I would like to start a discussion here regarding the dangers of state sponsored education and influence of youth. I will assume that to most readers the benefits of these things are already fairly apparent, so I am not going to spend extra time describing them. Note that I do not refute their merits. I am merely trying to show the other side of the coin and give a more complete picture. Please keep this in mind as you read.

To begin, all developing children have 4 major influences as they grow.

1. Their parents and immediate family.

2. Their local community.

3. The culture they are immersed in.

4. The state.

This discussion will chiefly involve the fourth. First, we must understand that anything we say, any plans we make, any suggestions we have will either be sponsored by the state or they will not. If they are not then they will be nothing but suggestions. We can only implement them if we do so privately, through personal expense. If they are sponsored by the state, then they will be universal. They will effect all children in Asgardia, or at least the vast majority. This is an incredibly important truth because anything that influences most children of a nation will directly influence that nations future. This could lead to very good or very bad things. Imagine if every child was given an incredibly intelligent personal tutor throughout all their childhood with infinite virtue, utter patience, and a complete commitment to truth. Such a generation would be filled with paragons of accomplishment. Alternatively, what would happen if every single child was taught to celebrate racism, prejudice, and violence?

The ability to influence a nations youth is very similar to the ability of a dictator. Interestingly, a dictatorship actually has the greatest potential for good of any governing system because of it's incredible unity and efficiency. A great and virtuous dictator could create wonders for a nation, and has done so many times in history. But there is simple and practical reason to not want a dictatorship: risk. It is easy to destroy a great nation, but it is hard to fix a corrupt one. While a dictator has unparalleled potential for good, he also has equal potential for corruption, and corruption is much more harmful then good is helpful over the long run.

But what does this have to do with children? Traditionally, children have been taught primarily by their parents and family, and secondarily by their community and culture. This is an incredibly diverse set of environments and creates a very diverse youth. However, when the state takes upon itself the role of educator, it has an incredibly large amount of influence on every child. This creates a unified environment and influences children evenly in mostly the same way. On a small scale it is not very different from cultural influence; yet, as the state influences children more and more, it creates subtle trends that will effect the entire nation in one way or another. Then, when these state influenced children grow up, they already are influenced by the state and naturally will tend to agree with it. They will become the next generation of educators and will reinforce the state's message to their children and community. Eventually this state interference will become cultural purely because every child was effected to at least some degree.

If this message is good and children are taught to be more intelligent, more hardworking, more kind, then we can say that this was good. We improved society much beyond what it would have been without state influence. However, if children at some point begin learning propaganda, ignorance, or hate, then all is lost. Because it means that every child will be effected, and in a short amount of time it will be almost irreversible. It is surprisingly easy to create division and spread ignorance among people. It is surprisingly hard to enlighten the ignorant and unite the divided.

This is why mass education and state sponsored influencing of children is dangerous. It can create harm or good in unparalleled amounts, but it will do so evenly, and once corrupted will be virtually impossible to fix. This does not mean that any individual idea is a bad one. It does not mean that any system will be corrupted or that any person in power will take advantage of their ability to influence a nations youth as Hitler did. It also does not mean that we wouldn't benefit from uniform mass education in wonderful ways. What it does mean is that we must always be aware of what could happen if a system is eventually corrupted.

After all, the nuclear bomb has the potential to save us from asteroids, prevent world wars, and equalize military power enough to prevent conflict. Yet, we work to rid the world of them because if they are misused, there will be no recovery.

It is clear to all of us that we see the pros and cons of ideas. That is good. Thing is, that's how we are, we are good and bad.

Family is more dangerous then the state since they transmit personal differences to the youth.

Unity must be the fundamental base of education.

Education should focus in providing:

Awareness of civil rights and duties.

Open-minded, non-partisan history.

Knowledge and tools for individuals to pursue their interest and happiness.

Self defense training to understand the consequences of violence.

And the most important thing is teach how to learn and let the mind free.

After 10yrs people should choose their curriculum/pensum.

Parenting is important but should be considered a threat.

I know... Sounds crazy, but here is why:

Everybody can have kids 😊.

Kids are fragile and learn quick, they can be easily traumatized and shouldn't be left unattended under a single cluster of ideals.

Family as we know it is a niche of ideas and stress. Families should have their kids on weekends and holidays while they are in training.

From birth to they are 5, and then after they are 15 gives the state 10 yrs to present the open-minded ideals.

Basically kids will be taken care by the state for 10 years under parent supervision.

I also believe families should have a 1 year break out of work and responsibilities when they have kids, so they can dedicate full time to their infant.

Birth Control is a must in all cases.

If you can't afford kids you should just keep it in the pants, if you are not open-minded or have radical ideas you are a threat.

I'm being very drastic and kind of joking but not really, because this kind of ideas are never welcomed.

But think about it, how many people you know that shouldn't have kids and have more that they can handle? I know many.

How many people are uneducated and basically shut down their smarter kids?

How many people teach just wrong things to children? Making that empty shell a threat? It's not the kids fault but they are doomed because of that.

Anyways I think I'm just starting to go out of the subject. But I live in a country where anyone can have kids and the families that have less assets have more kids. It's insane.

The point is not for the state to impose a doctrine but to help kids discover their passion and give them tools to be the best, give them knowledge not by telling them what to do but by teaching them how to learn this things and assit them when is needed.

Anyways... Just ideas.

Happy New Year

My argument is that the state is much more dangerous than family. I will hold to this firmly, though I accept that the state gives a great many benefits that could even potentially offset this. (I don't personally believe so but I will accept the possibility) This is based on the simple principle of diversification. Families are all very different. There can and will be a great many bad families. There will also be many good families. We can influence this as a culture and even as a state to shift this ratio as well.

Alternatively, the state is uniform. Unity is important, but when the state enforces the unity of it's youths education and development then it could be likened to the old saying of putting all your eggs in one basket. If the state becomes corrupt or incompetent (regardless of intentions) then the children will develop to be corrupt and incompetent. This will propagate to future generations exponentially until the state and it's citizens are destroyed.

Re: Population Control
By: Carlitos(Asgardian) on 5 January 2017, 2:07 a.m.

We are talking about population control... Nice. People wouldn't dream to say that out loud in the streets or a bar.

I think the name should evolve into sustainable cohabitation, it's the same thing, just sounds more rational and less like a blood bath.

It is said that animals in captivity don't reproduce as much as they do in their natural environment. I want to think that they are smarter then us in that aspect.

I think we must have kids in space, that's the way to go. Now... I've seen that in the UK a child can be made from 3 people. So maybe it won't be that complicated to "share a child" sounds awful and kind of odd but the point would be to raise it as a collective.

I previously posted on education and the involvement of the state in raising a child.

I will repost this there, I think it will be relevant to the discussion there to.

So... Yeah! No more than can be carried it would be deadly to do otherwise.

Have a nice day!

I would agree that in current examples available, "the state" is possibly the most damaging aspect to the greater percentage of "youths" and their developments. It should be our responsibility to fabricate a "state" that would not conform to this definition. Created correctly, corruption is freed from the inherent design. The easiest way to achieve this is to afford all citizens equal right in actually making the descisions. Incompetence is also likely to be erradicated by such a design, operating under the assumption of at least one person will have a clue, and they can educate the rest.

I don't think seperating children from their perantal units for any other reason than to assure their safety to be a wise thing. I also don't think "birth control" is something that should be enforced. It can be covered with general educational methodologies, certianly, but it'd make more sense to design habitational facilities with expansion capacity rather than try to impose limitations on the biological aspect, adjust the technological aspect to suit.

I think there will inevitably state involvement in education, given that we will be living on a space station that every resident needs to understand how it operates and how to operate it safely. To that end, there's going to be a strong push for basic reading skills (for warning signs), basic math (for reading meters, operating tools), and basic science as it relates to living in space. This is similar to an primary (elementary) school education.

While most nations now take guaranteed access to primary and secondary education (through high school) for granted, the first initiatives for public education were geared towards primary education and for similar reasons. The citizens can't use the government, that operates primarily through documents, effectively if they can't read and they can't pay their taxes without being able to do math.

Public education quickly grew to encompass secondary education, partly because of political ideologues hoping to dictate the course of culture sure, but in large part because of the simple economics of the situation. An educated population is a more productive population and states were the only actors who could pay for this cheaply and universally. It is going to be hard to prevent that kind of natural expansion, unless we head it off at the pass and bar the government from participating in education at all, which I don't think will prove popular. Parents tend to want their children to be educated and rarely have the skills, much less the time, to home school them.

Home schooling adds another devil to the issue. If we have public primary education and permit home schooling as an alternative, people will begin to demand curricular parity to ensure that home schooled children aren't being left ignorant of the above necessary knowledge by a parent who would otherwise teach whatever they please, such as an athletics only education (to raise Space Tiger Woods).

There exist several successful experiences in the world for nations which are basically made up of immigrants and have created successful educational systems for the children and the youth such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. However, these countries have primary cultures based on the Anglo-Saxon culture coming from Britain where these countries were british colonies. The british society itself has been built on equity, democracy and human rights. These countries have followed educational systems which have maintained their early established culture and somehow kept the private cultures of the minorities either their native people or later immigrants and their educational experience of these countries are successful. I studied my MSc in United Kingdom and I stayed there for 22 months and I saw how the minorities made up of immigrants originated 100-150 years ago still keep their privacies, own cultures, and traditions and at the same time participate to the domestic culture of UK even though this cultural participation of minorities is much less than Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

However, the asgardian culture has not been formed yet to follow an educational plan to preserve it and at the same time maintain the cultural identities of the minorities. The asgardian nation will be diverse more than any other nation on Earth and the diversity will be widen after several planets are populated according to the divesrse circumstances of these planets. At the beginning, the institutional infrastucture of Asgardia has to be based on equity, mutual respect and democracy. I do not agree at all with the opinion that the dictatorship may be advantaguous for Asgardia if implemented properly even with a virtuous dictator. The priority must be given to the respect of the human rights and cultural identities of the minorities of Asgardia.

At the beginning, the asgardian nation may be considered as a nation of minorities and the asgardian own culture will be coined later. The religion should not be considered at all as an issue for Asgardia. English language is not an official language in USA even though it is commonly used there. Similarly, English will be the common language in Asgardia for education, official transactions and media. Every minority will have the right to maintain its own language as a second language. The best educational systems proved of their results and outcomes will be applied in Asgardia for the scientific subjects of study.

I don't think we should emulate the British system of enforcing cultural segregation through the education system. That's exactly the kind of moralism that makes people cynical of state run education. A pluralist education system is an amoral education system, where no one is declared a permanent outsider or judged a moral degenerate to be culturally corrected.

When I was young, my mind formed friend'n foe identifiers, surrounding my amygdala, and gradually extending into my neocortex.  This happens to all of us.  In the interests of peace, we might offer the use of activities that boost excitement and nerve growth factor, positive Asgardia Amygdala programming, (#VoicesOfAsgardia) ... and perhaps a taste of something akin to Code Club.  I think we could form some collaboration, co-development, and co-promotion between citizens of Asgardia and Code Club, for youth.  Check out their volunteer opportunities, and share the idea of #FriendshipCube with citizens of Asgardia.