Reflections on Kiddie Indoctrinations in Canada

From the story a few days ago, about pro-Liberal indoctrination of children at teachkidsnews.com

While getting upset about the way in which Left and Right were presented in the article, it was tempting to overlook a further element in the presentation.

The most telling part of the entire article is, on reflection, the following:

And of course the party in the middle, the Liberals, believe there should be a balance between supporting individuals and supporting businesses.

Words like "middle". "Balance". All things that we want to be, right? To paraphrase BCF's comment, "porridge too hot, porridge too cold, porridge juuuuust right."

Teaching the left-right spectrum to kids would be bad enough, but too many adult blindly accept this meaningless paradigm as instructive, when it plainly isn't.

Presenting political opinion as some sort of balance between two "extremes" - nominally Communism and Fascism - both biases people towards the supposed "middle" and at the same time neglects the deep similarities that exist at both "ends". Libertarians have maintained this for years and have come up with the political "quadrant" thingy as an alternative.

They rightly argue that two forms of collectivism are hardly opposites, and ask where then does individualism come in. Right in the middle? How much sense does that make?

When faced with any two extremes, human beings naturally gravitate towards the middle. That is why, in the well known piece of pop psychology, when asked to pick a random number between 1 and 10, 90% of respondents choose 3 or 7. Defining the "middle" therefore, becomes a key element in any kind of indoctrination.

Teaching children that one political party represents the middle - i.e. the most fair and balanced set of opinions - has the effect of biasing them towards that party. And, of course, the authors know this very well indeed.