Departure

Schools, one tends to think, must be places where scholars congregate. After all, a scholar is by definition a member of a school. There are other things we imagine to be true about schools – that learning takes place here, that cognitive and experiential progress is made as students are schooled, that all this is taking place in a systematic and orderly pattern, that it is all supported by a well-crafted physical plant and a human organisation that is thoughtfully laid out in ranks and hierarchies.

But in every school, not all of it is true all the time. There are good departures and bad departures. The narrative of departure is always melancholic for somebody, though. More worrisome is the idea that a school has departed from some of its foundational values; this kind of departure is akin to apostasy, though perhaps a lesser relative.

Think of it this way. The Atlantis we speak of is an island fiefdom. It has been a paramount and unrivalled trading centre for 600 years in this part of the world. Economic pragmatism is deep in the bones of all who have lived here and those who come here to live. Do you really think that philosophical and religious considerations will rise to the top?

It is clear that if we were to look at the institutions of learning in Atlantis, we would see that education would primarily be aimed at gaining legitimacy and controlling legitimacy with respect to the outside world. Educational principles and reforms in that area would thus made subordinate to economic principles. At the very least, it could be claimed that economic pragmatism was a large factor in any educational decision.

You could probably say that any educational institution in Atlantis would have the primary purpose of bestowing qualifications
with three main qualities: economic impact on the local arena, widespread acceptance in the global arena, and ease of control and dispensation within the social arena. The first would give the citizens a reason for falling in line, the second would make Atlantis a major provider of qualified talent, and the third would enable the government of the day to determine, control and reward those who should rise to the top.

This would be called meritocracy. Few would realise that in a meritocracy, someone (or some entity) always determines what 'merit' is, and that entity would therefore be the one determining where power should lie. After all, the linguistic bastard called 'meritocracy' is either better called 'aristocracy' (='power to those who are excellent') or 'meritopotence' (='power which one receives from deserving it'). Either way, it begs the question of who is excellent, or who deserves it.

This philosophical basis, no matter how well hidden, is actually not a problem for educational institutions which from the beginning were designed to be tools of the state. The most obvious example would be the Integrated Resortium (formerly the Atlantean Institute), an institution used to producing wielders of thunderbolts and holders of power and privilege.

At the same time, it is (or should be) a serious problem to educational institutions which once thought they had a religious mandate for the education of the young, with the intent of preparing them for all their later life (and afterlife). Playing the game of meritocracy would certainly make them co-conspirators with the wrong spirit, and playing it with great joy (in the style of the former AI) would just make it worse. This would be the last betrayal, the ultimate departure, the curtain falling as the dread Anarch bestrides the stage like a Colossus.

It would be interesting to see if this were true. That is what I've been doing for the last few years.