#maybe i'll go into taxes to fund schooling later lol

[itstimeforstarwars]

am beg to hear your thoughts and rambles on this please

I've put some of my thoughts here, but I Have So Many lmao. Disclaimer that I've only seen part of the Clone Wars series and that while I've read a lot of star wars comics, I certainly haven't read them all, so these are mostly Just My Thoughts on my made up Mandalorian school politics that I made up mostly for the Galidraan au.

(it's also really long so here's a readmore)

So I don't think that education past age 13 is mandated on Mandalore. For the most part, education past middle school has been handled by one's clan, through apprenticeships and adults handing down knowledge and stuff like that. Perhaps there are specialized schools for like space travel and stuff. I think even elementary schools were a hard fight to institute, especially among the more traditional clans, but I like to imagine that either a) at one point the True Mandalorians and the New Mandalorians were like "education of children is very important to both of us so we should make sure all children get educations" or b) Mand'alor Tarre Vizsla was like "Education is a core tenant of both Mandalorian culture and the Jedi culture I was raised in and so I personally am making sure all kids get educated k thx."

Education inequality is fairly rampant, as big powerful clans like Kryze or Vizsla can afford to send their children anywhere in the galaxy to get education, whereas your local Vhett dirt farmer will do what they can with the clan they have, so you might have great practical knowledge on how to deliver strill whelps and you can easily calculate how much space corn seed you need per space acre but you never had calculus and you don't know a lot about how to get legislation enacted and you definitely never got the Flying Spacecraft 101 class that all the rich kids got to have at age ten.

Then the New Mandalorians decide that Mandalore needs public schools beyond just the elementary schools. I think this happens before Satine Kryze gets into power, but she definitely goes absolutely fuckin ham on expanding education. It's very divisive at first--some farmer Houses think it's a ploy to convince all their kids to move into cities and industry, others think it's a great opportunity to give their kids a chance to achieve something more than space corn. Some warrior clans think this is an evil New Mando plot to turn all their kids into pacifists, while others are elated at the chance to let their kids learn things that would never be affordable otherwise, and an educated warrior is a better warrior. So now they want to get involved in the public schools.

So now we have (more) school politics, and the politics of education is always a divisive thing.

The thing is, the New Mandalorians don't have total control of Mandalorian politics until Satine Kryze. There are Factions. The big factions are the New Mandalorians, the True Mandalorians, and Death Watch, but there are also smaller factions, as there are in all communities. There are traditionalist clans that never remove their helmets and won't even give their names to strangers, there are industrialists who want to expand their business beyond the Mandalore system and want their kids to learn languages and laws that they couldn't even hope to comprehend, there are strong clans who argue that the clan system has always worked perfectly fine, and there are people who have lost their clan or who have been kicked out of their clan, who now have kids and have no idea how to even begin teaching them.

Can you ban all weapons from school when your student populace has a lot of members from a faction where the use and care of weapons is a literal tenant of their religion? Should you include a class on the use and care of weapons in such a case, or leave that to their clan? Should the children be able to keep their helmets on all day? What about in the case of it being religious? What about the rest of their armor--especially armor pieces that double as weapons? How much security should each school have, especially when Death Watch is in the area and has been known to kill children? Would having armed guards posted around the school endanger them more--or send a message that your school board doesn't want, that it's actually really dangerous to send your kid to school? Should the school provide free breakfast and lunch to children? Is that their job? Will the parents consider it an attempt to brainwash their children into being sympathetic to the ruling faction?

Despite being extremely divisive, as soon as the New Mandalorians implement schooling for teenagers, everyone else also immediately decides to implement schooling for teenagers. Implementation and effectiveness varies. I think areas with primarily True Mandalorian rule or clans that are more like Din Djarin's clan would have fewer public schools overall, and most of the families would stick to the traditional clan-based education. Death Watch ruled areas probably have schools that are basically military schools. I think New Mandalorian schools would focus a lot on business and politics--trying to get children to be a new generation of leaders, because a good economy is very important in keeping people peaceful. In places with New Mandalorian control, weapons are banned outright on premises, but with True Mandalorian schools, I think the use of weapons is banned, maybe you have to keep it in your locker or something, but I don't think school is a weapons-free zone.

After the Mandalorian Civil War, Satine Kryze takes power. The True Mandalorian faction is dead, and Death Watch is in hiding. And Satine Kryze goes ham on education. Everything she does is for Mandalore's children, of course she goes ham on education.

She builds schools everywhere. She enacts legislation to make sure that there are elementary schools and secondary schools enough to service all the children of Mandalore. Real "x amount of schools for every y amount of population" stuff.

All schools provide free meals for all children--this is her single most popular law for a populace just starting to recover from a civil war. So many people lost everything; making sure that their kids have two meals a day even when there's nothing in the pantry at home is worth whatever the hell these New Mandalorians are teaching in these schools.

She brings in several teachers from across the galaxy to help them build a curriculum, though most of the education stuff is still decided by Mandalorian locals. What do Mandalorian children need to know in order to thrive on any planet they set their boots to? Mandalore will need to trade with other planets, and they will need to know about these other planets to not be exploited in their current state of weakness. Mandalore has a seat in the Senate; its children need to know about who else has a seat, and what their priorities are, and whether or not those priorities will conflict with Mandalore's priorities. Mando'ade will need to learn new languages, and they will need to learn math and engineering and history and politics and civics and there is just so much to learn and their population has been reduced so drastically. There are a lot of people who would teach if only they were still alive, but they are not, so we hired advisors.

She doesn't even consider involving the EduCorps--that's a Jedi thing, and even Obi-Wan Kenobi is barely welcome on Mandalore after having helped end the Civil War.

Secondary education is still not mandatory, but more people than ever are taking advantage of it. In a generation's time, nearly everyone will be sending their kids to school for at least a bit--maybe just a few months when there's no harvesting to do, so they can learn basic engineering and shop skills, or sending the kids to school for as many hours as they can go when Mom is between jobs and the pantry's getting a little thin--and regardless of Satine's popularity with the interplanetary stuff, regardless of what's happening with the Senate, the one thing most people like about Satine is the schools.

Right up until children start getting poisoned.