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[Fikilili]

Dwarven children. By far the most useless dwarf imaginable. It's like sand, they're coarse and rough, they irritate and they get everywhere. So much so that their mothers are force to roll their asses to their position if they get too far. So while the little lads are growing up and reach the age of 12, what could dwarves do with them? Here's a few suggestions regarding children in fortresses.

Orphanages
Orphanages would be a bit peculiar. As you may have noticed, dwarven couples love to a do a lot of short sturdy dwarven shrex. Which causes them to give birth to tons of baby dwarves. Which forces you to create new bedrooms and beds. Much ressources for a dwarf that will only be useful in twelve years. Also, while these children grow and thrive in the fortress, it might be highly likely that their parents die, either because they belonged to the military, or because of some !!FUN!! accidents. Enters the orphanage!
A zone can be assigned as an orphanage, as long as there's beds and an assigned manager. Once created, children without bedrooms, children without parents or newborns will proceed to sleep in there. With tables and chairs, they will take their meals there to eat. The orphanage manager will make sure that dwarven children are entertained and educated, and thus they will partake in many activities. Mostly the same as playing, however such activities implies the teachings of a certain discipline, such as wood/stone/bonecrafting or engraving.
[EDIT : Due to recent comments, orphanages could be assigned as simple nurseries or day-care rooms for parents to leave their childrens at.]

Pass time with parents and [VOCATION]
Children have parents. Shocking, I know! While working, some dwarven children will interested into what their parents are doing, or what any other adult is doing. I was thinking of a [VOCATION] sphere. This sphere will determine what the dwarf is interested in, or wants to do later on. As a child, he will attracted to certain jobs, or appreciate specific activities. For example, if a child is seen around carpenter workshops and such, the [VOCATION] sphere will turn into [VOCATION:WOODWORKING]. This vocation will not fully determine what will the child become afterwards. However, it will have an impact on what he would like to do. This vocation will encourage the dwarf to learn prematurely the intricacies of the professions he aspires to have. The child will read books about it, observe other dwarves partake in such jobs, or even practice in the corner. So you might not end up with a peasant in twelve years!

Schools
Just like orphanages, zones can be assigned as schools. Scholars are likely to make good teachers. They shall teach chidren how to read, count, maybe even enhance their spatial sense and critical thinking (and much more). Eventually, children will grow to have less flaws than their predecessors, for example being less clumsy, less lacking spatial sense, and be able to engage in conversations more swiftly. The teacher, however, must have the same qualities as a trader; good conversationalist, good judge of intent, good persuader, etc. This will help greatly and engage the children more and more into what they're learning. The more a teacher is charismatic, the more likely they're going to listen. A class must have chairs and desks, for each student and the teacher.

I have some more ideas, but I'll see where this thread goes first.

[ArchimedesWojak]

+1

this should have been added a long time ago

[Azerty]

Excellent idea.

I would also add apprenticehsip and other social training, or how children get inculcated the moral and cultural norms of their society.

[NW_Kohaku]

Before addressing the meat of the suggestion, there are a couple mitigating factors I think are worth pointing out for those talking about the "now":

This is why you have population controls in the init files.  Set maximum child population to 10% of the fortress or less, and it isn't a big deal.  The way that dwarves work, you really don't need that many more jobs running to support 1,000 dwarves than you need to support 10 dwarves, especially by the time you have everyone trained to legendary, and it's just all excess production.

Also, I never had problems with children, since they still work on harvesting, and I tend to have excess farmland for trade and textiles, so every single child in my fortress is a legendary grower by the time they hit 12.

Anyway, orphanages are fine, although I think it might also make sense to just have communal creches even for children that are not actually orphaned.  An "orphanage" only makes sense in a society that presumes parents fulfill all of their children's needs (I.E. a "nuclear family" society), and where you therefore need a special institution for parentless children.  Something like a daycare or a creche for communal raising of children makes more sense for the more communal dwarven society.  (Especially if the parents are military dwarves, for example, where "bring your kid to work day" is a VERY bad idea, tradition of "dwarven baby shields" notwithstanding.)  This would naturally blend itself with the "school" idea, where you have a communal education system - you just assign a few adult dwarves to taking care of everyone's children, and if they have no parents, they just never go "home".  Depending upon fortress or overseer whim, you can have an all-communal childcare policy, or have parents care for their own children to some degree.

It's also worth noting that public education is ahistoric for the time period.  Public education only started around the Industrial Revolution as the rise of machinery started to require workers that were literate and had basic math skills.  Only when there was an economic imperative to educate the poor was public education embraced.  Dwarves are fantasy, of course, but it's the sort of thing where you have to recognize they're being different and fantastical in this regard, even if we consider it common now.

On the other hand, you have home education by the members of the family.  In this case, I think it makes less sense to have kids follow their parents to the forge and just hang around the magma forge as their mother pounds out crossbow bolts all day (much less military dwarves) for reasons that should be very obvious.  Kids get in the way and kids hurt themselves and others if given access to powerful tools.

Instead, it makes more sense for kids to either play at home, play at some sort of park or dining hall or whatever social space can be put aside for them (or the creche or school if available), and when their parents come home, they then will teach their children personally.  A parent teaching their child might train their child in their own jobs, for example, so a smith might pass on smithing skills, and it might depend upon the parent's teach skill, at that.  To do this, however, parents would need to start taking more time off to just teach their kids.  This time off goes up the more kids they have, and goes down if they have a school or creche they can send their kids off to.

[Uthimienure]

An important consideration would be that a dwarf baby seems to be born with all their "adult" preferences (likes/dislikes), attributes (strength, agility, etc.), and needs.  The dwarf baby doesn't really have a strength of 83, for instance.

They will grow and mature up their adult statistics levels at age 12.

These orphanages, schools, and vocation ideas would be part of this growth and maturing process, and should not create dwarfs with higher statistics than these upon reaching age 12.  Otherwise we could have 12-year-olds with superior talents compared to the adult migrants.  This could become unbalanced.

If Toady addressed "age-based" statistics that increase from basically "zero" as a baby up to their "adult" potential, that's another story... and the orphanages & schools could be part of this process.

The vocation idea could be used to bring the kids up to a similar level of skills the migrants arrive with, but in skills that are relevant to what they were learning.  This would be cool and appropriate for the fortress they grow up in.

Good ideas, Fikilili.  Teachers, baby-sitters, nannies, and master-apprentice relationships would be cool.

[NW_Kohaku]

An important consideration would be that a dwarf baby seems to be born with all their "adult" preferences (likes/dislikes), attributes (strength, agility, etc.), and needs.  The dwarf baby doesn't really have a strength of 83, for instance.

This is something that Toady has said he wants to address in the future.  Children already have a starting size they grow from to adult size, which is a starting version of that.  (Also, since size multiplies the effective amount of power that a creature can produce in addition to Strength as a stat, a smaller creature that is still growing is already gaining in strength as they grow.)  In the old development pages, one of the bloat objectives was to make preferences based partially upon what dwarves see as children, rather than being innate.  This would mean that a favorite animal, for example, wouldn't be randomly selected from all the animals that exist in the world, but from among those that could feasibly be seen in a fortress (probably making zoo animals more likely).  Hypothetically, this could also apply to some personality traits, like art love (if the fortress is paved in engravings) or nature (depending upon how much of a hellscape the dwarf was born into).

[Thisfox]

While I'm not sure about orphanages as such, a school area being able to be designated, where the youngsters and any adult dorf who wants to or is assigned to teach might turn up too, seems like such a sensible idea.

I do try to make an area similar to a school or childrens area in my fort, usually a wellroom with a spare food stockpile and toy stockpile, and some beds and cabinets and chests that don't belong to anyone (I don't know why dorf children love cabinets, but I often find it's the best way to attract their attention). As I don't assign the kids to their own bedroom, this means that they tend to congregate in this area and it does make it easier. But the chance to get them some adult interaction and make it less likely for them to wander out into the edge of the map and get killed or horribly maimed by a camel and three pissed off turkeys (it happened. I don't know why, I was busy trying to breach an aquifer and didn't check why) would always be a plus. (completely a side issue, but I'm beginning to think turkeys might need nerfing, one took out a werebeast singlehandedly for me last year.)

[NW_Kohaku]

Oh, and one other thing to react to:

The scholar might be a good teacher for adults, but when we're talking about daycare for toddlers, that kind of knowledge is going to largely go to waste.

Daycare employees would likely be better served by having specific personality traits like high self-control, fairness, friendship, cooperation, and merriment, with lesser emphasis placed on things like eloquence, harmony, sacrifice, tranquility, and peace, as well as high cheer propensity and tolerance, and low stress propensity, anger propensity, violence, cruelty, and vengefulness.  (Children pick up easily on the stress of those around them, so maybe make children have thoughts on the stress levels of caretakers?)

In terms of skills, pacifier, consoler, comedian, and also, naturally, teacher, would be good matches.

[Azerty]

An important consideration would be that a dwarf baby seems to be born with all their "adult" preferences (likes/dislikes), attributes (strength, agility, etc.), and needs.  The dwarf baby doesn't really have a strength of 83, for instance.

They will grow and mature up their adult statistics levels at age 12.

These orphanages, schools, and vocation ideas would be part of this growth and maturing process, and should not create dwarfs with higher statistics than these upon reaching age 12.  Otherwise we could have 12-year-olds with superior talents compared to the adult migrants.  This could become unbalanced.

If Toady addressed "age-based" statistics that increase from basically "zero" as a baby up to their "adult" potential, that's another story... and the orphanages & schools could be part of this process.

What about specific skills for children? For exemple children could learn Calcul, Grammar, Geometry or Drawing; likewise, apprentices could learn Basic woodwork, Basic fishmongering or Basic milk-tender. When becoming adults, after combining with preferences and previous experiences, such skills might be converted to their adult equivalents, for exemple a very good Grammar and Drawing, combined with specific courses, might turn into a good starting in Geography; likewise, a high Basic woodwork who felt trees might become a good Wood cutter.

[Fikilili]

Oh, and one other thing to react to:

The scholar might be a good teacher for adults, but when we're talking about daycare for toddlers, that kind of knowledge is going to largely go to waste.

While I agreed with the rest of your response, I do not with that part of it. I'm talking about a SCHOOL, not a kindergarten. And believe me, some private schools for young children are pretty serious and are taught discipline at an early age. Mayhaps children could only go to school at a certain age, perhaps at 5-6 years old?

[NW_Kohaku]

While I agreed with the rest of your response, I do not with that part of it. I'm talking about a SCHOOL, not a kindergarten. And believe me, some private schools for young children are pretty serious and are taught discipline at an early age. Mayhaps children could only go to school at a certain age, perhaps at 5-6 years old?

Well, in this case, I'm thinking of daycare for the toddlers that separate from their mothers at 1 year old.  Right now, there's no real difference in behavior from 1 year old to 12 years old, so it would certainly make sense to have a transition from the very young children to the children that would start receiving basic education, like around 5 years old.

That said, I still think the scholar would be more of a college-level education teacher than a grade school teacher just trying to drill basic literacy unless they were being used as the private tutor of a prince(ss) or son/daughter of the count(ess) or the likes.