ABSTRACT
Potentially all governments can use schools to teach citizens to love and protect their state, its rulers, and its laws. Schools can be used to convince students that the state has the competence and authority to know what is good for all people or to convince citizens that they have a duty to sacrifice their needs and desires for the nation. Critics of education in democratic states worry that government-operated schools will impose particular values, methods of instruction, and knowledge on future citizens. Ideally, in a democratic state, political choices are made without coercion. However, imposition of ideas in government-operated schools can have a coercive influence on the future political decisions of students. Therefore, in both authoritarian and democratic states, there exists the potential for government-operated schools to be used to control the population by shaping the ideas and values of citizens.
