"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." – Benjamin Franklin
The city and county of Philadelphia is home to an astonishing 115 colleges and universities, 300 public schools, and nearly 100 charter schools. This isn't counting the 60 catholic schools among the 235 private schools within the city limits. Taken altogether, Philadelphia's education infrastructure is some of the most impressive in the nation. It gets high ranks for its college programs and poor ones for its public schools. Its charter schools march in lock step with the strides of most of the city schools, only they do it without providing services to disabled students or those who speak English as a second language. For a city founded in part on the value of a good education, the test scores and outcomes across the whole of Philadelphia's public schools make it clear that is a value that only the affluent are permitted to cherish.
The universities in the region produce breakthrough technologies in medicine and chemical science, provide leading archaeologists to digs across the world, send attorneys to New York law firms and artists and performers to LA Soundstages. Drexel churns out the business leaders of the future, while Temple fills the regions hospitals with residents and nurses.
By gaining access and control in education, you open doors in the halls of government, win the focus of a hungry lens from the media, and tap the libraries and archives filled with stored knowledge and the laboratory resources of hundred million dollar science programs. The competition for grant money is fierce, tenure is hard to come by, and column inches in the journals of academia are bought with the future careers of the people you are beating to publication.
Rules and System
Status in Education can reflect any number of things. Perhaps it's your position at a university, your role in the teacher's union, your funding of research grants, your foundation's scholarship program, your activity in your doctoral program, or even your election to your local school board. This lets you open or close programs, start research projects, access libraries and archives, or even access campuses other than your own.
Status 1: Adjunct Professor, Public School Teacher, Grad Student
Status 2: Professor, Public School Principal, Doctoral Student, Union Rep, School Board Member
Status 3: Dean, Superintendent, Grantor, Scholarship Founder, Union Chief, County Secretary of Education
Status 4: College President, State Union Rep, Education Lobbyist
Status 5: State Secretary of Education
Joining the Sphere
Any character may join Education at character creation or through play. Entry into it is fairly simple, in that you van voluntarily enter it through pursuing higher education, or as a career choice. Consider how your character interacts with their status. Are they an educator? A student in post graduate studies? What is their relation to their union? Or did they perhaps come to it through politics or government assignment?
Consider what your characters ambitions are within the realm of education. Are they trying to influence research programs, acquire access to the resources of a university's science department, or do they seek to improve the quality of education in public schools?
Depending on how you are entering play, there may be certain requirements. Consult the following list.
For Public School Teachers: Academics: 2, Persuasion: 1, and 1 in appropriate skills for the courses they teach. Science, Athletics, Politics, etc.
For University Educators: Academics: 3, Persuasion: 1, and 2 in appropriate skills for the courses they teach. Science, Politics, Computer, etc.
For Government Administrators: Academics: 1, Politics: 1, Persuasion: 1
For Union Members: Politics 1 in addition to the above requirements for their role in education.
Theme and Society
Citizens of Philadelphia fight a constant uphill battle for resources for their public schools. The push of corporate money into charter schools is sapping the city's education programs of much needed resources, while concentrating the cost of students with special needs solely on the backs of the public schools. While parents self-fund their bids to oust corporate stooges from local school boards, and indifferent administrators hit the back nine by three o'clock with their charter lobbyist buddies, the lives of Philadelphia's future are often turning the pages of books that are twenty years out of date or more.
This divide in class extends past the classroom to the college campus. Community colleges keep the trades filled with skilled workers, pouring apprentices into Philadelphia's expansive construction unions. The state colleges and Temple see to it that the middle classes have a shot at a better future, and UPenn sees to it that the heirs of the Main Line have a local option if they still want to feel superior to the unwashed masses.
Private university presidents look to the profitability of the enterprise over the outcomes of their students or the prestige of their published research papers while adjunct professors teach crowded classes of students in ever increasing loan debt who they will see later that evening at their respective second jobs. Before clocking out to drive Uber.
