Watching from the Shadows

In Atlantis, more and more people are complaining about shadow education. They claim the system is screwed up, or that the curriculum is. Most of these complainants know nothing about systems, nor about curricula.

Indeed, almost all of them know nothing about the rest of the world, and how the inequities and abuses are even worse elsewhere. Hint: it is not Atlantis which has the highest per capita use of shadow education.

The answer to how it all got this way is obvious. Given the suspicion that a game is being played for high stakes and that not playing gives a negative reward, all potential players are likely to go for it if they can.

That's what's happening in Atlantis. Everyone thinks the game is rigged, or that only the rich can play and win. But despite this, they play anyway, causing hyperinflation and expansion of the shadow market, the grey area, the twilight zone. Once they push the remuneration for shadow operators higher than that for teachers, teachers will defect to the shadows.

And here we are now.

Shadow Education

I am a shadow educator now. What does it mean, to be one? It means that you are not in the business of direct illumination, not a priest of the Ministry of Enlightenment. It means that you dig where the light doesn't go, and you save the ones that they can't save. Or it means that you go where the shadow people hide, and you sell them a drug they can't resist. Or it means that you pander, as Pandarus did, to the illicit desires of the mugger barons. And so forth. And so, forth.

Grey Areas

There is a world where no more angels go
Where armoured hearts beat out the passing years
Confident in nothing, bold in dismay;
Here are the ashes of our yesterday,
Here are the echos of our fallen tears,
Here is the valley of eternal snow.

And yet one scents the iron in the frost,
One hears the distant horn of Roland lost;
And though the sun has swept its circle out
These many ages clouded here in doubt

There are still kings beneath the silted dross.
A tarnished helm, a chapel in the moss -
Now here and there, the light of dawn returns;
And in the ashen hearth, a fire burns.