#again not a glc expert | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lucalicatteart · 7 years

Photo

★ School systems in Nanyevimi ★

A bit of misc info about school types (magic schools, skill schools, etc.) and how some of them function and just general realm wide education system stuff etc. !! (okay not “a bit”, it actually became quite long so I will put it under a read more lol... bhbbb... why can I not... be.. brief and to the point about, Anything..)

----

There are a ridiculous amount of different forms of school given how varied the cultures within the supernatural realm are, some are exclusive to certain areas, some are exclusive to certain species, some are exclusive to teaching only one particular type of skill or magic, some are more broadly specialized, some are formal, some are informal, some have grades, some don’t, etc. etc.

The four types of schools that I’ll cover here are Magic Schools, General Schools , Specialty Schools, and Global Learning Centers. The most info probably being about Global Learning Centers, since those have the most specifics to cover , whereas the others are much vaguer categories (like they totally depend on area and individual school, are not as uniform or cohesive as GLCs).

~~~ Magic Schools ~~~

Magic schools are, just like the name, specialized schools catered specifically to different types of magic in the realm. These are the second most common type of school, though they are technically just another form of specialty school, magic is still vaguely common in some parts of Nanyevimi and can be a large part of people’s lives, so I’m grouping them separately mostly due to that and also a few differences in how they’re run compared to most specialty schools.

These schools are somewhat similar to other specialty schools in that they can vary a lot depending on the area, but they are often more cohesive in organization and style, as there are higher forces regulating most of them. There are councils for just about everything somewhere in the supernatural realm, so of course, certain people oversee the teaching of different forms of magic (for info on different types of magic, who can use them, effects of magic, I have written a post about all the basics of magic, which should be easy to find on here) , particularly for the most common forms of magic. There are usually smaller councils of experts in a magical field spread out pretty evenly across Nanyevimi that may take on the role of regulating (or , at least attempting to regulate) the teaching of magic in a certain area, which may answer to a larger more broad magical council overall.

This is, at least mostly, due to safety of procedure the the immense dangers that can come with utilizing any form of magic, especially when dealing with young children or otherwise untrained individuals (like, people regularly die at magic schools, even though there are a lot of preventative measures in place it’s still just kind of , A Thing That’s Going To Happen When Training Hundreds Of People In Something That Is Both Deadly And Difficult To Control),, but some also criticize the wide reach of magical councils, with similar complaints as what you may find in certain academic circles, that councils end up gate-keeping, being overly precise about The One Right Method To Do Things and trying to enforce their own Traditional ways, and can sometimes be intentionally abstract and inaccessible to common people in an attempt to guard or hide knowledge.

Though this also depends a lot on the local council, as there is no Global Magical Council* , so magic councils in one area may be accepting and lenient, while only a short while away they’ll be strict and overbearing with tedious rules. Regardless of this variation though, probably like 85% of magic specialty schools are under the influence of some form of magical council who oversees the curriculum and does safety checks and instructs how to teach certain things.

These smaller local councils will communicate with the larger area wide council, and despite like, a million years of infighting constantly at all times, they’ll still mostly come to some form of agreement of just basic stuff like what order to teach things in and etc. , so magical schools, at least content wise, are generally decently uniform in a particular given area.

* (well, there is a global magical council but like with anything in Nanyevimi that tries to be broad reaching and global despite the massive amount of variation, their reach is limited and small isolated communities are just going to do whatever the hell they want lmao. International organizations can be very useful and organized, especially in global cities and places like global learning centers but, in terms of widespread effectiveness you’re just never going to reach everyone, or even half of everyone, considering a majority of the entire realm just minds their own business and has no interest in global policy or communicating with some random ass council from 5,000 miles away that they’ve never heard of in their lives)

Schools are usually separated by particular type of magic (like solely elemental magic, solely physical magic, etc.), though there are some Broad magic schools that teach the basics of many different forms of magic, it’s pretty rare and really only occurs in areas with an extremely high population of advanced magic users (like in large Jhevona cities).

While most schools just teach straight up whatever knowledge is needed to practice the one particular form of magic and not much else, some schools will mix magic subjects with complementary non-magical subjects, so the main focus is still always magic but with helpful additions (so like an elemental magic school also offering a focus in gardening, or a mind/soul magic school having additional focus in psychology, a physical magic school (healing and health focused physical magic specifically) also having classes on anatomy and non-magical medicine, or just any magic school offering combat or physical training skills on the side, etc.).

The common-ness of a type of school is basically the same organization as in the list of most commonly used magics (again, refer back to that general magic info post), as of course, most commonly used magics = most commonly available magic school. Likewise, there are no OFFICIAL schools for reality and illusion magics, as both formally unrecognized and illegal forms of magic condemned in a majority of areas, especially by magic councils (one of the very very few things they can agree on). Though a FEW illusion magics “schools” are known to exist (no reality magic schools are known because quite literally maybe only 300 people in all of existence can even use that type of magic). But most of them, due to the nature of what they’re practicing, are fairly shadowy organizations, usually with no formal campus or anything, just maybe a group of students and a few teachers who constantly are on the move, never staying in one place for too long, finding like , obscure caves and stuff to practice and teach magic in where people won’t hear about it and report them, etc. Even then, they’re still rare just due to the fact that hardly anyone possesses the ability to do such powerful magics in the first place, even if it was legal and you founded an illusion school in the most populated city in the realm, your student pool would still be tiny as hell, once most people realize ‘oh yeah, i just 100% legit do not have the inherent energy level necessary to do this type of magic without just dying or something, whoops’

(side note: so to speak in weirdly simplified ‘not-really-how-it-works-but-accurate-enough-to-explain-my-point’ video game terms like: If the average magically capable individual has about 300 magic points of energy to use in spells, the average basic magic action (conjuring yourself a sandwich or something) would take like, maybe 20MP , doing a basic illusion magic action (discounting the extremely minor commonly used ‘hiding your presence from others’ skill) would be like 4500 MP, and even the very simplest minuscule reality magic feat would take 26,000 MP. Most people just legitimately, no matter how hard they try, simply do not have the capacity to perform the action, even if they increased their skill and inherent ability, most people can never increase it anywhere near to the point that an action worth 26,000 MP is like, something they can just do casually when they need to like with other magics lol ).

Like with most stuff, architecture and uniforms and language spoken and etc. will all be dependent on the area it’s in (Elven native magic schools will use Elven architecture and clothing styles and will be taught in whatever local Elvish language, etc.). Pricing of magic schools will also vary wildly depending on the area, some countries don’t have official monetary systems, some will trade you 5 years of education in exchange for a barrel of foreign fruits you’ve brought, some do have an established monetary system but offer free schooling to everyone, some overprice the fuck out of everything, some will pay YOU to go to school (if you sign a suspicious possibly life binding contract), etc. etc. Food type and whether food is even provided as a part of school depends on the area too.

Many magic schools have dorms for people to live in while attending, but a few of them don’t for whatever logistical or cultural reasons. Magic schools for adults and magic schools for children are usually separate, or at the very least will be completely different buildings on the same campus where both groups are kept apart nearly all the time. Likewise, skill groups will be separated as well, pretty much all for safety reasons (like if you’re practicing dangerous high level magics you don’t want to be doing that in the same room as a defenseless 6 year old and some newbie elf who couldn’t produce a quick spell to defend himself from the explosion to save his life (literally)).

~~~ General Schools ~~~

The most common types of school. Basically just, literally any school anywhere could be considered a ‘general’ school. Often the subjects of schools, layout, class sizes, etc. will all entirely depend on the culture of the area. Many places in the supernatural realm don’t have a formal education system, so often this is just local schools in small groups taught by random ‘leaders’ of the community, mostly focusing on whatever skills the particular group finds important, such as farming, specialized magics, history, combat skills, etc.

Like for examples, to use five species I’ve established (to show some differences they can have) :

— General schools for the Ythrili …

would be in the form of like, extremely loose groups of people getting together to meet someplace to learn a skill from one of the particular experts in that skill. As mentioned in their info, Ythrili often fall into certain roles and to some degree try to keep balanced sets of people in a few particular skills that are most helpful to society (so some will be crafters, some will be food harvesters, some will be artists, etc.),, so usually it would be people in these designated roles teaching those under them who wish to study to be in the same role. Like a wood craftsman holding a small class with 5 Ythrili students early in the morning just out by a grouping of trees in the forest or something, working with them and guiding them on their individual projects they’re crafting for hands-on learning. They don’t receive grades/scores or qualifications or anything for completing tests of skill, they’re just kind of there to be informally taught and are considered to know the information once they know the information, people in the community will believe them if they say they have a skill (especially since Ythrili are a pretty small and well connected group, if someone is learning to be a gardener or something, people have probably literally seen them out in the morning doing gardening work or etc.) or the one teaching the skill can vouch for them later. There technically aren’t actually formal school BUILDINGS (they don’t have many buildings in general anyway, usually live more in open wooded spaces), but since they do have some form of organization to the way they teach others, I’m kind of still counting them as having a ‘school system’ and etc. , even if it’s using a lenient definition.

— General schools for the Fanyiniri (elves from the country of Fanyin specifically)…..

Are like the complete opposite of the Ythrili, extremely strict and formal and organized. There's a lot of broad societal organization things that would be too much of a side tangent to go into at length here, but their society is divided into strict rankings (with each citizen class being mostly relative to how close you are to the upper class (Cit 5), but also your ability to bring ‘beauty and perfection’ into the world can affect your cit class level as well). All common children (below Cit 4) are actually raised in school facilities, nobody really has families where it's like birth parents and children, they more go directly from a birth hospital to a place to be raised by the staff of what are essentially like, large nationwide boarding schools. Children attend these facilities from usually birth (though at first it's more like a daycare and they don't start getting taught much until maybe age 4) through usually age 14 or 15, where they will then be assigned work (though you can leave facility earlier than that if someone in Cit 4 or Cit 5 "adopts" you, or if you seem to have special skills that are in high demand owners of businesses can "adopt" you as well to use you for said skills, etc. ). Children there are kept under very strict schedule and meticulously organized while learning a usually fairly broad curriculum. Though sometimes classes can be individualized later on once children start showing more distinct personality traits and the staff can try to guess what cit level they'd fit into (like if they can tell you seem stringent about laws, intolerant of other students misbehaving, have violent tendencies, and seem to like to impress authority and follow orders and etc., they may kind of assume you'll be assigned to Cit 2 in the future (mostly law enforcement and government workers), so they may put you in extra classes tailored for those skills. Though most students just get a very general education, usually just stuff like (limited) math, science (only some of it), combat skills (though not magic, despite elves being inherently magic capable species, magic is banned in Fanyin outside of government or corporate use, so this is just physical training), manners and culture, languages, pretty biased accounts of """history""", gardening and food preparation , housekeeping, Cultural Study Of Beauty, reading and writing, lots of exercise and physical fitness classes as well as team sports (to let them relieve stress yet still maintain and foster the whole competitive environment thing) etc. They have a weird thing about wanting to boast the most educated and advanced population possible yet simultaneously having certain areas of study literally illegal or forbidden from most of the population so, the curriculum can be quite extensive with a heavy workload and a lot of information up to a point, but then other classes will randomly be like, entirely busy work with maybe a small vague discussion of what the subject is about but never explaining much further. There are 10 grades (you go up one grade yearly, from age 4/5 to 14/15) which students are usually separated by for the basic curriculum. Extra skill classes can be more mixed, but still try to keep students within mostly the same grade range. Classes occur daily for about 6 hours a day, sometimes up to 12 hours depending on the extra skill classes you're assigned to take, or if you're being punished. Every few months there may be a week or so without classes for holidays, or periodic 'Necessity Breaks' (like if over 50% of students start showing suicidal ideation in their bi-weekly personal evaluations, the staff may decide to give everyone a school wide break for a little while), but for the most part you're just in general schooling centers everyday for 15 years since birth. Later classes will start to prepare you for the outside world, usually around your 6th or 7th year of school, since all children are pretty much raised on these campuses in fairly closed off cities and generally haven't even left the small area once in their lives, so part of preparing them for work is also taking them on more trips to the outside and letting them tour job facilities and etc. and get used to like, what the actual world outside of the boarding school property they were raised in looks like. Like your 10th (last) year of school is usually mostly job and Outside World Education related, there's very little actual school subject related content at that point. These facility schools are usually extremely competitive, with a high focus on uniformly meeting standards and high achievement (students are often made to wear certain rankings on their uniforms, grades are posted publicly, minor physical punishment (like not beating the complete shint out of someone, but slapping them in the face or kicking them or throwing something at them) is common and allowed, bullying is allowed and even condoned for the most part as it's just seen as “necessary social pressure to encourage proper behavior and standards, which will positively nurture the student’s ability to fit in correctly and learn from their mistakes, through receiving generous cooperative lessons from their peers”, etc.). Most schools also have pretty much the exact same layout, uniforms, food menu items, color scheme, etc. with little variance by area (though they are often pretty beautiful, intricate bright architecture with hanging plants and gardens everywhere, etc. With the Fanyiniri, the setting and appearance of most places usually seems oddly mismatched to the oppressive, overly controlled, and bland daily life under the surface (like you’d expect, plain uniform undecorated gray buildings or something lol), but it is supposed to be 'A paradise of the elven people' or whatever, so I guess they keep up appearances by slapping colors and plants and (government approved) art on everything), with the apparent reasoning for this being that they’re made so that students can seamlessly be shipped around to other schools if needed and not really feel much culture shock or difficulty getting used to a new layout. Which might actually be at least partially the truth, since they do regularly exercise their right to move citizens around at random without notice, and it may indeed be useful for everything to look the same.

— General schools for a group of Jhevona in southern Nanyevimi….

(I’m just choosing a random group to focus in on for this one, obviously demons as a whole are too broad to really summarize what they all would be like, similar to other larger species like elves, it’s just hard to generalize, and I don’t really have much worked out about smaller groups and subcultures of demons so I don’t actually have a name or anything for these people but I guess, they’re, maybe on an island, somewhere in the south, just basing off of the very loose bits of info i have so far about jhevona cultures in different areas)). Would be somewhat of a ‘’typical’’ school setting, usually organized in a series of multiple wooden single classroom buildings all located on a fenced in campus, though it may depend on the exact area (usually when building into hills they separate out buildings, if on flat land it may all be one large building, but overall they’d still use wood mostly and whatever other materials are available in the area (sometimes mud and stone or clay). Each individual building (or each classroom, in a connected building) is for one level of school, with all subjects being taught by one teacher usually to a pretty small class size, then them all moving up in grade to the next building as a group, etc. Unlike the Fanyiniri school, this educational system is not very competitive, and is more focused on adding important skills to the community than on competing with other schools or meeting strict qualifications. School subjects are usually a decent mix of practical skill and academics, depending on what the one room’s teacher is capable of explaining, but usually an average curriculum to cover in a year for a class of middle grade students (like 10 year olds or something) would be: physical training, safe magic use practices, advanced language and writing, principles of self control (very important in the type of magic they do), nature science, biology, math, advanced history, early elements of mechanics (southern demons are known for building things and having pretty advanced technology so like learning how to build small machines or create things of some sort is usually culturally passed down), a bit of foreign language, advanced geography and cultural context info (now that the kids are a bit older, getting into like, politics of local areas, the different groups around them and their cultures, etc.), food preparation/hunting/gathering/etc., and then maybe a few other life skills thrown in like certain crafts and healing magic/health stuff etc. Magic is of heavy focus of course, as Jhevona are the most inherently magic capable species known and it usually plays a big part in their culture, though the type of magic would depend on the specific group in a certain area within the country (many southern demons are of subspecies that have particular inherent ability for soul magics and elemental magics, but even within a small town it will vary). There are also special side classes offered in some schools by members of the community, particularly things that the main room teacher may not be able to teach, like computer science or how to do surgery or how to breed animals or etc. Kids attend from about 7-ish to maybe 18 years old, though again it’s pretty relaxed, especially with most people in the country living in small spread out communities rather than clustering into a few big cities, it’s commonly like that sort of thing where everyone has probably grown up with everyone else, and all the locals will know whatever's going on (so like if most members of the community get together in a communal meeting area and say ‘hey, we should take about a month off of school so the children can help us with the big festival’ everyone just , kind of goes along and agrees, etc.) so there’s not much of a strict schedule about it. They do require the kids to finish school and there are certain knowledge requirements expected of most everyone in the community to attain (especially in relation to emotional control and regulation of magic use), but since it’s such a locally focused thing, the actual scheduling of when the information is given can be a bit lenient. The USUAL case though is about 6 days a week children attend school for 3 hours in the morning, then a two hour break, then three hours again (due to the emphasis of familial importance in a lot of southern Jhevona cultures, food isn’t offered in school, children usually return home in the middle of the school day for a few hours in order to have meals with their family and have a bit of a break and then return back to school ). They have no official breaks so I guess would go 6 days a week every week of the year if uninterrupted, but again, due to the informality of schools in the area, it’s likely the community members would agree on some sorts of breaks whenever necessary for practical or cultural reasons (like so children can help with farm work, or for a holiday in the community, or because an illness is going around, etc.). Once a kid has been declared as having completed necessary schooling and done a few tests of skill (particularly magic and survival focused, but there is an academic testing element as well) to prove they possess what general knowledge and abilities are expected of the average member of their population, they’ll usually seek extra mentoring in something they’re interested in (either by going to a more specialized skill or magic school, traveling to a Global Learning Center, or just meeting someone already in their field of interest and having them teach them privately), or especially in this area where family is super important, they may just settle down to do whatever their family does or work at the family business/skill/trade/etc. that just about every family in the community has. School is basically always free in areas like this with no real monetary system where most goods are freely shared/equally distributed among the group or things are simply traded for. There aren’t any uniforms. Kids usually sit at group tables rather than individual desks. Sports aren’t school affiliated and are usually something done for fun after school rather than like an actual part of the school day or curriculum. Though every teacher has different skills and it’s one persons job to teach every group of students (usually about 8-10 students in one individual grade (so maybe 10 students per single classroom wooden building), there are guidelines by age group decided by the community or small local government, so like, most kids even in different areas will be taught roughly the same things around the same times, even it it varies a bit by town due to the more casual nature of school and the ability of the community to influence schedule and subject focus and etc.

— General schools for both the beach and cave dwelling group of Verrucalt …

Don’t exist at all (I wanted to include one that has no schools just to show differences), they don’t formally teach each other anything in any sort of organized way. Though children are raised fairly communally in both groups (moreso the beach group than the cave group), and do have a wide variety of people in their lives that help them grow up and learn important skills and etc. , it’s totally dependent on the individual and there’s never like, any sort of gathering of people to learn things or etc. Not even loosely cohesive lesson groups like with the Ythrili. The Verrucalt really just don’t have any form of education at all beyond maybe some random community member taking a kid to fish and teaching them how, but there’s really not any form of ‘Classes’ or anything.

— General schools for the Avirre'thel…………

Would probably be the most “”“"normal”“” (more just in the sense of being recognizable to most of the earth humans reading this) of the four. School in Navyete is pretty individually focused, kids usually start short schooling hours (4 hours or so once or twice a week initially, then gradually increasing until it’s a full 6 days (vampiric time keeping is different in many ways, one of which is them having 10 day weeks, instead of 7)) when around 5 years old. They attend 4 years (from roughly ages 4 - 9) of this Introductory School, which essentially just teaches the most basic of concepts , mostly centered on: emotional health, physical health, survival skills, important cultural background knowledge (like what sorts of things are dangerous for their species ('don’t ever ingest or play with unknown blood since we can have severe allergic reactions to a TON of blood types’ 'don’t go near wild animals because they will attack you’ etc.), food preparation, how to read and write, and conflict resolution/managing emotions and interpersonal effectiveness skills ,, usually adding a focus on stuff like history and math and science and languages in the older years, but those are not considered as culturally significant to teach younger children and they usually focus more on building 'Practical Life Skills' type stuff first, more about basic survival and mental health and developing learning skills and etc. in general, as opposed to focusing in on specific more abstract studies. At age 9 (after Introductory School) is where it starts to be pretty individualized, each person goes through school at their own pace and can mostly choose their own subjects based on areas of interest, which they’re allowed to change at almost any time. There’s an initial introduction month before the first year of Real School actually starts, where children can sample all sorts of classes, kind of like a big career fair or something (except with school subjects). They basically just spend about 28 days picking and choosing whatever (you have to have 4 classes, but it doesn’t matter which, one day you could take “writing, woodworking, chemistry, and anatomy” and the next you could take “music, food growing, computer science, and psychology”. The point is just to see what you’re passionate about). Once that period is over, children choose their focuses for the year and start their classes. You accumulate points for completing classes (usually broken into 4ths, even if you decide a subject is not for you and you quit ¼th of the way through, you’ll still get some points for the 4th you finished), and basically you just have to have enough total points to graduate to the next level of a given class, and to have enough overall (which is basically just like, points for all mandatory classes and then maybe multiple levels in a few other focuses that interest you.) Though there is some focus on grades for individual assignments, their scoring system is more lenient (like one super bad grade isn’t going to totally ruin your average) about stuff like, if someone’s doing well overall but one particular chapter just happened to be bad for them, etc. etc. They’re mostly focused on individual competency and understanding of the work overall, regardless of if the person misses a few tests or etc., and usually put higher weight on the hands-on experience tests rather than like, just testing scores (like if you don’t do as well on tests in chemistry but then when they let you sample out working in an actual lab for like 2 weeks you do extremely well, they may overlook the test scores since obviously you’re literally able to do the job in practice even if for whatever reason you have issues putting it onto paper*). ((*where applicable, obviously some subjects (like medicine and etc.) have to be a bit more strict, but this is the general rule)) School is usually about 5 hours a day 6 days a “week” (10 day periods), with breaks for all different holidays and etc. in between (so there’s no like large continuous break with months of time off, but more like, every month you probably get a few days or more off for all the different events that go on in vampiric culture. Also you get 4 days a week off by default, which would be organized depending on the schedule your particular school follows. Like if A = days you attend school , and B = free days, your week would usually either be organized like ‘A A A A A A B B B B’ , ‘A B A B A B A B A A’ or ‘A A B A A B A A B B’ , either way you get four days off a week, so that can help as well with relaxing despite not actually having any designated stuff like 'summer breaks' necessarily. ) There are a few mandatory classes along the way (sex education, continued conflict resolution and emotional management courses, health & safety, usually some form of self defense or combat focused class, and basic language/science/etc. classes just to make sure that like, everyone can do basic things, like communicate, read, write, resolve conflicts, identify basic health issues common in the population, defend themselves, follow the rules for safe blood feeding, etc.), but a majority of the school system is very individualized to the student’s preference. Which works well for how their society is structured (most people work specialized skill jobs on a small scale (like most stores are just little shops on the street, most things are handmade by craftspeople, most all unnecessary work is automated and most people working are just doing it because they like to, because it’s fun, etc. Most everything is bought just from your local market and etc.), as people generally have jobs solely out of passion rather than than necessity, and if they ever want to change skills or do something else, school is free so, most people just pick something they really like and specialize in it fairly early on, working at it out of personal interest, changing later if they want. It's not as big of a deal if people hop around from subject to subject, or choose a specialty they end up hating later or etc., since their survival doesn't depend on getting and keeping a steady job in a certain field. And if you are still totally interested in the same exact focus you picked out when you were 10 and stay passionate about it and end up working in that field without ever trying any other skills out or switching careers, then that's fine as well. They feel it’s mostly not necessary to teach people things they won’t use and just culturally lean towards focusing more on promoting the population having a mix of a lot of practical skills (which is mostly leftover from the thousands of years of war time where it was absolutely necessary to focus on practicality and safety and unity above all else, so more of a focus on survival skills and ability to get along effectively in groups and such) and individual specialized passions, putting more of an emphasis on school being for personal development and bettering one’s life and community, rather than it being more strict and abstract achievement based (especially personal development, since if you’ve read the basic intro post about the Avirre’thel you know their historical focus on reaching perfection through self development just for the sake of doing so and etc.). Basically they just want you to know how to keep yourself and others safe, how to get along with your community, how to survive out in the world, and how to defend yourself, but other than that, you can choose to focus on whatever skills or ideas you find interesting. (also, keep in mind they are an immortal species.. so, it's pretty much assumed someone is going to have multiple skill focuses in life. It's rare someone lives 4,000 years and keeps doing the same exact thing with no interest at all in any other topics whatsoever, so they're also more casual because it's like.. you're probably going to end up changing your focus and hobbies and goals like, 40 times over the course of your life anyway, as long as you have a grasp of the basics, who cares how many times you switch what you want to spend your time on or what area you like to study, with every new thing you try out, even if you don't stick with it, you're still adding to your knowledge base and personal development so.. its all cool with the Avirre'thel.. just, do whatever you want dude lol) If you get full points in a particular area of education, you can graduate at like 13 years old, while some who work slower or have to repeat classes may graduate at 25. Neither is shamed and both are socially acceptable. Average age to graduate from schooling is about 16 - 20 depending on which academic subjects or technical skills the person is focusing on (and sometimes people stay in school longer to learn more, like if you had gained a full amount of points taking all levels of biology and chemistry classes, you could still always decide you wanted to stick around another year to take some music classes or something, even if you don’t need them to “graduate”). You can go onto a further school from there (a global learning center, or local specialty schools like medical or law), or you can just be done and use the skills you have (sometimes if your passion is very particular you may only be able to take related interest classes to get your points but then have to move on to a specialty school to get a deeper knowledge of it, like if your particular General School doesn’t teach neuroscience, you may just initially take psychology and biology and etc. then once out of general school go to a specialty school just for that). Schooling is usually mandatory up until completion of enough points, but there are life aids and extensive counselors all throughout schools who can help with any issues or give special help or allow you to take a few years off of school (or make a case for you quitting all together) if you’re in a bad situation, or can help you access free housing and food or etc. and get in a better situation before continuing. School appearance and etc. usually varies a decent bit depending on the area, though most still fall in line with typical vampiric architecture, with them being large buildings made of carved stone with tile or stone floors and ornate metal detailing. They do serve food daily, despite Avirre’thel not really needing food to survive, since it’s mostly dependent on an individual vampire’s feeding style, they usually allot for all of that by providing optional food daily but also allowing students to sit out and do studies instead or something while others eat. Students often cook for other students (like those in culinary classes and etc. will handle lunch time under the supervision of the adult kitchen staff/chef teachers), so usually the food served at school is similar to that which is eaten most often in the local culture of the area, with specialized popular dishes and local ingredients gathered by the community being used in cooking. Uniforms vary a lot by area, but are usually some sort of gender neutral layered robes, like a lot of more traditional Avirre’thel fashion tends to be (maybe down in southern Navyete they have slightly less layers but especially in like, northern areas where it’s regularly - 30F and stuff, uniforms have to be pretty warm as well lol). Though they don't wear traditional headwear and stuff or use the same patterns as ancient avirre'thel clothing, it is usually the same thing of just.. kind of flowy tailored robes that are warm but also easy to move around in, usually with scarves and gloves included if in colder areas (heating buildings isn't like.. super popular in Navyete? their culture is more just like 'yeah idk we'll just wear 8 layers of clothes inside our own homes, why would we waste energy on heat?'. Though some schools do have electric heating systems and stuff, culturally, it's not considered weird at all to just... sit in school all day with scarves and gloves on in a huge frigid stone building lol. It would be the same way most students live at home so it's just like, they don't care I guess lol. As long as they have warm clothes, they're well used to being in icy freezing environments 24/7.. that's just how it is in Navyete most of the time)

Bhhgbb I know the Avirre'thel is longer than the other ones since obviously I have the most developed about them as my current Focus Species or whatever, but hopefully even with the other ones being less detailed, the five examples can show how different schooling throughout the realm can be. Your general schools and broader school system are really just going to depend a lot on where you are and the local culture of the people and society you’re in.

~~~ Specialty Schools ~~~

As the name suggests, these are really just, schools that specialize in something particular.

Many areas in the supernatural realm are organized in smaller isolated communities, so the specialty schools offered in the area will vary a lot, some having none, others having a lot, all subjects usually being different. It’s probably most common for specialty schools to be based around subjects like medicine or building construction, or metal working and etc., usually things that are necessary for the community but not inherently intuitive or easily taught by most people (though there are definitely some small communities where like, everyone is raised knowing how to do healing magic or etc. etc. , generally, skills like that will be treated more as specialty skills).

In a majority of places in the realm, people are taught from a very young age how to prepare and harvest and grow food, so specialty schools for stuff like cooking or gardening tend to be some of the rarest, as in most places it’s just common knowledge. In areas where creative talents are highly culturally valued, many specialty schools will be for music, art, writing, pottery making, etc. It’s especially common for general schools to involve Practical Life Skills (like combat, survival, maybe some basic history and language but not much else), but then for there to be many individual specialty schools where people can learn more creative crafts, especially ones that are also important to the community like clothes making and etc.

Which is pretty obvious I guess that most of it will just depend on the focus of the people.

Like for example a group of demons who are of the subspecies that mostly works through dreams and the mind, may have a great deal of specialty schools in the area involving things like psychology and neuroscience and etc. , despite otherwise being fairly lacking in science study opportunities and most every other skill school in the area being more focused on food or primitive medicine or construction. Sometimes due to random cultural reasons people will be very advanced or overly focused in a few specific areas even if they aren’t in others, which is especially the case for more isolated communities. Or like, Navyete having a lot of specialty schools for working with stone and metal, due to like 90% of their architecture style just involving carved stone with metal roofs or detailing,, or them having many many different schools of combat and different physical training styles, due to their history of being at war with magical species (who obviously have the upper hand since.. uh.. . they can like blast energy out of their hands lmao) and a big thing in past society having been that everyone needs to be pretty strong and agile and adept at hand to hand combat to ever stand a chance,,, or also how they don’t have many schools focused on cooking and food, considering that most Avirre’thel don’t have to eat daily to live and have wildly varying feeding schedules, so things like cooking, while to some degree culturally important, really aren’t seen as necessary skills in a population where like 30% of people only feed less than once a month and etc. etc. Basically specialty schools are vague, and the subjects taught are going to depend a lot on the culture and community needs of the area the school is located within.

~~~ Global Learning Centers ~~~

The most broad but also least common type of schools are those classified as Global Learning Centers, which are basically just massive schools that cater to any type of student, and teach a huge variety of basic skills: basic trades and craft skills, basic languages that are the most prominent in the realm, basic forms of magic, etc. etc. The topics at the schools are usually pretty broad reaching, with most schools offering about 170 - 800 total course subjects (not including different levels of the same subject, if you counted the multiple levels of each topic as well then it’d probably be more like 460 - 3,000+).

These really only exist in larger Global Cities, which are like, cities in Nanyevimi with a huge variety of people all in one place***** (< I elaborate more on the context of global cities and etc. at the very bottom of this info, but since it’s more of a side tangent about the organization of the world rather than about schools i tried to put it at the very end lol). There are about 45 such schools in existence, usually each enrolling around 8,000 - 26,000 students each. GLCs (global learning centers) are usually still under influence of the local country or government of the lands they’re located in, but they are additionally regulated and managed partially by international councils and relevant other groups. Especially things like inter-species communication groups and etc., as they generally have to employ a lot of external resources in terms of allotting for the correct housing and food and what language should be spoken in classes, etc.

Like for example, if you were to host a small group of Vampiric/Avirre'thel students from Navyete at a GLC, you’d need to consider things such as:

their native language is Avirrekava which is a small isolated language unlikely to be spoken on the rest of the campus (so they should be spoken to to decide which language they’d like to be taught in (for example if they knew a second language that was more widely spoken, or if you should provide them an enchanted item that automatically translates words for them in real time or etc.)

temperatures above 70F can make them sick (so you should make sure they’re not required to go into hot areas of the school, ensure that they room with other species who need a cold environment, or provide them enchantments to help with it)

they will need some supply of blood to stay alive (talk to them about their feeding patterns and what the cafeteria would need to import for them)

many wild animals will attack them on sight (either give them an enchantment for this or ensure that their classes take place away from parts of the school that host animals, don’t require them to take classes with animals)

they can not touch certain metals and minerals (give them an enchantment for this or else make sure that none of the things they have to touch to get around (door knobs, etc.) are this sort of material, don’t require them to work with these materials, give them special gloves, etc)

they are an inherently non-magical species (so always have a non-magical way of doing things (for example if the only way to get to the second floor was a personal magic powered elevator, they wouldn’t be able to use it and would need stairs, etc) and don’t put them in any classes that require them to do things magically (or else just have a second optional non-magical form of the classwork, etc)), etc.

So because of stuff like that and the huge variety of things to consider with any species (maybe one person needs sunlight to live, another person’s flesh will burn off if it sees the sun, so you have to find ways of meeting both needs), there are often different representatives and special councils involved to help advise the school staff about like, blood incompatibilities and cross species diseases, cultural history of certain groups, most particularly health needs and survival needs of different groups, language accessibility, etc. etc. And often outside groups of mages are contracted to make all of the enchantments needed.

Usually a school will settle on a baseline way of operating that works for the maximum number of students possible, and then any adjustments that need to be made can be added by giving the other students enchantments (like say if a vast majority of the population was okay with an average room temperature of about 50F, but then a few students will die if they’re not at a constant 80F and some will be harmed if they’re not around 30F, then the outlier students may be given enchanted rings that regulate their temperature independent of external room temperature or something (free of charge, with free magic recharges) to wear for the full duration of them attending the GLC ).

So anyway, overall the schools will be reasonably unique in architecture and layout and etc. and a lot of those sorts of choices are made by those in the local area who own the school (so a place in elven lands may have their traditional elvish architecture, elvish as a main language, etc.), but often many decisions are also influenced by external organizations and advisors, for the sake of everything running smoothly and just due to the massive amount of information you have to take into account when dealing with anything in the realm on a broad scale.

(side note: Managing all of this information is especially significant in global areas, like most places in the realm can get away with being inaccessible or etc. because it’s their own place, like you wouldn’t go on a day trip to Navyete, which is 2,000 miles away from your home city, and expect all the signs to be in your own very specific language or etc.****. Though a good many places in the supernatural realm do have at least some resources for foreigners, there is no uniform globally enforced established requirement for them to do so. However in all global cities and places where the entire point is being accessible and open to literally everyone and easy for them to get by living and working and etc. in that area, there’s usually A LOT of thought put into city layout, housing, resources available, etc. etc. and the same goes for GLCs like… you by nature HAVE to provide equal access to things for all of your students, which in most cases you literally wouldn’t be able to do without the aid of external councils and etc. to help guide and educate you and help with planning. Whereas a non GLC, like maybe just an Elven mage’s college or something, would be under no obligation to not just have every class in elvish and provide only elvish food and etc. etc. And of course you can still attend if you can deal with that or use enchantments to make up for any differences or etc.,, and they may also take it upon themselves to offer extra resources or etc. , but they’re not literally by nature REQUIRED to as is the case with GLCs (just like an average elven city is not held to the same standards of inclusivity as an official Global City).

So basically it’s like, any person can for the most part attend any school they want (depending on the school system in the area), but in more homogeneous areas, you’re kind of taking a big bet on whether your experience will be made easier or not (which i don’t mean like, just plain culture shock or language barriers or something...but like literally, extremely serious issues in some cases. Like a vampire trying to attend an elven school that is within a country where it’s just 100% illegal to produce, harvest, or consume any product derived from any part of a living animal, and the school does not supply alternatives or other options for foreign students then it’s like? well?? lmao?? you’re just going to rot without access to blood?? maybe you can take a 3 hour trip out of the country borders every once in a while to refill?? maybe you can risk breaking the law ? how do you ever feed?? do you just,,stay sick permanently from lack of blood access?), whereas if you’re attending a GLC you pretty much are guaranteed to be provided whatever you need for it to be an accessible experience for you, so it’s not just up to random chance whether the country the school is in has those policies or not.

Most of the point of GLCs are for it to be a more secure and reliable option for schooling, especially for species with rarer or more incompatible needs than the average person. You can choose any school, but GLCs are usually ideal for a lot of people since they’re such a safe bet, especially if there’s no schools on the topic you’re interested in within your local area and you’re having to travel outside of your native land for schooling. If you’re already isolated away from home alone in a foreign country, it’s usually safer to go to a place that’s legally by nature required to be accessible and helpful to you, than to just kind of randomly hope that whatever other school you find will be able to do the same.

****(though this obviously differs depending on context, in some cases it would be expected of or legally required for a country to make changes to be accessible to others, like in the case of bringing in a lot of outsiders for work reasons, due to destabilization in the area, etc. but here I’m meaning like, just a single solitary traveler that isn’t there due to broader societal , economic, or cultural reasons in which it would actually be necessary or morally/legally expected for the country in question to provide extra aid to them)

(extra side note: Safe areas like GLCs are especially important for groups with negative associations, like how many people mistrust Jhevona and etc. While legally they may be able to attend any school, it'd be much safer for them to just try to attend a GLC where they're guaranteed respect and accommodation, because their experience may be awful if they just went to any random place, where people weren't monitored by international standards and were free to be as biased in grading and treatment as they wanted to. Especially since travel through the realm is already so dangerous, if you end up going to the wrong school, alone, far away from all family and friends, with no supervision or any regulations to look out for you, especially as a member of a commonly disliked group, you may end up just getting killed by the students and staff or something. Random schools that are unaffiliated with broader overseeing councils and standards (like all GLCs are) are under no obligation to accept you, tolerate you, cater to you, treat you equally, or keep you alive. Though I left the vague brutality of the realm out of my earlier explanation, since really that sort of thing is usually common sense, and it's rare for people to walk into an area where they'd be in danger and not know about it first.

(like for example, the unconditional personal rights laws in Fanyin (and Mippya) technically only apply to those of Cit 5 (which does not include travelers or students), which means like... technically.. stuff like murder, kidnapping, violence, etc. is not.. illegal? Or at least can be, depending on who does it and where (Cit 1 murdering a Cit 3 under any condition would be awful and illegal, Cit 3 murdering a Cit 1 even if in broad daylight right on the street would not be illegal at all, unless it were done in the presence of tourists, in which case it's only illegal because it would make the country look bad and crimes should be done in private to keep the streets beautiful. etc. Most laws are like that, where they're.. ridiculously conditional on a lot of things, like your social status, location, loyalty to the government, etc.), but as a foreign student you're not actually guaranteed ANY sort of protection AT ALL. While the government of the area does their best to keep stuff like this a secret so it doesn't hurt tourism and public reputation, it's common enough knowledge that MOST people wouldn't consider going to school there, just out of basic common sense, since it's like.. "yeah my stay may be 100% fine and I have a great time in school...however there's also technically plenty of conditional situations in which it would be legal for someone to kill me and face no repercussion??? so????? maybe another place??" lol)

So it's like, usually, it's just a choice between two reasonably civil school options, but maybe the GLC seems nicer or etc. etc. If you're looking into travel or going to outside schools in general, you'll likely be pretty aware of places to avoid, so it's often not a life or death scenario or anything. People are mostly aware of where they do and don't belong, and what areas would be safe for them and which parts of the realm they're likely to just be killed by the locals in lol. )

GLCs are sort of like colleges, but are not restricted to a certain education level, as school systems vary so wildly throughout the realm there’d really be no way to tell (one person’s “middle school” is another person’s “high school”, some people just don’t even have a local school system, curriculums vary, two people may both have graduated top of their local school system but one school system taught primarily how to grow beets and write books and the other mostly focused on abstract philosophy and elemental magic, etc. etc.), so it’s really just “we don’t require any background qualifications to get in at all, just give us your personal info and sign up and then take the entrance exams relevant to the particular few classes you’ve decided to take and then you’re in”.

(which the entrance exams usually aren’t too extensive, it’s not like you have to know everything about the class you’re taking (unless you’re applying for an upper level class where they’re starting off assuming you already have a certain level of knowledge), a lot of them are more just ethics questions and personal stuff like why you’re interested in taking the class and etc. just to weed out people who may treat the material poorly or don’t actually care about being there (like if there was only one spot left in the class and it was between someone who answered about how this was their life passion and how they had traveled 400 miles on foot just to get here to take this class and then another person who was just like “idk me mum told me i had to sign up for some dumb shit so you know whatever, idk why im here just trying stuff out”, then based on those entrance exam answers it’d go to the first person lol).

So because of this as well, there’s no set age, though you do usually have to be at least “at an age of relevant maturity” to attend, which for humans would be around 24, for elves (who physically age slower) would be around 34, for vampires (who age slightly faster than humans but are just able to stop their physical age at a point bc Immortality Complications) it’s usually around 20, for some very slow maturing species it could be up to age 50, etc. It depends (mostly on when it’s agreed upon that your brain is fairly developed and you’re able to make reasonable decisions, are not affected by lack of experience or mood and personality changes due to growth and hormones and etc.).

Younger people can attend in special cases, but usually have to be separated and escorted specially and are not allowed to live on campus (not due to lack of trust in the young people, a 10 year old in a class would be treated equally to an elderly person, as long as they understand the material nobody really cares at all. The extra rules for younger students are exclusively due to having to protect them, with them being more vulnerable to harm or predatory behaviors). Which is actually somewhat rare, as most schools in the realm don’t actually have a definite age you have to be to attend, while they will separate students by age or skill level or etc. many schools are not as strict about this as GLCs are.

GLCs usually have most students living on campus, especially since they’re common places for people to travel just to attend school (so like, 90% of students probably don’t already live and work in the local city, likely 80% of them aren’t even from the area the school is set in, they may have literally just arrived from a 50 day trip solely to come to access the education they’d like). Housing and necessities are provided and specialized to some degree depending on the student (like they’d probably house people together that have similar environmental requirements, compatible sleep rhythms, etc.), as well as food which at least two meals a day are guaranteed (with more, or larger, meals for species who need to eat more to survive of course. It’s just the ‘three meals a day’ thing really is not a concept in many places in the realm with it varying a lot between people eating once in the morning, once at night, once every few days, multiple small meals throughout the day, four times a day, whatever their culture calls for, etc.etc. So most GLCs as a middle ground for that will just offer like two meals a day officially, but students can get them at any time , you could pick up both your meals at once and eat them at 7 am, or get them early and space the contents out into 5 meals at regular intervals, you could just not have their food at all and cook your own meals, etc. etc. ) which are also specialized to the needs of the students if necessary (importing a small supply of blood for Avirre’thel students, etc.) .

(they also often feature food courts with little restaurants and communal kitchens and small grocery stores on campus, so people have even more options for buying and cooking their own food without having to go out into the local cities to do so, but at a bare minimum they do at least always provide you with the two meals a day)

GLCs just about always have uniforms, but they are pretty loose with how they’re worn and offer a lot of different alterations or modifications and different versions for students with very different anatomy, and even with pretty standard humanoid anatomy they offer a lot of choices (so like instead of ‘bottoms are either pants or a skirt!’ it’d be more like you can choose from: long skirt, overalls jumper dress, shorter skirt, medium skirt, split skirt, shorts, skort, long loose pants, long tight pants, short shorts, knee length shorts, capris, overalls shorts jumper thing, pants with a skirt over it, pants or shorts with like kind of skirt flaps surrounding them in segments, etc. etc. etc.), and will for the most part let students wear it however and modify them (cutting the sleeves off of a shirt, adding cute bows to your outer jacket, choosing never to wear the outer jacket at all, etc.) as long as you’re not changing it to the point it’s unrecognizable (like dying the fabric a different color), since the one of the main points of uniforms is mostly to be able to easily identify and keep track of students on campus. The uniform specifics (color, style, etc.) will usually vary by school.

There isn’t much structure aside from just, make it to your classes on time, take care of your needs, and follow the rules of conduct. Class length and start time totally depend on what class you’re taking and usually operate on their own independent schedules, the cafeteria is open at all times and people just come get their two meals whenever they want (if they want) and there’s no set time to eat, most places on campus like libraries and etc. are open at all times as well to accommodate different schedules, there’s the occasional area that may have a curfew or time that it closes and students shouldn’t be there, but it’s usually pretty open with the times things occur and etc. There’s no bed times or quiet times officially, aside from the dorms being separated to allot for different schedules (like rooms for people who sleep during the day and wake at night being all the way across campus from those who do things during the day and sleep at night), and just general rules to be considerate.

Leaving and entering the campus is reasonably regulated, you have to provide identification and pass through the usual non-magic areas (due to the prevalence in Nanyevimi of stuff like enchantments and shapeshifting, usually public areas where your identity is important to confirm (like workplaces, schools, etc.) will have rooms you have to pass through that are enchanted to override all current magic, so like if you’re shapeshifting to steal someone’s identity, when you pass through the room, your shapeshifting magic will be cancelled out and you’ll be temporarily rendered into a natural state free of all magical modifications where you’re unable to use any form of magic, meaning like… you’re going to go back to yourself and they’ll find out obviously you’re not actually who you were pretending to be lol)), and there’s usually a log kept of the people coming and leaving*.

(*mostly since a majority of people at the school are foreign students who are there entirely alone with no connections or support system in the nearby areas. They take responsibility for the students, so like if they leave and it’s been 3 days since their last return log and they’ve missed classes and stuff, the GLC has to notify people to look for them and etc. Since in general, the population of GLCs is pretty vulnerable to kidnappers or murderers or etc., considering they don’t have a family or job or apartment or anything that would notice if they went missing, really the only people who even know about their existence in the area would be the school and maybe their Friends at the school if they have any, thus staff at the GLC have way more provisions in place to secure the safety of students and track their movements, make sure everyone's still alive and nobody has been kidnapped or gotten lost, etc.).

(side note: GLCs are actually a common area for people to stalk to find targets, especially with stuff like the blood market, or scientists who aim to kidnap and study rare species and etc., foreign kids with no support systems in the area are a good catch, so the GLCs are usually like.. VERY guarded and protective, and new students get introductory classes about the land layout and social climate of the area, suspicious groups and behavior to look out for when traveling etc. etc.)

While some schools in the realm of course are more focused on making money, looking good on paper with high score statistics above all else, promoting a very specific agenda, or etc. , the point of a good majority of schooling systems in Nanyevimi is just to give people access to learning skills that they’re passionate about in order for them to improve themselves, their community, the local workforce, etc. etc. and to spread important knowledge and trades across the population. Likewise, that is the focus of all GLCs, so they don’t really require any unnecessary classes or hold very strict rules about timing or etc. You graduate essentially whenever you’ve mastered the skills and completed the courses of the particular studies you chose. There are certain levels of qualification you can attain that will have certain requirements (like if you want to be able to legally call yourself an “[insert name of your GLC here] Certified Medical Doctor”, you have to have taken and passed a particular set of classes ), but you can mix and match whatever you want, if you just wanted to stop by and take a single music course and then leave the school with a certificate saying "i passed the level 1 music course at my GLC", that would be fine, or if you wanted to stay on campus for 15 years taking a huge variety of classes to meet 5 different levels of qualification and leave school with 80 certificates declaring all the levels of education you’ve completed, that’s fine too.

It’s usually on a course by course basis, with some influence from if you’re attempting to meet one of the higher qualifications or not, but pretty open to customization and you just learning whatever random things you like until you feel that’s enough. Average stay at a GLC is 3-5 years. You can also re-try classes how ever many times you want, whether it takes you a full school year, half of a school year, or 3 full years to master the material of a given course, you’ll still be given your certificate accordingly just whenever you’ve got it down. Though their scoring system is a bit more strict than some schools in the realm (since they try to keep education and requirements fairly uniform across GLCs, one school’s low score isn’t another school’s high score, etc.), it is a little evened out by you getting as much time as you need to learn things.

GLCs by nature are required to be free to all students who pass the entrance exams to their classes , though this can be difficult depending on the area. In some cases they have to limit or put a restriction on the number of students that can be attending school at any given time and hold off new students until a certain number have finished or etc. (in the case that the school is still charged for supplies and thus spending money per student but not receiving any, they may have to limit student body to only how much the donations from outside organizations and etc. will cover) , or they may have to limit classes (some areas are fine with the school being free but want to limit what they’re able to teach, like in an area where non-violence is a major concept in their culture, they may allow the school to operate free of charge but require that they do not host any form of combat classes, or that if they do, the classes are paid for separately), or in some cases call in external defense force to protect the school (in some places where the governments or culture are extremely profit focused, so many people take issue with the concept of something being offered without anyone making money from it that there are regular attempts to like, shut down the school, attacks by the citizens themselves or local law enforcement meant to frighten everyone out of the area, etc. etc. so to protect students and etc. they’ll have to have more extensive guards and etc.

( Though this is rare since obviously GLCs want to avoid this and try to not host schools in areas where this would even be an issue in the first place, or any other place where they could foresee other dangers (for example countries like Fanyin, places in the middle of wars, militarized countries where it’s legal for the leaders to basically just do whatever the hell they want and ask people with weapons to enforce it (so they could walk up on the school and kill everyone and it would be perfectly legal and okay aside from like, probably being condemned/possibly starting conflict with the countries around them, but not if they cover it up well), etc. just anything in general where it would be putting the students at too much risk to host a school there), but there are still like, a tiny handful of cases where maybe a school has been in an area thousands of years but the area just now recently is starting to have those sorts of issues, or where like, it’s an extremely good area to host a school due to it being near a major travel hub or something so it’s very convenient and accessible for students but just like, ONE of the local governments is wild as hell but the pros outweigh that con, etc. )

But in general, most GLCs have no issue with this, since like, the broad majority of places in the realm have free schooling anyway (also most GLCs are in global cities so like, those areas are already going to be open to the concept due to the nature of the area as well), or have their monetary system organized in such a way that it’s something that’s easy to set up, or don’t even have an established monetary system so it’s not much of an issue in the first place, and there are plenty of groups who offer funding if it’s necessary, like international councils for the support of learning and education or etc. etc. But yeah, for the most part all GLCs are by nature, free of cost to the student, though there may be a few limitations or the occasional thing that is expected to be paid for depending on the cooperation of the local area, usually certain councils will offer to pay student fees in those situations, or etc.

Legally, GLCs kind of operate almost as an incredibly small country within their own campus, though like mentioned, they are still under the laws and control and etc. of the local area and the founder of the school, at the same time they do also have those requirements set on them by the larger councils and external groups who help manage the GLC, so sometimes like in the case of finances the GLC sort of acts as it’s own like, independent group, negotiating terms with local governments on it’s own behalf, or having certain laws and regulations that are applicable on campus but may be different off campus, etc. It’s usually a kind of weird situation, but works out since almost always both parties are in agreement, but again with stuff like money or being caught in the middle of local land disputes or etc, especially schools that have been established in an area for a long time will kind of act as an independent party trying to negotiate with local nations or governments as a separate entity with their own interests and etc. when necessary.

–

And that’s basically stuff about schools I guess!!! I have trouble organizing what exactly are important details and probably have added some unnecessary things or left out some important details that I just didn’t think to elaborate on lol but, this is mostly just a very vague run down of how schools and stuff work in the realm, just for reference if I ever end up mentioning them or etc. !

~~~

***** Aforementioned side ramble context for the whole global cities thing and how the supernatural realm (Nanyevimi) functions as a whole:

In most areas of the supernatural realm it’s pretty uniform depending on where you are, there may be other groups at certain travelers hubs or other areas, but for the most part, anywhere you are will be primarily inhabited by like 1-3 main cultures or species. Even though the supernatural realm has a ton of different groups in it, many stay isolated mostly in their homeland or centralized area, as travel can be costly and dangerous, and just plain difficult.

The way that everything is lined up is like,, in one country everyone is one specific type of elf and they all mostly speak their own language and they use magical technology and have cell phones and computers and rooftop gardens and they use a silver coin with a star in the middle for their currency , but then you travel just a mere 300 miles away and suddenly EVERYTHING is completely different, it’s a country primarily inhabited by orc-like people who all speak a totally different language and use fire to light their homes, communicate everything by letter and travel on foot, they use dried animal pelts for currency and have no conversion for the currency you’ve brought from the previous land, etc. etc.

Things like language barriers and cultural differences are easily overcome, especially if in a group that can use magic, but sometimes things like people existing literally on a nearly different timescale than your own (thus processing the very nature and importance of events and perception of their entire existence differently than you), or having such vastly different biological needs from you (one can only live in the heat, one in the cold, one must eat metals to live, other is allergic to metal, etc.), the uneven spread of technology, and stuff like magical areas vs. non-magical areas, can sometimes make it much harder to relate to or trade with others (at least harder than it would be if most people lived generally around the same timespan and had similar physical needs and the technology to effectively communicate across longer distances).

Which isn’t to say they dislike others, there are not many groups that isolate themselves out of hatred for their neighbors, and most cultures are at least reasonably welcome of travelers or visitors or negotiating with the people near them, but it’s more of just like, they just don’t feel the inherent need to expand themselves or go many other places, generally, especially species with a slower growing population or those in already kind of isolated areas that don’t often have large scale internal conflicts or etc. (since there wouldn’t even be much logical reason for them to travel elsewhere other than out of curiosity, but not the type of urgent necessity like what happens in wars or when there’s not enough resources for a group or etc. ).

Like for example if you’re a small 2 foot tall squirrel species that lives in trees and has a lifespan of just about 50 years old on average and your highest daily concerns are just making cool huts out of grass and finding enough berries and writing cultural story songs in your language to pass on to your offspring before you die, you’re probably not going to be very concerned with the giant 19 foot tall humanoid water creatures that live a little off the coast of your forest and live for 8,000+ years and spend most of their time building underground monuments to their group of 22 celestial gods and eating fish and that don’t speak any language you think you could even come close to understanding because you literally can’t even produce the same noises with your mouth anatomy. And yeah, they take small pebbles from the shore sometimes, but overall they don’t bother you or interact with you and they’re just so far outside of the scope of any of your most pressing daily concerns and you feel like you couldn’t even comprehend the way they’re living anyway so, you kind of just leave them be? And sure, if they were being killed or needed resources or something (assuming they’d even be able to communicate that to you), you’d help them out since, why not? You have nothing against them. But, for the most part you just don’t think of them, you’re busy with your grass and your songs. Maybe a few members of your squirrel group get curious and go out to attempt to talk to the others occasionally, or create a religion based off of these strange water beings and leave them flowers at the shore from time to time to maybe gain luck from them or something,, but overall they just seem so abstract to you, never make contact with you, and aren’t causing you any harm so?? you just don’t think about them often.

Like almost in a way there’s SO MUCH variance in so many ways between different groups and species and etc. that it ends up being difficult to establish a more concrete sense of uniformity or unity across the realm. Small areas can group together, and plenty of species can exist alongside each other and etc., but the wide variance in biology and technology and inconsistent travel and communication systems and isolating environmental factors and etc. make societies exist more in little isolated centers and tiny civilization pockets around the world, rather than all being one huge interconnected system where everyone knows about everyone else and trades with everyone else and etc.

( though there are plenty of global organizations and international councils that try to promote unity and safe travels and will help represent you or give you a translator or etc. if you have to be traveling between a lot of countries,, trains that run between large areas and etc.. and a handful of broad sources of global connection on a large scale that are present and available and at least somehow accessible from some areas. and of course, global cities and stuff. But these things aren’t present everywhere, and are not super widespread)

The current state of Nanyevimi is kind of just like, a bunch of little distinct pockets of people (towns, cities, villages, etc.) within slightly larger distinct pockets of people (countries) all of which likely don’t really have much to do with the pockets of people beside them (with the exception of a few major conflict areas, or major areas of unity where there’s a lot of alliance between groups in the area) and just kind of sit alone doing things in their own ways, with the occasional like, interference of a global council or something asking permission to build an international railway through the area or asking if it’s okay to escort travelers through the lands or etc. Other than communicating for only the most utterly necessary of trade or resource exchange, most groups don’t go forming political alliances with other groups or trying to integrate others into their culture or take over their lands or etc., they just want to keep to themselves.

BUT ANYWAY, this is context on why “global cities” are kind of an actual distinct thing, since you would think like, “every city is a global city”, but usually cities are pretty much just the people in the area and not much else. Like for example, most large cities in Navyete still are mainly populated by vampires, since the entire population of Navyete is like over 96% Avirre'thel due to them being an extremely isolated people generally. Even though they’re still large bustling cities with many inhabitants, those inhabitants are mostly all people who speak the same language and are from the same culture. Then compare that to some of the major coastal cities in Asen, which, though they are right next door to Navyete, have a massive variance in population and are usually places where you find businesses and schools and groups and species and cultures from legit all over the entire world collected in one place.

(Asen is a very “global country” overall, despite being originally founded by the Fanyiniri and elves still being the slightly dominant population in the area by most measures (especially if you count rural areas), Asen has operated as an independent country free of the Fanyiniri for like 10,000 years, and it just so happens to be really conveniently located for hubs of global trade and etc).

So, yeah. Something being a 'global area’ (cities, learning centers, travel hubs, etc.) is actually fairly unique and uncommon in the realm as a whole. Though there are many attempts to unify the realm (like people always suggesting ‘universal languages’ or like, having every living species classified in a registry to keep track of them all, or to have like, established communication networks or councils involving every culture/nation in the world, etc.), these usually, hardly ever work or even get off the ground as an idea (since with most things there’s a lot of criticism of if that should even be a goal in the first place, implications of that, etc. etc. It’s usually some professor brings up an idea and then his colleagues split into groups of differing opinions on the matter and argue about it for a few years and then eventually drop it) , so , Global Cities and stuff are usually the closest thing to a unified society that exists. Little tiny pockets of the world where, at least on a smaller scale, you can find the extremely rare event of like 90+ unique humanoid species all chilling and trying to get along with each other in one space.

#worldbuilding #idk really what to tag this as lol

73 notes · View notes

definingvalue-blog · 6 years

Text

Architecture Activism & Brutalism. Birmingham Central Library Campaign Case Study (Part II)

Identifying Key Agencies Involved Into Campaign

(Image 2.1 ‘Campaigners picketing outside of Birmingham’s City Council’)

As soon as the plans to get rid of the building became a subject of public discussion, they were met with strong opposition from a local organisation ‘The Friends of the Central Library’ in February 2007 to ‘bring together people and organisations to highlight the positive features of the Birmingham Central Library, challenge the City Council’s case for demolishing it and promote the creative and sustainable use of the existing building’.[1] Its passionate co-founder and secretary of Alan Clawley was a former architect, social and environmental activist, who unfortunately passed away from cancer in April 2018 after devoting over 40 years of his career to various campaigns in Birmingham.[2]. Despite community based, green design approach for small scale developments that he focused after abandoning his career in housing design for Runcorn New Town Corporation and GLC, according to his obituary he “admired the Central Library’s rigour, austerity and honesty, as well as its ethical virtues of architecture in public service. As a Green Party activist, he was also opposed to the wasteful destruction of a building which could be reused”.[3] It is quite astonishing, that someone so mentally different from bold Brutalist visions of John Madin’s architecture was enthusiastic to protect this visually unforgiving monumental building understanding its social value over aesthetic, and together with C20 Society backed an advisory application from English Heritage for Grade II listing.

(Image 2.2 ‘ Alan Clawley was one of the most notable campaigners’)

‘They will regret demotion’ (C. Smith)

English Heritage director of planning, Chris Smith, whose responsibility is to provide consultations to owners, planners and councillors on preservation and protection strategies for buildings of historic importance, personally recalls two attempts for the building to be listed – in 2003 and 2009, although in both occasions it was turned down after strong opposition from Birmingham City Council involving influential political figures and the developer’s backing.[4] Smith stated that ‘people will regret demolition’ as Birmingham has already lost its key modernist architecture with some John Madin’s works earlier, claiming that on his last attempt of approaching the architecture minister Margaret Hodge, she simply told him that ‘I’m not listing that because I’m a democrat. The English don’t like Brutalism’.[5]

(Image 2.3 ‘ John Madin, the architect of Birmingham Central Library’)

‘(The council) will destroy the civic and cultural heart of the city’ (J.Madin)

The architect of the building, John Madin, who design building in 1969 was also involved into campaign to save his most iconic work until his death in 2012. In his last interviews to Birmingham Post, he was depicted as a strong critic for the new Birmingham library design by Mecanoo Architects calling ‘£193 million replacement as a waste of money and not fit for purpose’ due to lack of natural daylight that previous building was notably criticised for.[6] Madin later stated to the reporter Paul Dale that demolition is motivated by ‘commercial greed rather than genuine concerns about cultural provision’ blaming the council for deliberate neglect and constant refurbishment cost speculations in order to fabricate the argument for a new one in Centenary Square, which would be introduced later.[7] The architect specified that his building was ‘designed with an open flexible plan on every floor with no structural walls to inhibit the free and easy alteration of its layout… to meet any future requirements with regard to technical developments over the 21st century and beyond’.[8]

The attention of various media to the campaigner’s desperate attempts to preserve the building was growing as fast as the degree of hysteria from various local authorities, who chose to back up the council’s plans to replace the library building. The question about the fate of the building triggered by Birmingham Post poll in June 2008 resulted in a fearless debates that spread from popular Post blogs (blogs.birminghampost.net) further polarising opinions among public.[9] For example, Freddie Gick, the chairman of the Birmingham Civic Society, which celebrates and honours the heritage of the city, in response to listing attempt back in 2008 commented that ‘this monumental, brutalist incinerator has no place in the centre of our city, flanked by the glorious nineteenth century architecture and sculpture of our other civic buildings’ blatantly repeating Prince Charles’s infamous review on the building. [10]

(Image 2.4 ‘ Mike Whitby was the leader of the city council’)

‘The building may be ‘unique’, but it is unique in its ugliness and dysfunctionality, hardly grounds for statutory listing one would have thought’.[11] (M.Whitby)

Mike Whitby, the leader of the city council mentioned earlier, was strongly opposing any attempts to preserve the library especially when the opposition attempted listing for the second time. In July 2008, Whitby has launched an infamous letter to the minister Margaret Hodge with urge to visit the building, which was fully published with its highlighted controversial citations by Paul Dale from Birmingham Post.[12] The original article was since heavily edited in 2013, as the editor’s original extract preserved on Birmingham Press in return was openly criticising the council for rather senseless attack towards the architect, who ‘lives in Hampshire rather than Birmingham’ and demolition of his other ‘non-quality’ buildings in the city to make a support case against listing that indeed raises reasonable questions of his writing manners for such an authority.[13] The Council’s letter is expressing many points that describes the building as unfit for purpose, highlights lack of any significant recognition in architectural discourse, although the most interesting part of it is about criticism of the architect of the building John Madin, who ‘does not have a national reputation and none of his buildings have been listed’.[14] He concludes that ‘building fails to respect its higher quality listed neighbours’ by blocking the view on them and references book Building Jerusalem by Tristram Hunt that celebrates Victorian architecture and openly criticises the demolition of the old library building back in 1960’s.[15] It is quite logical to conclude that this letter is indicating Whitby’s rather personal interest for the new multi million development at any cost by manipulating any known facts in every possible way.

(Image 2.5 ‘Former head of regeneration & planning expert Clive Dutton’)

Birmingham's executive head of regeneration, Clive Dutton, took a position at Birmingham city council in 2005 after effectively bringing a regeneration plan for West Belfast. In the Guardian’s obituary, he was praised for ‘his ambitious Big City Plan set the direction for the city’s renaissance, and out of it came almost £1bn of new investment, leading, among other things, to the redevelopment of Birmingham New Street railway station and the creation of the Library of Birmingham’.[16] When the local activists attempted to apply for Grade II listing again in 2008, Dutton stated that ‘the council would seek permission from the Government to demolish the building even if it did get listed’, which unashamedly indicated that the deal with city planning authority was reassured already.[17]. While working closely with city council’s leader Mike Whitby, according to the confidential paper leak to he pleaded to obtain the Certificate of Immunity from Listing for the building to Birmingham planning authority, which was later passed to the Secretary of State for Culture in order to prevent any further attempts to jeopardize his ambitious masterplan. According to the Stirrer (now part of the Birmingham Press), who shared the extract from that confidential document, Dutton speculated that the building is:

‘no longer fit for purpose; in extensive disrepair requiring very considerable expenditure; preventing the redevelopment of Paradise Circus which will greatly improve the city centre and prejudicing the continued enhancement and comprehensive development of the West End; not readily capable of adaptation for alternative use’.[18]

According to architect John Madin, Clive Dutton and Mike Whitby’s contradictory statements that the current library would need £160 million of investment to renovate it up to modern standard were misleading as both never provided any evidence to prove any details of this estimate.[19] In September 2002, the commissioned schedule by Ayoub Khan estimated a minimum and maximum retrofit options for £27 and £37 million respectively, covering new circulation system, roof, extensive external facade works and its maintenance and internal refurbishment, while former city council leader Sir Albert Bore in June 2004 gave an estimated cost of refurbishment as £25 million.[20] Since then, the sum had been increased over six times as the October 2005 scrutiny report issued from the city council meeting projected cost of £120 million pound including £50m for the proposed extension, but it was still less than the budget that city council prepared for the new building.[21] (p.175 report)

And yet, there was no officially disclosed for public feasibility report that either assessed condition of the central library at the beginning of 00’s or clearly investigated the option of refurbishment with justification sheets for projected costs, which ended up varying greatly from £24 to £124 million. The other objective, which makes the council’s official reasons for like ‘in extensive disrepair requiring very considerable expenditure as a reason’ against listing protection particularly dishonest is their own shared involvement in dilapidation of public service building over years with unwillingness to duly invest and maintain it over last twenty years. With an absence of strong case work on the existing building, it was yet granted an immunity from listing on 11 January 2011, without a chance to be challenged by anyone.[22] What valuable lesson that could be learnt from this situation is the need to demand for information transparency during public open consultations or various media platforms on similar campaigns in the future.

(Image 2.6 ‘Former architecture minister Margaret Hodge’)

‘I am a democrat, and British don’t like Brutalism’ (M.Hodge)

The former architecture minister Margaret Hodge, notably described as ‘a controversial figure for architects because of her dislike of modernist buildings’ by BD Magazine and threatening to revise listing criteria for post-war buildings was another major political figure involved, after being re-appointed as architecture minister in September 2009.[23] In 23 November 2009 she made her final decision live on BBC bus stating that ‘in the end I have to exercise my judgement, there is an insufficient architectural value, insufficient historic importance to say that this building shall be listed’.[24] It is worth familiarising yourself with what Hodge personally considers as good/bad architecture in a quite descriptive article on Building Design online magazine by Liz Bury, to whom she gave a personal tour around her Barking & Dagenham constituency in east London, where modernism is clearly not coming to her personal taste.[25] According to heritage consultant Jon Wright from 20C Society, Margaret Hodge is known for ‘bringing a personal opinion about post-war architecture, in particular, to bear on decisions which should be made with rather more open consideration than she’s giving’.[26]. Indeed, from any logical perspective this situation is mediocre by letting such incompetent people to define the value of subject they may have no other understanding than beyond the look of its facade. The second problem in Mrs. Hodge vision is her disregard to the fact that her own Labour Party government was in power at the time when buildings she dubs as ‘concrete monstrosities’ were built across the country to provide public services for ordinary people at unprecedented before scale, which seem rather worth celebrating as a civic achievement for Birmingham history than a visual damage for the city.

(Image 2.7 ‘Brian Gambles - the Birmingham head of libraries with new library at the background’)

‘We are cooking city’s heritage’ (B.Gambles)

Brian Gambles, The Birmingham head of libraries, who was also responsible for Central library’s fate, has been actively advocating for the new building since the very beginning of the campaign, motivating it as new social gesture to the public. Being less cynical about his goals back in 2007 to the Stirrer (Birmingham Press), Gambles pronounced that the building is ‘cooking city’s heritage’ with unsatisfactory climate control in old library reserves, while the rest of his concerns were addressing typical wear and tear problems of neglected for years building such as leaking roofs, breaking escalators and asbestos removal that could be undertaken if necessary.[28] He has been a keen promoter of the new library of Birmingham on Centenary square since its approval in 2007 and never skip an opportunity to explain his vision for the library moving from its traditional book provision service to experiential learning center role providing various workshops, classes and public events, ‘engaging people who feel alienated by the current library provision, while making those who use it already feel better provided for’, says Gambles.[29] In April 2009, the design for the new building was presented by Dutch architects Meccano with the chief librarian controversially stating that ‘many of us have the means to buy books…our role will now be less about transactions with users and more about aiding their transformation’. [30] In 2010 Guardian’s interview coinciding with council’s last effort for immunity from listing, he turned on building’s condition once again by declared that ‘It's ugly and unfit for purpose and would cost too much to properly renovate’ demonstrating a piece of concrete at his office allegedly fallen of the facade.[31] After six years of active lobbying from the city council, on 3 of September 2013 the new library of Birmingham project was officially completed and opened with a ‘sense of triumph’ initiating the way to raze the old one.[32] Alike his proponents, Gambles demonstrated a rather subjective position, though his motifs could be possibly justified with enthusiastic idea to get the largest educational, cultural and social hub for the city equivalent in scale to ‘Guggenheim effect’ in Bilbao attracting investment and tourists.

In December 2012, plans to demolish Birmingham Central Library and replace it with a major office development were set to be approved by city councillors planning committee with a figure of Rob Groves, Senior Project Director of the Argent Group, who aims to transform Paradise Circus area with mixed development comprising retail, offices and hotel space.[33] This decision accompanied with a certificate of immunity and opening of the new library officially put an end for any possible scenarios to the old building. Even if the motivation of private developers does not particularly require any comment in this specific context, the agencies involved in enhancing and protecting cities heritage like Birmingham’s city councils and other cultural organisations mentioned earlier should not operate on such reactionary level as with such powerful hands any preservation of modernist architecture in the UK will be in a serious jeopardy.

Reference list

[1] https://ourbirmingham.wordpress.com/central-library/1-the-friends-of-the-central-library-group/

[2] http://brutifulbirmingham.blogspot.com/2018/05/alan-clawley-tribute-by-joe-holyoak.html

[3] http://brutifulbirmingham.blogspot.com/2018/05/alan-clawley-tribute-by-joe-holyoak.html

[4] https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/heritage-expert-claims-public-regret-12118279

[5] https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/heritage-expert-claims-public-regret-12118279

[6] https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/new-library-of-birmingham-slammed-as-waste-150750?_ga=2.225686362.133968997.1532898749-2144510126.1532596349

[7] https://ourbirmingham.wordpress.com/central-library/1-the-friends-of-the-central-library-group/3-library-plan-driven-by-commercial-greed/

[8] https://ourbirmingham.wordpress.com/central-library/1-the-friends-of-the-central-library-group/3-library-plan-driven-by-commercial-greed/

[9] https://www.birminghampost.co.uk/news/local-news/love-hate-it-city-library-3959551

[10] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2184733/Birminghams-ugly-library-gets-protected.html

[11] https://www.birminghampost.co.uk/news/local-news/whitby-tells-hodge-library-unworthy-3957713

[12] https://www.birminghampost.co.uk/news/local-news/whitby-tells-hodge-library-unworthy-3957713

[13] http://thebirminghampress.com/2015/10/the-last-of-the-wreckers/

[14] https://www.scribd.com/document/3940170/Mike-Whitby-s-Letter-to-DCMS-Re-Central-Library

[15] https://www.scribd.com/document/3940170/Mike-Whitby-s-Letter-to-DCMS-Re-Central-Library

[16] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/29/clive-dutton

[17] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2184733/Birminghams-ugly-library-gets-protected.html

[18] http://thestirrer.thebirminghampress.com/library-1112071.html

[19] https://www.birminghampost.co.uk/news/local-news/cutting-cultural-civic-heart-out-3954128

[20] https://www.birminghampost.co.uk/news/local-news/cutting-cultural-civic-heart-out-3954128

[21] https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/downloads/file/3683/library_of_birmingham_options_october_2005 (p.175)

[22] http://www.birminghamconservationtrust.org/2009/11/23/birmingham-central-library-granted-immunity-from-listing/

[23] https://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/margaret-hodge-is-architecture-minister-again/3149282.article#commentsJump

[24] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XR5pLmIzqw

https://www.birminghampost.co.uk/news/local-news/end-sight-birmingham-library-after-3937461

[25] https://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/now-thats-what-margaret-hodge-calls-architecture/3109322.article

[26] https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/culture-minister-margaret-hodge-under-108478

[27] http://thestirrer.thebirminghampress.com//library-2011071.html

[28] http://thestirrer.thebirminghampress.com//library-2011071.html

[29] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/mar/07/future-british-libraries-margaret-hodge

[30] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/apr/03/libraries-architecture-birmingham

[31] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/mar/07/future-british-libraries-margaret-hodge

[32] https://www.birminghampost.co.uk/news/local-news/sense-triumph-library-birmingham-project-5799974

[33] https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/plans-to-demolish-birmingham-central-library-379029

Image list

2.1 - https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/branded_news/BEA8/production/_86980884_img_0020.jpg

2.2 - https://i2-prod.birminghammail.co.uk/incoming/article14607101.ece/ALTERNATES/s1200/TRMRMMGLPICT000020456998.jpg

2.3 - https://i2-prod.birminghampost.co.uk/incoming/article4710430.ece/ALTERNATES/s1227b/BP2955490.jpg

2.4 - https://i2-prod.birminghammail.co.uk/incoming/article7817474.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/Mike-whitby-birmingham-library.jpg

2.5 - https://cached.imagescaler.hbpl.co.uk/resize/scaleWidth/460/cached.offlinehbpl.hbpl.co.uk/news/RLP/CliveDutton920612-20150608110046870.gif

2.6 - https://static.standard.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2014/06/06/15/8MargaretHodge0606A.jpg

2.7 - https://i2-prod.birminghampost.co.uk/incoming/article5799972.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/brian-gambles-library-of-birmingham-2.jpg

0 notes