Another side-product of my fic-writing: a chart over the Cardassian education system. Squares with unbroken borders represent separate institutions, while squares with dotted borders represent jobs. Below is a more thorough discussion of each step.
TW Discussion of child labour and unhealthy work-loads in education ahead
We don’t have much canon on Cardassian education. What we have is:
- Children are put through memory training at age four (The Marquis part I)
- There are universities (Profit and Loss, Enigma Tales)
- There are institutes (A Stitch in Time)
There is also some stuff in The Never-Ending Sacrifice, but my memory of it is a little hazy. As that is about someone who gets dropped back onto Cardassia after spending most of his time living as a Bajoran, it’s not exactly representative.
I have decided to put the age of emergence (which is similar to age of maturity) at 14. This appears to be the age at which you start at e.g. the institutes. There are passages in The Never-Ending Sacrifice that implies that it may be 16, but I tend to imagine Cardassian society making people grow up quite fast. Furthermore, they don’t really have any concept of child labour laws. Making a kid under ten work might be frowned upon, but after that, it is fairly normalised, particularly in domestic service and on farms.
Proceeding from one stage of education to another requires passing exams and getting certain grades. Big career decisions are done under the guidance of government officials, and changing your plans is usually quite hard.
This is intended to be the education system as it was before The Fire. I think that, as with many other institutions, the system was changed after the destruction at the end of the Dominion War.
The stages of schooling are:
Basic school (4-10 years) Supposedly mandatory, although in poor communities and in rural areas, this is not always enforced. The teaching is generally focused on the three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic), as well as a lot of facts about how great the Cardassian state is. This is also when the memory training mentioned above occurs.
- After basic school, some children will go into ‘unskilled’ labour (psst, there is no such thing), such as domestic service, farm labour or factory work. There is also the possibility of continuing to:
Lyceum (10-14 years) More advanced school, going more in-depth into literature, history, mathematics and the natural sciences. This stage is not mandatory, but encouraged.
- People who have finished lyceum may go into similar jobs as those who have only had basic schooling, or they may go into administration, office work etc. This is also the cohort that generally gets enlisted into the Cardassian military (although they will sometimes enlist people with only basic schooling too - it depends on the situation).
After Lyceum, there are a number of different routes for further education. These are by far less common than the first two steps.
Prelims Preparatory studies for university. In order to go onto prelims, you need a conditional offer from a university, and you have to have a general idea of what you are going to study (e.g. natural sciences, humanities etc.) You go more in-depth into the field. No Cardassian schooling is kind, but here, the pressure is cranked up to eleven. The idea is to identify the people who will be able to deal with the pressure of university education. By the end of prelims, you will have to have decided (again under the watchful eye of the state) what you are going to study at university.
- Those who fail prelims may get the option of applying to an academy, but often they end up doing the kind of jobs that people with Lyceum qualifications do. Those who get through prelims go on to:
University For advanced study. Quite uncommon. The time spent there depends on your subject, but people are generally expected to do at the very least the equivalent of a 21st century bachelor and master’s degree. Changing subjects is virtually impossible. While the most common route to university studies is through prelims, you can also get there through the institutes in some cases. In those cases, you are generally ear-marked for a certain ministry or the military.
- People going down the prelim+university route may become doctors, engineers, scientists, archaeologists and university researchers.
Institutes Higher education that trains people for different types of government jobs. Follows directly after Lyceum - in order to be accepted you need to have shown exceptional skill and have a sponsor. The institutes takes nine years to complete. After three and six years, students who are not performing well enough are dropped. The institutes are incredibly strict, and students are not supposed to use their name during their time at the institutes. Instead, they are given a moniker based on their ‘group’ and their academic aptitude. The institutes are gender-segregated.
The institutes that are named in beta-canon are:
- Bamarren (A Stitch in Time), which in state intelligence.
- The Dekaris Institute (Fearful Symmetry), trains officers for the Cardassian military.
- The Institute for State Policy (A Stitch in Time), which I guess does what it says on the tin.
- Surjada (Fearful Symmetry), which, like Bamarren, seems to be a route into the Obsidian Order. In my opinion, there is no ‘official’ route to the Obsidian Order - they recruit people of all kinds of backgrounds, if their skills have been noticed.
I imagine there are a number of others, ranging from advanced economics to certain kinds of engineering.
Academies The most common of the three post-Lyceum routes. Academies are trade or vocational schools and encompass a lot of stuff that we would expect to be studied at university. The academies also provide also the shortest post-Lyceum education, lasting only a few years. There are separate academies for different jobs. Like the institutes, students are boarded.
- The academies educate teachers, pharmacists, accountants, some types of mechanics - anything that requires specialised knowledge but is not seen as ‘complex’ (psst that’s bullshit).
One type of education I did not include in the graph is that of performing arts. I think it’s seen as something in between academies and institutes - let’s call them conservatories. These include specific types of music, dance and acting. (Also I kind of love the idea of Cardassians having something akin to the kpop industry, with people being trained for years and years before maybe ending up in a group.) There are only a few of these conservatories on Cardassia Prime, and only people who are seen as exceptionally talented are let in.
