What do French attitudes about capitalism, American attitudes about sex and Korean attitudes about evolution have in common?
They are all in school textbooks used by their countries.
It's not news that school textbooks have a powerful influence on developing minds, that is why efforts to hijack school teaching for the purpose of social engineering have always been a factor - heck, the origin of government school control was social engineering, not education.
In The Economist, the case is made that the degree to which a government keeps control of classroom textbooks is a good guide to its commitment to ideological control. Yes, the more social authoritarian a country is, the greater its efforts to control what truth children are taught. if Arab countries refuse to even put Israel on any of their maps, it is no surprise Arab children dislike Israel.
This is why, in America, it's actually better to have local control of education. Sure, here and there we get cranks that want to teach religion in science class, just like we get cranks teaching that genetically modified food causes cancer, but it is never a national issue the way policies can be in more controlling countries.
It ain’t necessarily so, The Economist
