Vavardi Education
Education is valued in Vavard for its own sake, rather than only for its practical considerations, and a well-balanced curriculum is considered highly important. Music and the arts especially are included much more prominently than they are in other duchies, but more traditional topics are also included.
The nobility and most affluent gentry hire personal tutors for their children. Good tutors are highly sought after and well-paid, offering instruction in politics, laws, economics, religious texts, history, fine arts, music, court dances, etiquette and multiple languages. Further lessons are geared more to the role the child will be expected to fill, including potentially business or household management, statecraft, architecture, warfare, dueling, fashion, embroidery, poetry, singing and playing musical instruments. This tutelage may last until the child is nearly sixteen, when he or she is expected to begin shadowing the appropriate parent and gradually start taking over small duties.
Those whose families cannot afford private tutors begin their education in primary schools. Open to children between the ages of five and ten, lessons are offered without a tuition charge due in large part to the donations of generous benefactors. Though enrollment in these schools is not compulsory, most parents try not to let their offspring miss out on the opportunity, given the strong civic pressure for all citizens to be educated. Classes include reading, writing, counting, art and music, and the young pupils enjoy diverse reading materials, from the Erra Pater to classic plays written by famous bards, from a collection of nursery rhymes to royal speeches. By the end of this education, children are expected to possess the basic knowledge in many fields: economics, arts, laws, music and Lithmorran. Given the heavy funding from donations, school functions are also a frequent occurrence, focused on appeasing the egos of the school's benefactors through the display of star pupils and artistic presentations of gratitude.
After the age of ten, schools become much more specialized. Donations change greatly as well; instead of sponsoring schools, it is much more common for benefactors to sponsor individual students who are especially promising or beautiful. A sponsored child is expected to owe direct benefit to their sponsor, especially those who go on to study arts or trades, who will often join the service of their benefactor for a few years after completion of their training. As these secondary schools charge tuition to the parents, the poor who go unsponsored tend to end their education at this point, returning home to assist their parents as best they can. Those students who continue in their education select between schools geared to academia, economics, trades, and arts and architecture. In addition to core studies catered to the type of school, students are provided more lessons in economics, architecture, a foreign language, and a form of art or music, and they are encouraged to attend special conferences held by visiting luminaries from different fields and walks of life. The length of the curriculum varies between the types of school, generally between two and five years. Depending on the direction of the school, students then go on to become apprentices, return to assist their families, or enter into university level education, including specialized classes at The Vavard Academy of Economics or studying abroad in other duchies.
