It is to my understanding that Sargon of Akkad believes the current and next generations of children (in the United States) will undergo a concentrated effort of what to think rather than how to think through the Common Core educational standards brought about by the Obama Administration. Link here.
To this point, I offer a brief rebuttal. The belief that an educational system has the ability to constrain the human mind is one that has been offered time and again by authoritarians as a method of mass indoctrination and means of societal control. Formal education has always been a key interest for religious institutions, whether it be Judaism, Islam, or Christianity. Unsurprisingly, these religions rely on access to the minds of children in an attempt to indoctrinate them with particular--and peculiar--beliefs about morality, the universe, and even politics, if we're talking about the American South.
Still, we get free thinkers abound. We are fortunate to be of the age where the edifices of religion are crumbling, after they hedged their bets on explaining the "unknowable", only to be shown how knowable something can be while still showing how little we know about it--a double-strike against the gnostics of faith. This benefit bears the fruit in the way of fallen adherents; the many friends, if not ourselves, we can name who started out in a strict household of faith, chastity, and deep piety and who later fell away. The mass exodus from religion in the west is a sign of the failure of attempted indoctrination by a mix of education, parents or the previous generation, and pious men with a keen and unhealthy interest in children.
Religious indoctrination failed so thoroughly that it required the pious institutions to create increasingly morbid and vicious punishments for those who failed to conform. Excommunication was never enough, but instead required whipping, then starving on a rack, and eventually to the gruesome deaths of stretching or being drawn and quartered. These punishments would have never been needed if humans could be so easily indoctrinated on a large scale. Moreover, it would also require the assumption the vast majority of people are sheep in need of a shepard, a fact that is evidently false. Rather, the use of Occam's razor would remove the previous line's assumption and replace it with the simpler explanation: acutely aware of the consequences of transgressing, most people held their tongues and did the dance (metaphorically, as dancing would have you stoned to death) to avoid ever standing out.
The symbols of liberalism in America will not do a better job than the old icons of the faith. Any attempt to indoctrinate children can be easily subverted by the ubiquity of the internet and a dash of skepticism, something which the human brain is innately wired to have. No effort aside from a lobotomy will crush the curious spirit of children and the profound power of pattern seeking which we have evolved. The moment the observer fails to see the pattern working perfectly, doubt will take command and the hard efforts of indoctrination will begin to crumble. Just as it had before in religious education.
It is a bleak look of the future to think so little of others. Despite my deep respect for Sargon, I cannot help by feel that he may have flown too close to the sun on this point. He has become the hero of his own tale, his mind supreme over the easily pliable, gullible, a credulous minds of the next generation's.
This has been an unedited rant. @nrokchi
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