INTERLUDE:

Gap years

Compulsory education finishes at the age of fifteen in Icomo, at which time they receive their primalaureate degree.

Students with this level of education are knowledgeable in the core areas of language and math, but have also studied basic engineering and programming. This allows them to be productive members of a workforce that relies heavily on machines and robots.

Depending on the student, their education until that time may have been supplemented by other fields of interest, like writing and drawing.

Although some people go on to study until they are twenty-four or even twenty-eight, and earn the respective superlaureate or ultralaureate degrees, there are four mandatory gap years from the age of fifteen to nineteen. During this time, they receive a modest government stipend to do as they please, contingent on them working part-time or doing charity work for a combined total of at least two years.

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The vast majority of young people decide to return to school and obtain a superlaureate, while a considerably smaller percentage continue on with their education to obtain an ultralaureate.

Education is free and largely funded by the salaries of wealthy businessmen in Ii—where the super-rich have tended to concentrate, owing to that province’s bustling economy—and from whom there are not infrequent grumblings of dissent toward paying the relevant taxes.

That being said, the gap years have become an indispensable cultural phenomenon, the benefits of which are easy to understand. Therefore the gap year tax, if not paid gladly, is at least paid dutifully, and with a tinge patriotism.

Naturally, the gap years are intended to reinvigorate the young and give them time in which to gain perspective. During this period, they reflect on their childhoods and student lives and begin to understand what sort of people they are or would like to become. They also start to understand what being a student means, and what they would like to achieve as one. Nearly all of the students who return to school at the age of nineteen do so with renewed interest, receive better grades, and have clearer goals.

The gap years are therefore a special time in the lives of the young people of Icomo. It is a sort of intellectual pilgrimage for them, and they are expected to travel widely. They might hold a variety of odd jobs, volunteer for charities, or develop new skills. Alternatively, they might do nothing but read books, draw pictures, and learn music.

However they spend their time, it is invariably a period of growth and discovery, so much that Icomo citizens are not considered adults until their gap years are over, at which time they decide whether to pursue further education or begin working.