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Old 09-05-2020, 06:24 PM   #11
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: (Another) World of Superhumans

The average high school would only have seven superhuman students though, which would make it uneconomical for public or private schools to have specialized classes, facilities, and faculty for their super students. Being talented is not a protected category, magnet schools based off intelligence or particular skill sets are constitutional, so I imagine that supers would fit under the same purview.

As for the danger associated with having supers mixed with mundanes, imagine an adolescent with the following ability: Mind Control (Conditioning, +50%; Reliable, +10, +50%; Super, -10%) [95]. They could rewrite the minds of everyone within their school with only a few days of effort and treat them as their personal toys, and that type of individual could occur within the bottom 80% of supers.
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Old 09-05-2020, 07:00 PM   #12
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Re: (Another) World of Superhumans

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
The average high school would only have seven superhuman students though, which would make it uneconomical for public or private schools to have specialized classes, facilities, and faculty for their super students. Being talented is not a protected category, magnet schools based off intelligence or particular skill sets are constitutional, so I imagine that supers would fit under the same purview.

As for the danger associated with having supers mixed with mundanes, imagine an adolescent with the following ability: Mind Control (Conditioning, +50%; Reliable, +10, +50%; Super, -10%) [95]. They could rewrite the minds of everyone within their school with only a few days of effort and treat them as their personal toys, and that type of individual could occur within the bottom 80% of supers.
Me I'd never allow allow that advantage as written without Mind Probe as a prerequisite. It would be like picking a lock with no sense of touch.
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Old 09-05-2020, 07:01 PM   #13
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: (Another) World of Superhumans

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The average high school would only have seven superhuman students
Your high schools seem oddly small. When I was in high school in the mid-70s my school would have had 16 supers and our cross-town rivals would have had 20 (out of a town with 30-40k residents).

So for what I remember to be a commonly sized instittion you have fewer supers than football players but more supers than cheerleaders. Supers would outnumber the newspaper and yearbook staffs (though not perhaps if combined). Much more than the chess club. Seems like quite a reasonable clique to me. :)
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Old 09-05-2020, 07:33 PM   #14
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: (Another) World of Superhumans

The average high school in the USA possesses 600-700 students. The majority of the best high schools in the USA have less than 700 students and some of them have as few as 200 students, though the best does have an enrollment of 1800 students.
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Old 09-06-2020, 11:00 AM   #15
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: (Another) World of Superhumans

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The average high school would only have seven superhuman students though, which would make it uneconomical for public or private schools to have specialized classes, facilities, and faculty for their super students. Being talented is not a protected category, magnet schools based off intelligence or particular skill sets are constitutional, so I imagine that supers would fit under the same purview.
Supers are becoming established in your setting around the same time the concept of a protected class/category is being established, so that's going to be on the table during the formulation of such laws. Additionally, I don't think there's anywhere in the nation where gifted and talented students are required to go to a special school*, which seems to be what you are suggested with your super schools. I'm just saying, this is going to be influenced by - and have no small amount of influence on - the way the civil rights movement unfolds.

*In cases where there is a special school for gifted and talented students, it's not uncommon - certainly this was the case in my area (and the reason I didn't participate in such programs until middle school, as I didn't want to leave my own school and friends) - to have a single school that handles such programs, in addition to having "normal" students/classes/etc.

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As for the danger associated with having supers mixed with mundanes, imagine an adolescent with the following ability: Mind Control (Conditioning, +50%; Reliable, +10, +50%; Super, -10%) [95]. They could rewrite the minds of everyone within their school with only a few days of effort and treat them as their personal toys, and that type of individual could occur within the bottom 80% of supers.
Unless being a super automatically makes you more resistant to other powers, such a person is every bit as problematic in a super-school as a regular one. Indeed, such a person is arguably more problematic when his/her potential mindslaves have amazing powers. You'll need methods of either preventing people from using powers, or detecting when they do so (both of which are implied by the Super Power Modifier). If such methods are expensive/rare enough for it to not be sensible for every school to have access to them and horrifically-problematic-yet-low-cost abilities are as prevalent in the setting as they are in your posts, then I could see it being compulsory for superhumans to go to special schools. As I noted, however, I strongly suspect it's more realistic that a given region would have a single school that had a supers program in addition to regular programs, rather than having supers-only schools.
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Old 09-06-2020, 12:00 PM   #16
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: (Another) World of Superhumans

I think that it would be the parents of mundane parents who would demand that supers have their own schools, to prevent their children from suffering from competitive disadvantages. In addition, a number of extracurricular activities in mundane schools would like be forbidden to supers due to their perceived unfair advantage. For example, a super with Enhanced Move 2 (Ground) [40] would have an insurmountable advantage in long-distance running, as they could reach speeds of 40 mph even if they were otherwise average in their capabilities.
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Old 09-06-2020, 12:07 PM   #17
Fred Brackin
 
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I think that it would be the parents of mundane parents who would demand that supers have their own schools, .
....and are these parents going to form mobs with pitchforks and torches demanding separate but equal schools for "different" kids?

If you think they would do this and that it get them what they wanted you've already settled what the role is of Supers in your new setting and that role is persecuted minority.

It would go farther. Adult supers wouldn't be allowed to "compete" for "normal" jobs. You probably end up with Super-Apartheid.
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Old 09-06-2020, 12:21 PM   #18
Flyndaran
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Default Re: (Another) World of Superhumans

The supers as stand in for persecuted minorities in the real world always fell flat to me. Because those with supernatural powers are literally very different to all other people by definition.
It's quite silly, IMO, to start yelling about pitchfork wielding mobs when you have children with equivalent destructive power to those carrying guns.
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Old 09-06-2020, 01:35 PM   #19
AlexanderHowl
 
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The supers as stand in for persecuted minorities in the real world always fell flat to me. Because those with supernatural powers are literally very different to all other people by definition.
It's quite silly, IMO, to start yelling about pitchfork wielding mobs when you have children with equivalent destructive power to those carrying guns.
I agree. Superhumans as persecuted minorities is sort of a silly premise, especially when some of them can literally change the minds of the people around them. It is more like parents would withdraw their children from schools with known supers, so concentrating supers in specialized schools would be required to prevent social disruption.

In such a setting, national governments would likely run such schools, as they would want to make sure that any antisocial tendencies are addressed early. In the USA, this would likely mean that a significant number of supers would likely end up in the federal bureaucracy and/or military, while the majority of the remainder would end up in corporate jobs. A licensed hero system may evolve to keep the supers that wanted to be 'do-gooders' or just wanted normal careers properly registered, with the US government providing wages, benefits, liability protection, etc. as incentives for registration (unregistered supers who engaged in vigilante action would not have the benefits).

In such a registration system, supers could be divided into student, government, corporate, and independent. Independent supers would include classical superheroes as well as people who have superpowers but pursue normal careers (for example, a professional baker who happened to have the ability to create spatial portals). Registration would be especially important to independents, hero or normal, because it would offer liability protection (though they may find themselves called upon during emergencies). Unregistered supers would probably be considered to be automatically suspicious by the general public.
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Old 09-06-2020, 02:20 PM   #20
Aldric
 
Join Date: Nov 2015
Default Re: (Another) World of Superhumans

Would that assume there is a reliable and widespread enough way to detect supers?
And what about knowing what they can do?
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