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Original RPG Stats by Marc Fletcher By AARON SKETCHLEY (aaronsketch@HOTdelete_thisMAIL.com)

2012.05.23 Ver 1.1

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Official Setting information is in darkgreen. Extended Universe information is in steelblue.

Education in the Unified Government and the Formation of Dissident Groups

Depending on the location, (ex. Earth, older and larger colony, or a new start-up,) education in the Unified Government territories varies significantly. There is but one constant throughout the Unified Government territories, and that is history up until SWI, or the lack of it. By and large, the Pre-SWI history of Earth is limited due to the near complete destruction of Earth and the lack of extensive data records in the surviving institutions and facilities. In recent years, there has been a few successful archaeological excavations; however the vast majority of what was known has been forever lost.

With the destruction of Earth at the end of SWI, the Unified Government opted for an Asian-centric education. The main reasons are the majority of East Asians in the Unified Government and the UN Spacy who survived the destruction of Earth, and the Chinese Empire was the longest civilization in recorded history. The long period of a unified culture is felt to be highly beneficial to the future of the Unified Government, and humanity in general.

European (and later American) colonialism, over reactive military actions, and wasteful consumption are frowned upon by the Unified Government in its vision of a utopian future, whereas Asian (specifically Japanese) 'Wa' philosophy, the ability to live in close proximity to huge numbers of people with minimal privacy/private space, and social ethics, such as being polite and not being a litterbug, are promoted. This is not saying that all values of one culture supersede and replace all of the others. It is saying that the good points from all of the cultures are retained while the bad points are not, with the priority of social harmony and cooperation being emphasized above all else in the Unified Government way of life.

Individualism and related traits are, of course, supported, but the main emphasis in the engineered society that the Unified Government has been endeavouring to create is peaceful harmony and group cooperation. It is justified by the front and center need of these societal attributes for the very survival of humanity and that a number of the societal engineers were from Japan and everyone accepted the 'if it isn't broke, don't fix it,' logic of their justifications.

Unified Government education is either in English or Japanese - both for the literati. The prime reason is that a) Macross is a Japanese production, b) a lot of the scientists and high technology manufacturing firms, pre-SWI, were Japanese and c) the language of the UN is English.

As humanity spreads across the galaxy, the distance between lonely small colonies is far and the ability for the Unified Government to maintain its social engineering is reduced the further one is from the core. In addition, non-cloned citizens educated in the traditional means by cloned parents whose only knowledge and advice on parenting comes from a small collection of childrearing books produced by the few actual parents and grandparents who survived SWI, are basically becoming spoiled selfish brats. Most of them end up being less productive than their parents (in both the sense of their personally productivity as well as their contributions to society.) A significant few of them step out of the Unified Government box and acquire knowledge that is not necessarily promoted by the Unified Government. Some of these individuals go on to form dissident, protest or even terrorist groups working against the Unified Government. A lot of the rank and file of these groups are generally less educated, discontent with their lot in life and looking for leadership and an outlet to their frustrations.

Therefore the fatal flaw of the social engineering of the Unified Government is the lack of training of the clones for parenting, a lack of being open to alternative ideas (thus making outcasts of those with alternative ideas,) and a general over stretching beyond the abilities of the Unified Government leadership's ability to lead.