In the three alien civilizations, how much involvement and influence do the parents have over their children versus the state? Are children separated at an early age and raised in state institutions? At what age typically are they tested and have their future charted out for them?

As we have discussed, this will vary depending on what those in a ruling class among elites can carve out for themselves in having an advantage from direct control of their young versus turning them over to the state to be raised. The state childcare system is typically implemented for toddlers and will continue until children can be truly independent and self-sustaining, as a contributing member of society, with roles and duties to perform in exchange for the goods and services they need to live. Most are raised by the state, and so have only a loyalty to the state and not to personal relationships, as with a family in the case of human culture, or a ruling class in the case of those who are truly controlling the state and its edicts. That is the defect in a state-run system, that when it is only a central government that holds power, individual citizens become truly powerless because no one has an ability to change or affect policy, and it is basically a form of slavery, so socialism, in effect, becomes a form of slavery. The young are integrated into society at the earliest opportunity, in finding useful tasks for them to do as learning exercises and ways of tracking their progress and development to monitor their ability, so they can be tracked and funneled into positions of greater and greater complexity and challenge. So the idea is not to sequester the young in an artificial school setting for many, many years, to separate them from life through sequestration, but the opposite. The intent is to integrate them into society as soon as they are able to follow directions and carry out basic tasks that have a useful purpose, and to keep them working and learning basic knowledge on the side at the same time, but with an emphasis on productive tasks as a means of learning the things that are important to have a useful place in society, and not arbitrary and largely meaningless facts and figures, and the doings of people long dead, as in human education.