Putting aside whether we call something teaching/indoctrination, and whether it’s done by church/state/someone else, there should be least issue between rationalists and others in the clear examples you mentioned, where the evidence is logically explained by logically valid theories.

The problem is that VERY MANY of the topics taught by the state to children do not answer this description, including huge slabs of social studies, civics, sexuality, gender, family, history, literature, anything touching on the state itself and the state’s concerns including science, medicine, production, and the environment. The opportunity for corrupt error is wide open; as unlimited as government power.

Not only does the state teach many things as truth that are in fact matters of interpretation or arbitrary. Much worse, it teaches many things as truth that are flatly incorrect, that do not meet minimal threshold standards of logic, and that have been disproved in theory and practice over and over and over and over again, at huge and ongoing cost in blood and treasure. For these it is perfectly appropriate to use the term indoctrination.

As for duress, what is compulsion but duress? For example in NSW, if you refuse to send your child for compulsory indoctrination, the state will remove (i.e. abduct) the child, place it in foster care even if the education is worse, and thus destroy the family. If you refuse to pay, you’ll be imprisoned.

So yes it’s duress and indoctrination, properly so-called. It concerns the compulsory inculcation of many beliefs that misinform the child about the true nature of the world, and social co-operation, and rational ethics; it misleads them about the true nature of the state with false beliefs that are biased in favour of the state and corrupt interests, such as the author's tacit assumption that "we" are the state.

The parent’s right to “protest” will avail him nothing; that argument is just a piece of flummery, the moreso since his right to protest inheres in his nature: it is not a gift of the state. (The argument that one can protest is mere irrelevant docile state-revering.)

Why do they keep teaching these beliefs if they’re wrong? Because just as with religion, they believe, even strongly, what they can’t rationally defend and because it’s in their interest to do so.

And it’s in their interest precisely because of the privileged one-sided position these “educators” and authorities - these secular priests - have in the state, as against the subjects of their power. The state’s priestly class the intelligentsia, as much as or more than religious acolytes, has all the same potential for corruption and conflict of interest as against those forced to fund, and to undergo, its indoctrination.

That’s the point that the article ignores.

In these circumstances, it is laughable to suggest that “Curriculums should be determined by appropriately qualified people on our behalf”, when “appropriately qualified” is to be determined unilaterally by the state, and the evidence that it’s “on our behalf” is only that the state does it!

And what would you say if I made the claim that the Ayatollah decides “on our behalf” what indoctrination we should all be compulsorily subjected to? It’s just as much a circular, absurd, and completely impermissible appeal to authority when made for the state.

To think of state indoctrination as if the people were a land-owner commissioning an architect – a consensual transaction - is to display fundamental moral and intellectual confusion by completely ignoring the compulsory nature of state education: talking AS IF the funding and attendance of state indoctrination were not compulsory. Once we correct for this blatant factual and logical error, the argument collapses.

Just as religious indoctrinators have a program for systematic conversion to their creed, and hate competition, so does the state. But the state is much more of a threat to the good society because it has a monopoly of aggressive force which it uses to shove its religion down everyone’s throats and persecute non-conformists by harassing them, and threaten them with court, and fines, and abducting their children, or physically attacking and caging people who refuse to pay. The position of the state today is much more like the position of the Catholic church in the late first millennium, than like any other contemporary religion. It is positively derelict of the rationalists not to be alive to this point.

I will prove against all comers that all attempts to vindicate the rationality of the state’s child indoctrination flounder in the same fallacies, and exactly the same methodology, as churches’. State education has all the same credulous irrational dogmatic religiosity and intolerance, and is much worse for being based on physical duress, which the modern churches’ aren’t.

Education and state should be just as completely separated as church and state, for all the same reasons.

Should we teach more religion in schools?

God no, but it would be nice if they taught a little of the 3Rs, & made a lot less rounded students.

'God no, but it would be nice if they taught a little of the 3Rs, & made a lot less rounded students. '

would agree Hasbeen but due total lack of respect and ethics the kids tell the teachers to get s-. Maybe in not so many words but definetely in actions.

Jardine, you have poured so much of yourself into your comments that I feel I should try to propose at least as painstakeningly argued a response, but I'm not even sure that you and I live in the same world; or that what you see as we move in our world is what I see.

It might help me to understand your concerns if instead of just saying that religions and states are irretrievably malign, you could give us some idea of the alternative kind of society that you must believe could exist. It might be quite unfair but I have to say that, given the limited time (and intelligence) I have available to get my head around everything you say, all I see is someone driven to destroy every comforting assumption people make about our world and the societies we create in it. You actually remind me of how Mr Abbott dealt with problems when in Opposition, and that's proably a nasty and unjustified thing to say; but there it is.

BTW, I know Foyle quite well. He is an inspiration to all who know him, partly because he's always constructive, partly because he spends every day educating himself, partly because he gladly shares what he has with the less privileged, but mainly because he lives the Socratic good life. And he's like this knowing, as I do, that we have very little time left in this life and that there is no other; but knowing also that there is no God waiting at life's end to dole out rewards and punishments.

I hope you experience the peace that he and I enjoy, and not the fear that bedevils so many believers.