Nobody enjoys being manipulated. I have never met anyone who remarked, “I’m so glad people cleverer than I tricked me into doing what they wanted.” Yet we are all bombarded each day with messages from people and institutions vying to shape our thoughts and control our behaviors.

Television commercials push us to buy certain products. Politicians describe domestic and foreign threats in such ways that only they can provide necessary solutions. Religious leaders choose which doctrines of their faiths must be diligently observed and which ones can be casually overlooked. More open societies might be marketplaces for competing ideas, but the most effective salespeople within any society are the ones who know how to magnify their own messages while silencing others.

Given that this is the case, a society interested in protecting its people from manipulation would be highly invested in educating citizens from a young age how to use reason, rationality, and logic to filter truth from falsehood. Aside from a smattering of classical and religious schools that focus on how to assess information and judge its credibility, it is evident that Western educational systems have been designed with no such purpose in mind. Students are taught what to think but not how to think. They are handed bits of knowledge without first being provided the cognitive tools for acquiring knowledge on their own. They have no appreciation for how misleading rhetoric and faulty logic are used to produce spurious arguments. They have no background in philosophy sufficient to arm them with the mental acuity necessary to spot and reject propaganda. They have no comprehension of the linguistic games that are used to program their minds. They lack shrewd discernment.

What does it say about a civilization that generally requires young people to spend thirteen or more years in public school systems engineered to produce mediocre minds? It should set off alarm bells! When governments are in the business of dumbing down citizens, they are investing in future generations who will be obedient slaves. Or, if an animal farm metaphor makes it easier for a........

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