Jafar's a great guy to get POV of, though I miss Mahlone and his wide-eyed innocence (and is it just me, or have we never gotten a Krystabel POV?)
One thing Jafar appreciated about the Liberator was that he didn't overexplain. Oh, he didn't underexplain, either; Jafar still remembers Mahlone and Tesilon-Kappa's poleaxed expressions when Cain explained why they weren't going to do the same thing as the failed Imperium. But for the more forward minded members of the Liberation Council (unfortunately, that includes Krystabel), he was willing to just say and let them figure out for themselves.
Which was why, nine months from Cain's initial order to expand their educational facilities, Jafar convened the Second Council on Education. The Chief Clerk had no intention of autocratically running his system like his foolish predecessors; instead when a matter was of great import, he would assemble eight of the most relevant intellectuals (but most certainly not the same eight for every subject) so that a council of nine could deliberate on the matter. The First Council had mostly been to agree on the questions they needed to ask themselves, and so this one would be a presentation of answers.
"Thank you all for coming today." Jafar had copied the Liberator's style of a round table with all chairs equal, only a banner with the sigil of the Changer behind him indicating that he was first amongst equals. "Last time, I asked all of you many questions; now, I request for the answers to those questions. To start with, what is the aim of the Liberator in assigning this task to us?" He had his own ideas, of course, but saying them would bias the council.
"Because we have both the knowledge that is to be taught and the outreach to do the teaching." Barrios said. "The Bringers might have the first, and the Handmaidens the second, but teaching requires both, and so even if we are not the top in either we have more to contribute." Jafar was pleased that the bastard 8th son turned politician had corrected himself from the cynical "to keep us busy" answer he gave at the first Council. Truly, it was wise to not dispose of subordinates at their first mistake.
"Faith." It was rather surprising that Almudron, former priest and now expert on comparative theology, was the second to speak up, and his answer even more so. It certainly captured everyone's attention, Jafar's included. "It is true that we are the most influential of the four. But what we lack is faith. The Handmaidens are the emissaries of Slawkenberg's protector deity; even now, she has turned one of the vicious invaders into a protector, and sent the rest of their kind scurrying. The USA have delivered victory upon victory, against enemies we were taught to fear. And the borgs have created enough miracles to make an Imperial Saint blush; the Panacea, the Liberator's Fire, and more. Yet, what do we have? Mortal power, but can mortal power be put upon a scale with such faith? The quartered wheel is imbalanced; the Liberator has given us a chance to right our ship."
Jafar was impressed; while he had been thinking along those terms, Almudron had expressed it with great clarity. Certainly, the rest of the council thought so too; while the others still gave their well-thought out answer, it was clear that Almudron's had captured the crux of the issue the best. Satisfied that all knew what was at stake, Jafar moved on. "Next up, what would be the main strategies for quickly expanding our educational facilities?"
There was plenty to listen to here. Garangolm, who managed the resource flows to the borgs, had actually managed to formalise the ad-hoc system of apprenticeship the techpriests were using in their factories and gotten a test facility for educating new techpriests running, though the first graduating cohort wouldn't be ready until next year. The demonologist Magmalo had also done tests on volunteers to imbue their minds with knowledge from the Infinite Library; unfortunately, said knowledge was extremely scattershot and there seemed to be a limit without crossing the line into demon summoning, something Jafar was thankful the former summoner lady was able to restrain herself from doing. Somnacath was experimenting with sleep-lessons; so far, it appeared that it was effective on people who were already good at the topic and useless on those with no awareness. Jafar approved an expansion of that one, with the suggestion from Barrios to pick a series of elementary topics that built on each other.
He did have to pause Rakna as she presented on the possibility of using the non-natives to derive an education system that Imperial planets with more sense than the Giorbas would use, though. "Pardon, but the topic of your presentation strikes me as having some relation to a recent event. Would you know who the writer was?" There was no shame in presenting one's subordinate's work, of course, so long as rewards were given appropriately; many of the previous ideas surely had such involvement too, and Rakna's position as the head of the largest number of clerks meant leveraging that was her greatest contribution. But something about this tickled his brain, and he had to know.
"Ah, it's Firis, from the strategic data policy division," Rakna answered. Right, Firis, that name came up in a discussion before, Jafar pondered. Fortunately, Anja, Garangolm's equivalent for the USA, had an answer. "Ah, right, that's the girl who was involved in that keruffle with the... whatshisname, Heider? The guy who went and accused a Handmaiden. No, the sibling of a Handmaiden, I think?"
Right! Jafar had almost forgotten about that waste of space that had him called up in a very uncomfortable meeting with Mahlone and Krystabel about abuse of authority. He'd personally interrogated the person to find it was something as dumb as him being upset his crush didn't return his feelings. "Go ahead, then." It was always good to have a clear mind and questions answered.
After Rakna finished her presentation, Almudron started. "While I had intended this independently, knowing the person behind the last proposal, there might be room for cross synergy. A lot has been said on the education of adults, but children are our future. I would like to propose that we do a trial run of standardised children education using the orphanage attached to the temple of the Imperial Creed. As it stands, all early education is home-based, which is going to become tougher based on the projected working standards. At least, the priests I know have experience imparting knowledge of letters and numbers, and the closest thing to a proper curriculum. Given that non-natives are common at the church, I believe there's synergy to be found with Rakna's proposal."
It was a good proposal, and the Liberator tended to look favourably on anything that kept the worshippers of the Corpse-Emperor part of society. While he had to admit he wasn't quite able to share in Cain's high-minded dream of perfect freedom of worship, something that has turned out to be rather foresighted with the Valhallans, this was something he had no problem getting involved in. Or, rather, Almudron involved in; the man still kept many contacts with his old faith, and letting him lead this project would surely increase his loyalty. "Very well. Consider it approved. Rakna, I'll trouble you to give me a combined version of your proposals. Next?"
Anja rose to her feet. "The USA has developed a new way of teaching soldiers without having to hit the fields. It's this rather fascinating thing called a miniature wargame, where painted miniature military units are assigned statistics and point costs and the soldiers try to defeat their opponents. I think there's a opportunity to move these games into the civilian markets..."