This is a rant about a topic very close to my heart that coincides with some of the events happening in the world at the moment. In a way one can say this issue has been around for a long time, and there’s no doubt it will continue to plague human society far into the future, especially when so-called “civilization” is supposedly the default mode in the world today.
History has registered a myriad of wars and conflicts, almost all of which concerned by rule a certain “us versus them” narrative to engage and incite combatants, boost spirits and morale, and henceforth sustain the combative efforts from a fighting party. This kind of narrative of course isn’t limited to the war period, and it often continues on even when conflicts conclude. In fact, the winner in each war perhaps has not only more liberty but also incentive to preserve a certain narrative that can portray their involvement in the best light possible. Of course all this is taken as quite normal in the context in which it is employed. I’m not particularly interested in dismissing warfare propaganda as unethical because for the most part I’m convinced the problem lies more in the existence of war itself (which I find unjustified in most cases, but this isn’t my point for this particular rant).
Now let’s look at education, in peacetime or wartime alike. Needless to say, anything we learn in school about history or even current affairs has an element of fiction to it, however big or small. It’s very unlikely that reality can be interpreted with absolute objectivity for everyone is biased in some way in taking in the events happening around them. As a result, history is even trickier to capture due to everything being recorded in retrospect and naturally layers of filtering, misremembering, negligence, and retraction are allowed to emerge in between. In educating school children, there’s that element of unintended bias, and of course there’s also the deliberate attempt to convey untrue narratives to achieve specific aims (typically to hide something or amplify another). It’s not a rare practice in many parts of the world, and its existence and extent depends a lot on the political and cultural atmosphere of the nation, region, or locality in which it is employed. For example, in some countries there are active efforts to counter propaganda in teaching materials for the sake of relaying historical events in the truest, least refined forms to future generations. On the other end of the spectrum, there are quite a few of places where efforts go instead into the manufacturing and disseminating of propaganda that mislead youngsters both in formal schooling and beyond.
As I suggested, much of this decision to promote propaganda is influenced by the politics and cultural patterns of the place in question. So if the authority of a certain nation has a political agenda to fit education to a particular narrative, or a population has a traditional or cultural leaning towards a misled unity of worldviews (subject to debate but let’s just keep it for the sake of this argument). Now possibly the worst (and most obvious) outcome of this practice is that students of propaganda develop a false understanding of reality, and with a whole generation of youth harboring such a disposition, the consequence can be catastrophic. And keep in mind that everyone is under the influence of not just one but many sources of input, so a young child can receive messages from not only their schooling but also their family, their peers, the media, etc. Thus, if propaganda is used in education, politics, the media, and much of the civil society, it can mislead young people and prompt them to cultivate dangerously false ideas of the world.
Today my friends and I were discussing recent global affairs and the phenomena that gave rise to these. One thing stood out to me: a government or a head of government is more likely to uphold erroneous notions of history if they have been nurtured in an environment that condones or actively promotes propaganda. This of course isn’t a deflection of blame from the individual or group of individuals that makes deliberate, conscious decisions. At the same time, I’m tempted to think that a society that fails its own youth is also culpable, especially when the act is self-serving for the authority in power, more so than when a society is blindly stuck in its backwards, conservative tradition of mishandling the harsh truths about their own (ancestors’) doings. And as my friend concludes, it can very much turn into a vicious cycle of deceiving and raising a generation of misinformed politicians and voters, who in turn carry on that deception in educating their successors. What happens right now in the world is a lesson also to those who are granted (if they are) the responsibility for educating future generations and for promoting the most accurate (read: diverse and inclusive) understanding of the world as possible.