Some years ago, a friend of ours decided to stop being a chiropractor and become a public school teacher. At the time, I was still dabbling in what we like to call “education,” serving here and there as a substitute.
One day I mentioned to him some of the untruths, false facts, and lies included in the curriculum. Stuff like “Contrary to what is often said, Queen Cleopatra was a pure black African.” Uh, no, she wasn’t: she was Macedonian, the last of the Ptolemys to rule Egypt.
The ex-chiropractor, who was coming down the home stretch of his teacher training, replied, “You don’t understand. It’s all right to teach children things that aren’t true, as long as it makes them feel good about themselves.”
Nice. Pile up some self-esteem built on a lot of easily-refuted falsehoods. When individuals did that on their own, it was considered a character defect. A lot of technical terms were invented to describe this: “liar,” “B.S. artist,” “self-deluding ninny,” etc.
If you need lies to feel good about yourself, how do you feel about yourself when you finally find out that those things that made you feel so good were only… lies?
Education marches on.