Interesting (short story)
"Tell me about your education system, Minister", the Inspector joyfully asked. He was already duly impressed by the systems and achievements he had learned of today.
"Gladly, Inspector. I will take you right to one of our centres.
They went through the courtyard and towards a spherical building high enough to reach the proverbial sky. Neither said anything before they arrived at the main door. It opened automatically, quick and without a single sound. Inside were long rows of people sitting with wires connected to their brains.
"What are they doing?" the Inspector asked, lowering his voice mid-sentence, afraid of disturbing whatever was going on.
"Not to worry, Inspector", the Minister replied, having turned his head at him at the same time the Inspector had begun to say the first word. "They cannot hear us. And to answer your spoken question: They are learning".
"I see. What are they learning here, exactly?", the Inspector asked in a jokeful manner.
"Everything we can teach them", sounded the reply. The Inspector's smile faded. Before he even was able to come up with an intelligently-sounding follow-up-question, the Minister continued.
"They go into a virtual reality. In that reality, they are in all respects themselves. The environment is specifically programmed to be as educational as possible. You are now watching the achievements from thousands of programmers and other respective experts in their field."
"How ... long?" the Inspector asked.
"It only takes about a year for us. About forty-two of your Earth years. For them, it's about three to four thousand of our years. Depending."
The Inspector again found himself waiting for the Minister to continue on his own initiative.
"I can understand your loss of words, Inspector. Trust me, I have had visitors from worlds both inferior and superior to your own. I believe I can anticipate all of your questions, even if you yourself might not be able to voice them at this time. First of all, there's the technology behind it. Understand that we cannot share _all_ the details, but I will give you some of them. Second of all, what do they learn? As I mentioned, they learn everything. What do I mean by that? What we did was take the sum of all our knowledge, translated it into a virtual reality that would most easily explain what should be learned. The whole thing is compressed. In the beginning, all we did was to utilize the time the person would normally be resting. Now, we have improved it much further. Everything appears normal for the person involved. They also have the option to discontinue the journey after a short while, but few chooses to do so. Those who do usually know exactly what they needed. If not, we try our hardest to resolve it. Then we make the necessary additions and put the person back into the system."
"The best learning is the learning you do through discovery, by figuring out things for yourself. That's what they do here. Essentially all they know, they've experienced first-hand. At least that's what it feels like to them. It works great. All of our mathematicians are essentially self-taught. As are everyone else".
"What do they do when they come out?", the Inspector asked, having regained control of his tongue somehow.
"Everything", the Minister replied with a smile. "Just like any other graduate of your education system would do -- whatever they specialised in. As you know, we have a life span of almost half a century. After spending about eight ninths of their experienced life in the educational system, they help society. They improve the system. They discover new things. Many discover new things while in the system, but our system is not set up for that kind of discovery. They learn what is already known to us, through discovery, while in there, and when they are finished, they discover things no one knew previously. That's usually how it works, but there are notable exceptions to this. You see, at once they start to create knowledge that's entirely knew, we have trouble compressing it at-the-fly. It actually takes longer for them to work on entirely new things while in there, so we disconnect them instead. The most important thing is that they become happy and productive members of society. It doesn't matter how we do it. The system, and we, are there for them. Not the other way around."
"Feel free to look around some more, Inspector", the Minister ended after a short period of silence. The Inspector appeared to be daydreaming, but had heard every word of what the Minister had told him. He was also greatly amazed by silence and the small echo that was there all the time while the Minister spoke, even though he only know became consciously aware of it."
"Thank you, Minister. This has been most interesting."
"Something looking that regular which provides an education that is most individual. On our planet, it's the other way around.", the Inspector thought to himself.
"Tomorrow I will show you something _really_ interesting", the Minister said.