Education in Star Trek

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makare

I was thinking about the school on Deep Space 9 the other day and I was wondering what would be taught there. With all the different cultures and view points what would an education in the Star Trek universe look like? History classes now even in specific subjects like US history lack any meaningful depth. If you needed to cover the history of multiple cultures, could it be done?

I was just pondering it so I wanted to know what you all thought.
 
Speaking as someone who spent last year teaching 2 periods of World History per day... I'm thinking yes, there might be ways to teach the history of multiple cultures.
 
C

Chibibar

probably like Macro History where you teach how each society are doing during other society vs Micro History on specific history race (totally made up words)
 
You would just end up spoon feeding the kids the propaganda relevant to the current political climate.

Like the Federation is a liberating force for downtrodden civilizations, just as long as they agree to the government style foisted upon them by said Federation.

The Cardassians are ruthless terrorists that are out to dominate the know quadrant of the galaxy.

Then the Bajorans are just a bunch of wusses that the Cardassians and Federation wipe their heels on, because they can not take care of their own needs and defenses.

Then the kids would get on the Federation wide Memory Alpha and learn what really is happening in the galaxy.
 
M

makare

Speaking as someone who spent last year teaching 2 periods of World History per day... I'm thinking yes, there might be ways to teach the history of multiple cultures.
But all those cultures are still on the same planet and they are interacting in one way or another. In the Star Trek universe the prefederation history would be completely separate from the rest of the federation.
 
But all those cultures are still on the same planet and they are interacting in one way or another. In the Star Trek universe the prefederation history would be completely separate from the rest of the federation.
Right, but all I'm saying is that you can teach history with a multicultural view now. It wouldn't be any different in the future. Simply switch from regions of the world to regions of the galaxy/system/quadrant/whatever.
 
J

Jiarn

There was a pretty specific episode on this, when the Kai came to speak against the school's refusal to teach the religion of the Bajorans. It was pretty apparant that they were teaching Bajoran factual history alongside Earth history.
 
While history for history's sake is fun, especially if you're into that, the primary reason to teach history is to enculture the youth. Seeking to understand why the "world" is the way it is through the lens of history (ie, this is how and why we got to where we are now) one can learn to appreciate certain aspects of life that are otherwise bewildering or confusing. Further, history can help them understand the long reaching effects of choices people have made, which can help inform the children as they make choices in the future.

There will be historical specialists, just as there are specialists in anthropology, physics, etc, and they will learn history at a deeper level.

But I don't believe that just because there's more recorded history available, and just because there are more alien cultures than we have now, that teaching history will have different goals, or be more difficult to do than it is now.
 
With the advent of the Universal Translator... will schools still teach foreign languages?
Considering Klingons can still bypass it somehow, yes. Besides, the Universal Translator doesn't always work well when it encounters new languages. Sometimes you need a xenolinguist to program the thing on the spot to get something close.

As for the Education... it seems to me they would simply receive history mainly focused on the world and surrounding worlds of where the class is or based on the predominate race of the class. This is why Keiko's school mainly covered Earth/Federation and Bajoran history, as 99% of the class fell into those groups (Nogg was the only one who didn't).

Besides, on Earth or any other major Federation world, it would be trivial to set up multiple classes covering the histories of member worlds. With transporter technology, the kids and teachers don't even need to live on the same side of the planet to have class together once a day, so it wouldn't exactly be hard to find the right people for it.
 
Think of how much math they would have to teach. What's really sad is that we barely cover Calculus in high school now.
 
Think of how much math they would have to teach. What's really sad is that we barely cover Calculus in high school now.
Honestly... work has mostly become optional thanks to the replicator. Seriously, they don't even lose their waste... they just collect it in vats and then mass breakdown/replicate it into blocks of sanitary elements for use in the replicator system. Water is purified this way too.

In other words, all food that is replicated on a starship has at one point exited another's digestive track.
 
When someone invents self contained breathing apparatus and we eradicate air borne virus and bacteria, pretty soon people will be thinking that the fact we share our air is revolting.

"Just think - all air that you breath has at one point exited another persons mouth!"
 

North_Ranger

Staff member
When someone invents self contained breathing apparatus and we eradicate air borne virus and bacteria, pretty soon people will be thinking that the fact we share our air is revolting.

"Just think - all air that you breath has at one point exited another persons mouth!"
Well, that's hardly anything new. Nor the food part. We eat food. We crap. Crap is dissolved into nutrients. Nutrients get used by plants. A couple of cycles of plant-to-animal-to-crap-to-nutrient-to-plant... and you eat it again.

So we're all just eating crap that has been recycled a couple of million times already.

Also, I remember someone calculating the amount of air expelled by Abraham Lincoln in his dying breath - and then calculating that on average every person breathes in a certain amount of molecules from that same breath. So congrats, you all have something that's been in Honest Abe's dying mouth.
 
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