I suspect that just changing the education system to using the new Charisan numerals (0-9) rather than the old Church characters (I-X) will have a great difference in the education of future generations. And with Charisian manufacturers teaching the equivalent of trade schools and no doubt emphasizing the importance of careful mixing of different ingredients to get different steels and metallurgical results, or to get the new explosive compounds you get molar chemistry which leads to some bright youngster recreating the periodic table at some point. Measurement and sensible numbers produces new education in science and the Royal college along with more trade school education leads to more secular teachers teaching trades and general education. That's the production of mechanical engineering as a start, and probably all this leads to advanced geometry, trig, and calculus. In fact Calculus should be somewhere in the mix just as soon as the inner circle can find a "Leibniz" to introduce it in, because calculating gunnery tables and constantly changing rates was one of the spurs to developing it (at least for Newton).
Since so much of this strays from writ, secular education is going to become the norm. And because it works, it will spread. That was Langhorn and companies big problem. Science and Math work. They create reproducible results, and they're useful. As the underlying logic gets more and more built in, it will become the new orthodoxy for Charis and it's empire. Soon such schools and thinking will occur in Siddarmark, and if, as we all seem to suspect Dohlar is forced to capitulate, then it will get a foothold there too.
What we probably won't see, because it's not straight line germane to the story's, is a slow change in political/philosophical education or what real world schools used to call the humanities. It would make an interesting side story, but it's not really what David writes about so I doubt that we would see it much "on camera" so to speak.
Now if David could ever see his way to opening up his world as Eric Flint opened up his 1632 series.... But let's face it, Flint's 1632 methodology is the only time I can recall ever seeing an author opening up a world like that. And it's got to be a metric tonne of work to deal with. With as many story lines and contracts as David has to juggle already, I'd hate to even think what kind of a load that would be.
Still even though DW puts in a enormous amount of work juggling the events and doings in his political, social, and economic backstories, there are just so many facets of a "real" world that he'll never have the time to write about, or the page space to document. Or for that matter the interest in documenting because he want's to get his main story out darn it. So away we speculate. The changing education arena is just one of them. There are many others I'm sure.
Larry
