Vandagan Education

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While not as fixated on the point of education as Lithmorrans, Vandagans with the funds available tend to consider it a high priority to have their children educated.

Many richer members of Vandagan society have studied in Lithmore itself to be truly cultured, cosmopolitan and experienced with the liberal arts, before returning to Vandago to devote themselves to the arts of rhetoric and debate considered proper and necessary for their highly political way of life. This is mostly true for males, Vandagan women of the upper classes receiving at most private tutelage in manners and the feminine arts. Needlework, dancing, music, and fine speech are all the average noble or gentry woman might expect to learn, usually kept out of the heavier subjects the men study.

The average school in Vandago itself tends to focus primarily on practical subjects such as engineering, rudimentary physics and architecture, with a slant more towards actual career teaching than liberal arts curriculums. Middle-class male Vandagans will often attend these vocational schools as a route to success, fueling the duchy's dominance as an architectural and scientific power. It's not unheard-of for middle class women to attend as well so as to find a career that will allow them to be somewhat respected and self-sufficient in their own right, whereas the poorer of both sexes will be lucky if they can attain enough of a basic education to be able to read and write.

Membership in the Church is the one real exception to the dominance of practical schooling in Vandago. Those who take holy orders are rigorously educated in theology and learning, putting a Vandagan's time-honoured love of a good argument behind obscure doctrines and scriptural passages. The church schools in Vandago are extremely thorough due to their rich funding, producing scholars whose focus on effective and powerful sermons is well-supported by their practice in debate and speech.

All in all, the Vandagan approach to learning mirrors that of the Lithmorran in the upper classes, albeit slanted more towards use in the turbulent world of Vandagan politics rather than simply for its own sake. The middle classes focus on learning in its practical applications, leading the duchy to success in scientific pursuits, whereas the lower classes tend to find any form of education whatsoever both difficult to obtain and largely useless in everyday life.