Final answer:
Special schools for noble and gifted children provided training for high-ranking positions, such as the Ottoman Empire's devshirme system and the imperial academy in Nara, Japan. Prestigious European universities educated the privileged for professions in civil service. In the United States, boarding schools were set up for the assimilation and vocational training of Indigenous children.
Step-by-step explanation:
The special schools attended by noble children and exceptionally gifted kids that provided training for becoming priests and government officials varied across different cultures and time periods. For instance, in the Ottoman Empire, the devshirme system involved the recruitment and education of Christian boys to become part of the Ottoman bureaucracy and military elite, with training provided at the palace school. In Japan, the imperial academy at Nara taught young aristocrats various subjects including the Classics and Chinese, though true meritocratic advancement was limited. During the early modern era in Europe, prestigious universities like Oxford and Bologna were primarily for the education of the economically privileged and aimed at professions such as medicine, law, or theology.
In more recent history, particularly in the United States, boarding schools were established by federal authorities to educate and assimilate Indigenous children, focusing on training them for low-paying jobs in manual and domestic labor. These schools discouraged any maintenance of native customs and languages, often implementing harsh discipline to enforce assimilation.