No Child Left Unexamined

The current (and not for long) US President once instituted an educational plan with the tagname 'No Child Left Behind'. In that, he seemed to be creating a hugely magnified echo of the Atlantean examination system. (For more about Atlantis, search this blog for 'Atlantis' or 'Atlantean'.)

The Atlantean examination system came from obvious origins. Atlantis was colonised by a sea power of old, a leviathan that once encircled the world with its mighty lamps and scales. From that power, the prescribed examinations for the elite were borrowed. An examination meant for the top 10% of the population became the norm. In saying this, I am merely recounting what the official story has proclaimed. There is nothing scurrilous here.

But take a moment to reflect. Right at the beginning, the form and substance of examination was already pegged to the top 10% of the world-spanning elite. This very same examination was then refined, made tougher, made more substantial, tweaked in arcane and dangerous ways. It is the current means of testing in present-day Atlantis. And hardly anyone complains that it is hard.

The warlords and savants of Atlantis (sometimes, they are one and the same) have so deeply ingrained a culture of imperial national examinations in the populace that local students are on average far better educated in technical subjects than their peers overseas. This happy state of affairs means that almost any child of Atlantis can, if he wishes to and finds it affordable, go elsewhere to make a living.

In that sense, no child has been left behind; every child is exposed to the system early, and hardly anyone is left on the hillside for the wolves. But there are still gaps. The cost of overclocking the central processing units of an entire nation has yet to manifest fully; let us hope the burnout is containable, and that there is indeed a better age ahead.