[X] My Assistant

[Leofski]

"Good afternoon kids and welcome to the advanced hacking class. Miss Burn tells me that you are all quick learners and frankly, I have better things to do than sit in a classroom for four hours a week, so I�€™ll just hand your grades to the administrator at the end of term."
A hand shot up at the front of the class. "But Sir, we did this two years ago in Basic Hacking."
"Your disdain for my assignment is noted and I've duly lowered your grade. Now, as I was saying, I'll now split you into to groups and tell you which firms servers your marks are on"

[Chrysalis]

I want to read more.

This is interesting.

-Chrysalis

[Mickle5125]

"Good afternoon kids and welcome to the advanced hacking class. Miss Burn tells me that you are all quick learners and frankly, I have better things to do than sit in a classroom for four hours a week, so I�€™ll just hand your grades to the administrator at the end of term."
A hand shot up at the front of the class. "But Sir, we did this two years ago in Basic Hacking."
"Your disdain for my assignment is noted and I've duly lowered your grade. Now, as I was saying, I'll now split you into to groups and tell you which firms servers your marks are on"

nah... lowering the grade isn't that big a deal since they're changing them anyway. He'd increase the security around the grades.

[weblife]

Great story!

And I agree, preserve it somewhere other than here too. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

And send more! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Cthulhudreams]

Tutorsofts are like.. right in the book.

Its obvious that any 'schooling' for poorkids is going to be 'soft based, especially as you can jack them off technonet or whatever.

[CanRay]

Oh... Like any good ShadowParent is going to trust a Tutorsoft that came from the CORPS!

[Fix-it]

I'm sure once the faculty re-writes half of it, they might use them for homework, or perhaps for kids who are unable to attend regular classes.

or perhaps for subjects that they don't have faculty for.

[Cthulhudreams]

The tutorsofts in SR are extremely powerful with very short horizons to achieving high skill levels, so I can certainly imagine that they would be popular corp or know. To the point where UCAS, CAS, the UK and every other world power would use them as a adjunct or even the primary method of teaching to the 3rd and 4th quartile of the population in terms of wealth.

Those would obviously have to be unbranded.

[Leofski]

I don't know. Joey D campaigned with simsense teaching as part of her manifesto and it seemed that people considered it controversial.

[Cthulhudreams]

It's not possible for them to deliver conventional teaching because they don't have any money.

All the income that you might tax is earnt by people who work in another country (the mega corps). And they are happy to give away land to people who don't pay property taxes (extra territorial corps). So pretty much all the tax payers have fled - corps and medium to high income earners - leaving the UCAS which low income earners to deal with.

So they have no cash to pay teachers, but all these poor people to educate. I'm not sure how else they can do it.

[CanRay]

Simple. Over-sized classrooms with understaffed, overworked teachers, insufficient text books, and so on.

We're seeing it now in some areas.

[Speed Wraith]

It's not possible for them to deliver conventional teaching because they don't have any money.

All the income that you might tax is earnt by people who work in another country (the mega corps). And they are happy to give away land to people who don't pay property taxes (extra territorial corps). So pretty much all the tax payers have fled - corps and medium to high income earners - leaving the UCAS which low income earners to deal with.

So they have no cash to pay teachers, but all these poor people to educate. I'm not sure how else they can do it.

As CanRay said, but toss in: buildings with failing infrastructure, greater emphasis on security (for the staff) than the education, no cultural (music, art) education at all, no support for sports, no food programs (the kind of programs that keep poor kids fed in the morning, for instance), etc. Oh, and of course a healthy dose of, "No one cares about the street scum, just keep them away from civilized people!"

I'm sure a lot of teachers that try to be crusader types will take what they're given and do their best to make a go of it. I'd be willing to bet that those teachers often break the rules behind the backs of the school board (all of whom are likely proxies for various companies) and use teaching materials such as tutorsofts that they're prohibited from using normally, or at least the ones that aren't donated to them by some corp. Those teachers would be the sorts that the shadow schools would like to pick up. In fact, this has been the run I'm working on for my group, it is how they're going to pay their tuition (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[CanRay]

Pretty much, yeah, SW.

I grew up at the "Welfare School" in Northern Ontario, where everything was lacking as I stated. (At least we weren't serached at the door!).

Luckily, I was gifted enough that I went to the Tech High School, despite it being completely clear across town.

[Cthulhudreams]

But to employ a teacher you need to actually pay a salary to someone who has a degree, and can presumably make significant money by working for a corp as a teacher at a private school or as a corp trainer.

It wouldn't be like the current situation - without income taxes from the top 20% of earners (megacorp citizens), payroll taxes, property taxes and company taxes (corps again), government budgets would require them to deliver 50-80% of the services on 20-30% of the money. Income taxes from the top 10% alone account for ~50% of the canadian budget, much the same across the world. These people leaving - which they have to work for the corps - would pretty much single handedly end government services across the world (the real reason no-one is ever going to let anyone have any sort of extraterritorial policy ;P)

To extend the classroom teaching model, a teacher would have a class of HUNDREDS at that level. Thats not school, thats lectures, except you don't have tutors to do the 1 to 1 stuff.

Giving everyone and trode net and saying 'welcome to tutorsoft 2.0 virtual teaching' actually has a incremental cost of 25 yens and is basically free by comparison. While its hard to make definitive statements, it seems so much cheaper that you wouldn't bother with actually having a building or teachers or anything for the unsustainable public schools.

[CanRay]

Except for Tradition, and the fact that the Megacorporations wants the general populous to stay just rich enough to be a consumer and undereducated.

The less you know about things, the easier it is to twist reality.

[Cthulhudreams]

Except for Tradition, and the fact that the Megacorporations wants the general populous to stay just rich enough to be a consumer and undereducated.

The less you know about things, the easier it is to twist reality.

So despite the extraterritoriality thing, they volunteer to hand over 35% of net because they have social responsibility? That doesn't really fit with the portrayal as total monsters in every other respect. And all individuals who work for megacorps also donate 40-50% of their income to local government? What the hell?

Note that if the top 25% of income earners left to megacorps, the UCAS couldn't even afford the US military (which they patently have) much less education. That doesn't even consider the effects of the missing company tax.

[CanRay]

I was refering to Tradition being the reason to get away from TutorSofts.

But I can see the Corps having a few financial fingers in the Schools. Good for PR, and allows them to spot bright children at a young age, indoctrinate them, and "Give" them scholarships to Universities that indebt them for life.

As for affording a military, how many 3rd-World Countries can't afford a military, yet have one? Hmmmmmmmmm?

[Chrysalis]

I would say companies have different levels of intrusion in schools. High intrusion means that the whole school is one giant advertisement. Low intrusion is often when there is a group of companies sponsoring the school. You see brand-names, but it's not in the curricula. No intrusion means that there are no logos, maybe even a no logo policy.

I would see that outside of beavervilles corps run aptitude tests at secondary grade schools, similar to A levels or SATs. For you to get a corp job or join MIT&T you have to score high enough on your aptitude tests to be awarded a scholarship. The aptitude test measures, mental acuity, intelligence, science, language and general knowledge.

By the way the proper term for a shadow school is a hedge school.

-Chrysalis

[Leofski]

It's also worth noting that the SR books are narrated by a bunch of people who understandably distrust the megas. I'm not going to argue that they're saints by any means, but I think shadowtalkers may overstate how bad they are, either by omission or that anything good they do is almost always not run relevant.

[CanRay]

Very true, Leofski. The Shadowtalkers are a bunch of Neo-@s, anti-social, anti-government, anti-corporate, anti-everything freaks and weirdos, some of whom are borderline sociopaths. (Some not so borderline! I'm looking at you, Kane!).

Not to mention that they constantly see the worst of what is going on, and rarely see the good things going on. Of course they'll suspect everything!

[Cthulhudreams]

Well, a third world military is considerably cheaper than the US military. I imagine that significant cost savings can be relised by scrapping all the boats, planes and nuclear weapons, then firing all of the navy, airforce and marines, and then selling all the Tanks, UAVs, NBC gear, radio gear and trucks, and having a military comprised entirely of guys in the back of technicals, but I wouldn't really say that 'dudes in utes' is really in any way comparable to the US army.

But yeah, you could afford the 'dudes in old trucks' with only like, 1% of the current US defense spend.

As for corp schools, well I imagine they run schools for private corp employees, under a scheme like that chrysalis outlines, but I don't see the street sweepers and cleaners qualifying for that stuff causing the problem.

Though both of those tasks are probably automated, so I guess its 'who does it for the kids of the unemployed?'

[Mickle5125]

I'm sure the corps have something for the children of the unemployed... after all, it wouldn't do for some poor, yet heinously smart brat to slip through the cracks and get picked up by the other corps, would it?

[CanRay]

Mickle grabs the point for the Unemployed Children...

And I personally see the UCAS Military running on Corporate Military Surplus just like a lot of militaries today run on US and Soviet Surplus.

With some "Donations" from the Megas to curry favour with the Countires in question. Don't forget that Ares is constantly trying to portray itself as "America's Megacorporation" and "One For Mom and Apple Pie" that the UCAS and CAS eat up, a donation of some uniforms, a few crates of rifles, and the rare AFV goes a long way towards that, and can be written off as "PR Budget" easily enough. Especially seeing as said country is now reliant on spare parts for same from the source.

[Cthulhudreams]

Mickle grabs the point for the Unemployed Children...

And I personally see the UCAS Military running on Corporate Military Surplus just like a lot of militaries today run on US and Soviet Surplus.

With some "Donations" from the Megas to curry favour with the Countires in question. Don't forget that Ares is constantly trying to portray itself as "America's Megacorporation" and "One For Mom and Apple Pie" that the UCAS and CAS eat up, a donation of some uniforms, a few crates of rifles, and the rare AFV goes a long way towards that, and can be written off as "PR Budget" easily enough. Especially seeing as said country is now reliant on spare parts for same from the source.

No point for poor kids. Poor kids do consistently score worse on tests that people from rich backgrounds, very low ROI. Sure you might find the next einstien but that is so unlikely that the ROI just isn't there. Plus, if some other corp does, its way cheaper to pay for an extraction team later on

The exception is mages, because that is extremely easy to test for, so you'll yank them out of poor ares later on, once they awaken

As for the military, the hand me downs explanation doesn't fly. They still have the full nuclear arnseal etc in the fluff (which isn;t included in the mian defense budget, some comes ontop of that 20% expenditure) and no-one else does except Ares. if you are going to get them hooked and bill them later you need them to actually have money to bull them.. which they don't. You'd have to cut the US's already dismal health program to less than 10% of its current funding and completely cut social security and cut education to 10% of current funding and then maybe you could afford the defense force to have 10% of current funding.

However, that stuff really only works in 3rd world nations because what they have is seriously cheaper (and miles less effective). A modern military with C&C and stuff is expensive.

I do agree that they could have disbanded the US military as we know it and gone for something more Ethiopian.

Remember the UCAS government really doesn;t have any money at all whatsoever and is running on 20 ot 30%. To achieve that the US would have to cut social security and medicare by 50%, while not running down the trust funds at all in the intervening time, and completely disband all other government services, including education, law enforcement, transportation, justice and military

[vladski]

As CanRay said, but toss in: buildings with failing infrastructure, greater emphasis on security (for the staff) than the education, no cultural (music, art) education at all, no support for sports, no food programs (the kind of programs that keep poor kids fed in the morning, for instance), etc. Oh, and of course a healthy dose of, "No one cares about the street scum, just keep them away from civilized people!"

I'm sure a lot of teachers that try to be crusader types will take what they're given and do their best to make a go of it. I'd be willing to bet that those teachers often break the rules behind the backs of the school board (all of whom are likely proxies for various companies) and use teaching materials such as tutorsofts that they're prohibited from using normally, or at least the ones that aren't donated to them by some corp. Those teachers would be the sorts that the shadow schools would like to pick up. In fact, this has been the run I'm working on for my group, it is how they're going to pay their tuition (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I don't disagree with any of the above, save for one thing: sports.

We know that major league sports continues into the 2070s. Mostly corp sponsored. However, I seriously doubt the Corps are gonna rely on jsut hte kiddies that pop up in their Corp run schools for their employees. Money will still be funneled to schools to promote a sports program (at least ones that are direct training for the "Pros.")

__________

"The Ares Excellence in Football scholarship goes to Tommy Jones, the most outstanding highschool running back of 2071. We at Ares are proud to support those less fortunate in metahumanity by providing educational benefits to outstanding young achievers. Tommy has won a full scholarship at Ares Tech and will be playing for the Ares Tech Cannons this fall. Also, his school will receive funding as part of our Excellence in Football program. Let's give a hand to our promising young scholar who has done so much not only for himself but for his school."

A young, very large brutish looking orc strides to the podium as the crowd goes wild.

Vlad