Robin Hanson announces that he thinks schools exist in large part for the sake of propaganda. I’m not shocked. Actually, I think propagandistic schooling is vital to the health of liberal democracy.

Consider: think of every contact you’ve had with American political discourse, as well as every survey you’ve read that investigated American’s knowledge and beliefs about political issues. How many people have really thought carefully about the principles of liberal democracy and come to the conclusion that it’s a good idea? How many people have a knee-jerk positive reaction to whatever they happen to believe American principles are? I have little doubt that the second group is much larger than the first group, and that the second group deserves a lot of the credit for the fact that, to a significant degree, American society actually functions in accord with the principles of liberal democracy.

Now why does the second group exist? In my own school experience, my classmates and I were exposed to pro-American propaganda from an early age, i.e. narratives of the American Revolution, the Civil War, and WWII designed to leave us with no doubt in our minds that the good guys won these conflicts. And at every point, we were given the message that the good guys here were good because they adhered to the principles of liberal democracy. My impression is that this is what most people’s schooling is like, and it’s probably the reason so many American’s have a knee-jerk “yay American democracy” reflex. Certainly, my “yay democracy” reflex developed before I could seriously consider Plato’s criticisms of democracy.

In light of this, I would say that while we should try not to hinder the development of rational views about political systems, the fact is that many people aren’t going to put in the effort to develop a rational view of the matter, and the human tendency towards tribalism means that there will be a constant temptation to believe that the needs of one’s own ideological tribe trum the values of democracy. Furthermore, indoctrination is sadly much easier than getting people to think deeply about the issues. For this reason, I think universal pro-democracy indoctrination is a good thing.

As for Robin’s view on the issue:

But to me the honest approach would be the opposite: we should publish lists of specific beliefs we teach in schools, and our best arguments supporting those beliefs against critics. We can’t say such topics are not important enough to bother arguing for, if we are going to all the trouble to teach them. And if we are too embarrassed by the quality of our supporting arguments, we just shouldn’t be teaching such things.

Robin seems to complete “honest approach” with “best approach,” but he of all people should know better: dishonesty is rife among humans precisely because the benefits are often so great that one would have to be a fool to be honest in many situations. I do agree with him that we should not be teaching children things for which there are no good arguments, but we should be careful about frank official statements of what the purpose of public schooling is. It’s not hard to imagine such frank statements endangering the crucial project of indoctrination. I’m not sure they really would, but if they would, this is just another case where lack of frankness is the prudent move.