#obviously theyre better off in terms of having food to eat and safe housing but there's probably still a merchant v seam class system here

[enobariasdistrict2]

i just remembered that on my reread of tbosas snow talked about taking a calculus test and i was like "lmao wait calculus still exists in a dystopia damn" and then i remembered... the capitol has universities for higher education, and there's even a chance that a "poor" person like snow could get scholarships if he really really wanted that education. as compared with the obviously poverty-ridden district's education is a priority in the capitol, because that's how you get power and wealth to put other people (the districts) down.

and it's crazy to me because as established by the original books, in District 12, you either learn about coal your whole life + minimal basic reading/writing/math skills and then work in a mine from 18 until you die by natural causes/starvation/accident, or you go win a hunger games and kill innocent children to maybe live the rest of your life in peace/reasonable wealth provided you don't disrupt the capitol authority which is the only way to get out. and even with that you still have the fear or losing your entire family or being sold to sex slavery.

even in district's 1/2/4, the education options are also equally bleak: you work for your industry (luxury/masonry/fishing/etc) or you get mindwiped into believing propaganda, become a brain-corrupted child soldier, and then either die in a games you were coerced into volunteering for or become a soulless murderer. obviously they get treated better than the people of d3-12 regardless of whether you're a Victor or average citizen - as katniss said, they're apparently allbeing well fed - but you're still a servile pet without useful education beyond basic skills, and there's still the fear of sex slavery for victors of 1/4.

the way education is a commodity for people who are "deserving" of it... it's horrible and unfortunately really reminiscent of the real world systems