Lune Villa Finishing School
The Lune Villa Finishing School is a specialised educational institution exclusively for young women within the Benacian Union. Founded in 1719 AN and situated in the urban bailiwick of Lune Villa, it is the first of the finishing schools of the Union-State to implement the "Nurturing Path" indoctrination programme as a part of standard harmonisation processes. The school developed a reputation for upholding the strictest standards of ideological orthodoxy and psychological conditioning aligned with Humanist principles.
Facilities
The twenty-two acre site of the school occupies a prominent position amid the baroque splendour of Lune Villa's aristocratic enclaves. Its central edifice is an imposing colonnaded structure exhibiting the finest traditions of Goldshirian architecture and stonework. Surrounding this are residential quarters, instructional halls, libraries, gymnasia, and private chapels arrayed in an orderly quadrangular layout.
While outwardly opulent, the school's environment is intentionally austere and regimented. Students reside in stark dormitories, attend courses in utilitarian classrooms, and undergo strict regimens of gymnastics, posture correction, and meditative abstinences. This uncompromising austerity is meant to fortify their asceticism and singularity of purpose.
Administration
Lune Villa is administered by a Governess who also serves as the school's mistress of discipline. Paulina Klementina Šándorska, formerly of the Women's Auxiliary Service, has occupied this position since 1722 AN, cultivating a fearsome reputation for her unwavering commitment to the core tenets of Humanism and the relentlessly efficient suppression of deviant behaviour among students or staff.
Šándorska oversees a faculty and staff of 225 comprised of instructors, prefects, disciplinarians, counsellors, and support personnel. All are rigorously vetted and continually monitored by the Benacian Censorate to ensure adherence to received ideological conditioning and root out any potential memetic contamination or heretical deviancy.
Role of the N&H Future Leadership Programme
Since its inception, the N&H Future Leadership Programme has exercised an influential presence within the school. Scouts from the Programme routinely monitor students' academic performance, psychological evaluations, lineages and genetic profiles from a young age.
Those deemed exceptionally gifted yet unflinchingly committed to Humanism are discreetly tracked as potential candidates for subsequent cultivation by the Programme. Promising students, thus identified, may receive advanced theoretical instruction and access to restricted materials beyond the standard curriculum in order to prepare them for their future role as ones set apart from the common lot, and burdened with exceptional duties.
Accordingly, the Programme has exercised influence over faculty promotions, disciplinary procedures, and student recruitment policies at the school, so as to create an environment conducive to their agenda of identifying and controlling the development of favoured candidates. Conversely, talented but ideologically-suspect students have faced coordinated opposition through grades suppression, demerits, disciplinary proceedings, and expulsions.
Student Body
At any given time, the school at Lune Villa accommodates up to 750 students aged twelve to fifteen years old. The majority are identified through the "Calling" process - being selected at a young age by Benacian evaluators as demonstrating the precocious intellectual gifts and psychological malleability suited for development into model servants of the Harmonious Society.
While many are from families of good standing in the hierarchy or wellborn lineages within the Benacian Union's core realms, the school also accepts a quota of orphans, state wards, and foreign inductees earmarked for cultural assimilation. Once enrolled, all forms of contact for the students with their former lives are systematically severed in order to ensure a complete reorientation of their focus upon the indoctrination being imparted upon them.
The students are divided by age cohort and further subdivided into classes of forty girls apiece. The classes are further into coteries of eight. These coteries are punished and rewarded collectively so as to foster an efficient culture of internal self-policing. The classes are further encouraged by games and competitions for rewards and privileges to internalise Humanist teachings on finding the optimum balance between collaboration and rivalry when advancing the interests of the group which has become the seat of their identity.
Curriculum
In common with all other finishing schools, the institution at Lune Villa aims to provide young women with a comprehensive education that prepares them for their future roles in society. The curriculum includes traditional academic subjects such as mathematics, the sciences, and languages, as well as practical skills such as home economics, etiquette, and deportment. The curriculum also includes a strong emphasis on physical fitness and self-discipline, as well as instruction in the principles of Humanism.
Faith
A key component in the indoctrination process is the inculcation of faith in the great chain of being which binds the mortal realm to the celestial temple, and which places all creatures in abject subjugation to the Highest Divinity. Meaning therefore is derived through service to the rightly-guided and divinely mandated order of creation.
Students at the school are accordingly taught a greatly simplified form of Cedrism, with the emphasis being almost entirely upon the cultic worship of Viviantia, the goddess of life.
Nurturing Path
Developed and taught at the school on an experimental basis, comprehensive multi-year Nurturing Path curriculum is the embodiment of Humanist doctrine concerning the socially-prescribed role of women in the Harmonious Society. Its overarching goals are:
- Suppression of individualism and independent ambition;
- Cognitive conditioning towards subordinating personal desires for societal obligations;
- Embracement of selfless nurturing and maternal archetypes as the pinnacle of virtue.
To this end, the Nurturing Path employs a hierarchical system of three ascending tiers that students must demonstrate comprehensive mastery of to progress through. Each is denoted by an avian nomenclature:
- Hatchling (12–13)
- Swan (13–14)
- Phoenix (14–15)
Coursework encompasses a wide range of topics filtered through an uncompromising Humanist lens - from domestic sciences, languages, philosophy and ethics to childcare, etiquette and the art of gracious living. Physical and psychological conditioning regimens of increasing intensity are also integrated, including deprivation, group censuring of deviationist thoughts, and positive reinforcement of required behaviours.
Those unable to fully internalise each tier's teachings and shed their former individual identities face dismissal, demotion, or potential reassignment to menial labour roles as bondwomen. Advancement culminates with "kindling" as an ideal "Vessel of Virtue" upon attaining the Phoenix tier - indicating comprehensive renunciation of personal ambition in favour of contented societal service.
