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Originally Posted by
Laurentian
I find it pretty funny that Terrans still have high school...oops I mean upper school, much different. They even have cheerleaders! The fringe worlds have them despite the fact that they are supposed to poorly educated. Er how many schools would each planet require?
Uneducated could mean "high school degree". In many countries today you can get sued if you try to prevent a kid passing high school, even if the kid doesn't deserve the diploma.
The number of schools would depend on how big a planet is. I think Chau Sara had 400,000 people, so if 1/10th were children, that's 40,000 kids.
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If fringe worlders are poor than who pays for those schools?
Taxes. And if you can't give a lot, expect lame schooling. (That's one reason schooling varies so much from district to district in the US today. That and poor people can't afford to buy a lot at school bake sales.)
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I guess they could be government funded but the Confederates are supposed to callous toward the fringe worlds so why would they pay to give them schools? Wouldn't they be government indocrination? So why would fringeworlders go to them? Is school mandatory? If so why would rebellious fringe worlders obey? If they are so poor why wouldn't they drop out at like 12 or something? Does education start at 4? Why do they need lots of schools when they can just upload whatever information they need?
Even in South Africa, the downtrodden populace was given schooling. Just not in English, since the powers that be didn't want the locals talking to people outside of South Africa. (That, of course, has changed now.)
Education is valuable, even if it's just high school level. If you haven't reached that level of education, you're missing valuable skills. For instance, suppose you put fringe worlders in positions like maintaining nuclear power plants, and it's hazardous to your health? You still want the employee to know basic math in case of emergencies, just not enough to sabotage things.
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One young Old Family
member (seems to be around Nova's age) had a
150 year old grandmother which is strikes me as rather odd. I Imagine there are fertilty treatments and surrogates but becoming a grandmother at about 130? Especially since the Old Families don't seem to have anything against teen marriage (not that this leads automatically leads to teen motherhood mind you).
She might have saved her ovaries.
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Apparently few Terrans live to be a hundred (and 80 is old) so it appears that Terrans have life expectancy rates similar to the US, nevermind the constant wars and the ill-health in the fringe worlds that should reduce life expectancy so there should be quite a few centenarians to make up for the young dying.
Terrence, a Confederate marine, retired and living on Tarsonis, was considered old in his eighties. I suspect life expectancies were decently good right before the Great War started, especially on core worlds.
Yes, there were wars, but they weren't that destructive before the zerg and protoss appeared. Korhal was the only exception, and it was indeed so shocking nukes were restricted thereafter.
Fringe worlders might have live shorter lives (Raynor's mother died of cancer due to government negligence, for instance) but Nova herself would have had little knowledge of things like that.
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Not to mention that
others have
speculated that the terran population growths depends on increased life expectancy.
I don't think that's really necessary. As long as most children survive to breeding age and somewhat beyond... they clearly have to have birth control, otherwise Tarsonis would have been overpopulated.
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Or that over 10 billion people have died in only 4 years. Shouldn't this be a huge demographic disaster for the Terrans? Which just leads to questions about how many Terrans their are supposed to be and how they got to be such a large size in such a period of time.
That should be a disaster. They lost more than half the population of Tarsonis, which I'm calculating as 4 billion (since I think 2 billion were killed; incidentally, I believe Umoja and Moria have populations of about 2 billion).
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The Confederacy (and the Umojans for that matter) were ruled by councils. I suppose those councils acted as a sort of cabinet and exercised authority collectively. However usually bodies such as these would be headed by a president since after all the term president comes from one who presides over a body such as a council. Not to mention there would probably one or more people who would effectively lead such a body, often by reducing the others to mere ciphers, such as in many modern parliamentary governments. Doesn't seem they were too interested in who was actually running the Confederate government, especially since now that is been destroyed and replaced by an autocratic monarchy.
There was also the senate, an elected "parallel" body which did seem to have quite a bit of influence, although probably less than the Council.
The Council being unelected was considered a big deal. Compare to the US government today; no one really cares that the Secretary of State didn't win an election to get her position.
