
>> Couple of thoughts spring to mind:
>
>> How about the Asimovian 'teacher' model - also used to great comic effect
>> in HitchHiker's Guide ("don't forget, press the *other* button...") - in
>> which the pupil is taught by a computer,  which may be set to be
>> personalized for the pupil and their ability.  Presumably the software can
>> then offer - after appropriate tests which could be written, oral or
>> experential in holographs etc - certification.  Obviously this would need
>> to be higher tech levels than 7 or 8.
>
> I see this as illustrating the difference between "education" and
> "training" -

Yes, understood!  I have this discussion with my wife a lot who argues that much of what I do is training not teaching... although I'm paid for the latter.

> I don't see a way to mechanize examining for
> *understanding*, as opposed to mechanistic performance of operations.
> This might have been common in the Ziru Sirka prior to the Terran
> conquest, but I don't see it as a real model for education.

I might have to disagree here - perhaps I should have added the line I was going to about the teaching possibly being AI level.  Which of course in some Imperiums might mean it's borderline not arrived yet.  But as Ian W points out it's simply a variant on the tutor model which I should have added.  I'm not convinced that TL12 or 13 computers of Traveller mightn't be able to assess the kind of learning you're talking about - certainly let's say at undergraduate degree level - and thus replicate that tutor experience.  Even if computers can't, there's still room for the model as the human (or non-human sophont) tutor model.
>
>> (In fact, it occurs to me that I learned to type this way using an
>> institution wide software - was it Accutype? - at university where I never
>> interacted with any teacher, went through the lessons and was made to take
>> additional lessons in areas I was weak, and had a printed certificate at
>> the end of it - I believe I still have it!  It said something like 'over
>> 10,000 key depressions per hour at 99% accuracy')  (no wonder I can type a
>> lot of rubbish very quickly!)
>
> This is a perfect illustration of what I mean above -

Yes, can see what you're driving at.  But that was a TL(7?) computer!

> sure, you can be
> 99% accurate in depressing keys on a keyboard, but could that program
> detect whether or not you were using the 'correct' fingers on the
> 'correct' keys, or did it merely detect that the 'correct' key was
> depressed when it was expected?

Hmmm, long time back now but I *think* I recall that it could detect things like correct fingering.  I would certainly expect Trav 'trainers' of that sort to be able to.

(Reminds me of my time in Taiwan when I found it fascinating when leaning to write Chinese characters - which must have their strokes written in a certain order - that my teachers could tell whether I'd written a character in the correct order *after the fact* (I.e. Without watching me do the actual writing).  Seemed like magic!)

>
>> And the 'child's play' model in which youngsters learn by playing and
>> perhaps role-playing together.  Perhaps it appears unsupervised by in fact
>> is being monitored (at a distance) by proctors who will judge whether a
>> child has progressed sufficiently to join the next higher level of
>> society.  I think I read a longish short story along these lines recently -
>> I'll see if I can find it.  But I seem to recall the protagonists were near
>> adults and started out at least in a swamp where they hounded a poor girl
>> to (death?) and lived in 'fake' environments of some sort.  [After a quick
>> look I can't find this, but it might have been electronic rather than in
>> print so I might never find it again.]
>
> This was outside the scope of my posting, which was intended to focus on
> postsecondary (college) education. What you've described is a component
> of the Montessori and Sudbury models, but both of those are pretty much
> limited to primary education.

Well, yes.  Here on Terra now.  I was thinking that that might not always be the case and that there might be systems or societies where this was how adults, or near adults learned as well.  In fact, that was the point of the story I'm desperately trying to remember - they were adults going through this process.

>
>> [But in looking for that, I found this...]
>> Philip K. Dick's short story 'The Exit Door Leads In' which has a
>> fascinating form of college and testing!
>
> ... which you've not described. Correct the omission.

:-)

I know, I know.  It was late, I was very tired, it was quite a complicated story, and I thought an exercise for the reader might be looking up the story!

SPOILER alert...

In short, a citizen is selected for 'college' by lottery when he's buying some fast food.  There's very little information about what he's in for as government (not detailed) seems quite oppressive.  He (and others including a woman he befriends) get briefed on the fact that they're at a military college, that certain information is classified and they'll be punished severely for leaking it.  Some info is so secret it's not even in the computer.  They have their various classes in individual rooms in front of computers (see above!). Protagonist, on his first day, is an obscure corner of knowledge and sees a tangential reference to something he knows is secret and shouldn't be in the computer - evidently this tangential connection has been overlooked, so he quickly prints out the three pages to have a record before it disappears.

Now he's in a dilemma over what to do with it.  Reading it he's found that it has details which would provide cheap energy for the masses and transform people's lives.  Turn it in and know it will be suppressed when he could have made a difference?  Leak it and accept the punishment knowing he's acted for the good of many others?  Do nothing and risk getting caught with the incriminating evidence of info he shouldn't have?  He goes to the girl to discuss it with her and she runs through his options but doesn't prompt him to any choice.

When he's handcuffed and taken away we find out that the college - in fact the girl - is really testing for whether he'll rebel against authority or meekly toe the party line and he ends up back in his dead end life. Wishing he could have another go at 'college' but can't because he knows the test.

The intro to the story in my copy of Best SF of the Year 9 (1980) says: In recent years, our schools have come to realize that what students need to learn isn't just tensor calculus or the wellsprings of John Milton's art, but also practical knowledge about how to function in the world that awaits them after graduation.  The result has been a major, and controversial, shift in teaching methods. Philip K. dick offers a darkly satiric story about a future world with demands on the individual that trashed anything we know today... and about the education of one young man adrift in that world.

As an interesting side note, given it's written in 1980, there's a prescient connection with Snowden in a paragraph that runs:
"Just publish them.  Some magazine or newspaper.  A slave printing construct could print it and distribute it all over the solar system in fifteen minutes.  All I have to do, he realized, is pay the fee and then feed in the three pages of schematics.  As simple as that.  And then spend the rest of my life in jail or anyhow in court.  Maybe the adjudication would go in my favor.  There are precedents in history where vital classified material - military classified material - was stolen and published, and not only was the person found innocent but we now realize he was a hero; he served the welfare of the human race itself, and risked his life."

I'm also more than suspicious that Dick is having a satirical dig at those of faith accepting truth blindly given that his main character is called Bibleman.

The key paragraph seems to me to be the girl's denouement towards the end in which she responds to Bibleman realizing he's failed.
"You failed me.  The purpose of the test was to teach you to stand on your own feet even if it meant challenging authority.  The covert message of institutions is, 'Submit to that which you psychologically construe as authority.'  A good school trains the whole person; it isn't a matter of data and information; I was trying to make you morally and psychologically complete.  But a person can't be commanded to disobey.  You can't order someone to rebel."

While we're on education, the same volume of Best SF has John Moressey's story 'No More Pencils, No More Books' which takes 'inner-city' schools to an extreme with teachers using electric shocks to keep unruly kids in line in schools where it's pretty much open warfare between staff and students in a grim future.

Right, had better get back to my own teaching preparation.  Or is that training preparation? ;-)

tc