Star Trek: The Next Inspiration

So I was watching a little ST:TNG last night, and I saw that episode where Worf's son, Alexander, comes on board the Enterprise to live with his daddy. Part of the episode dealt with how Alexander was (mis)behaving in school. While watching those scenes, I started thinking: What would "school" on the U.S.S. Enterprise be like? In this particular episode, they made it seem like it was basically the same as the way it works in America -- one teacher, a class full of 20-some-odd kids, field trips, etc. But as I thought about it some more, I realized that the Enterprise would probably have a much different form of education. Come to think of it, Earth in general would do things a lot differently 500 years in the future, given that it's a utopia and all and our current educational system -- for lack of a better phrase -- sucks donkey balls.

So I got inspired to write a story. I'm calling it "Education on the Enterprise". It's taking the form of a kind of brochure that all the parents of school-age children on the Enterprise would receive describing how "school" worked. I'm still in the "idea" phase, but here's what I've thought of so far...

First of all, there wouldn't be the traditional "class" as we know it. I think that by the time five centuries had passed, people on Earth would finally realize that having one person be in charge of the education of 120 kids is a bad idea. Indeed, there aren't really "teachers" the way we think of them. That is, a Teacher with a capital T, someone whose sole job it is to ... well, teach. There would be several "Advisors" or "Mentors", people who would, among other things, meet one-on-one or in small groups (of, say, about 10-15 kids per Mentor)every once in a while (perhaps two-three times a week) to check up on their charges and to see if they needed any help with specific fundamentals, such as reading or writing.

Now here's where I start running into some problems with my idea. Given that there is no one particular job or profession that Enterprise's educational system is preparing it's students for, and given that there are a multitude of worlds available for the students to live on with a vast variety of cultures, what is the overall purpose of Enterprise's educational system? How long does it last? It seems that people tend to enter Starfleet Academy roughly around the same time that young adults enter college (around 18-19), and students who'd want to pursue a career in Starfleet would most likely require additional training and education specifically suited to that choice, but what if you didn't want to enter Starfleet? So I'm thinking that at some point, say around age 16-17, students would be required to set some sort of goal for themselves for "post-graduate" work. Now, this does not necessarily have to be the career that the students end up choosing, but it will be what they end up studying for the next year or two. So the question then is, how will students be able to make this choice? Well, somehow, Enterprise's educational system has prepared them to make it. How? That's not what I'm sure of yet.

As I said, it's still in the idea phase. But I do know one thing -- from age 5-17, these kids are not sitting in a room reading out of dusty textbooks. Look at Wesley Crusher, for chrissake. Annoying though he was, he exemplified the kind of education that the kids aboard the Enterprise would be having. He was interning! He was learning-by-doing! Actually, it went a bit beyond that -- the kid was a fucking Acting Ensign. He piloted the damn ship! Don't tell me that Wesley-the-obnoxious-one was the only one to whom such opportunities were available.

So there it is. More on this as it develops.