Oh boy, this website is a hoot. If ever there was proof government should be kept as far away from education as possible, this is it. Here’s a sample. It’s a comic to teach children about why we pay tax. (Note that this only seems to work on Internet Explorer. If you don’t see a comic strip below, visit http://kids.direct.gov.uk/main.aspx and click Places, The Offices, and then on the magazines on the reception desk.)
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Notice how expertly put together it is; very visually appealing. It’s worrying that the government is getting very good at this kind of thing — their “information” films have similarly high production values.
I find it interesting that in the tax-free world from the comic, there is no-one to collect litter or repair traffic lights, but there is someone to charge the children money for crossing the road. Therein lies a clue to another way the world might work without taxes.
More from NickM and the Adam Smith Institute.
Just in case it’s not clear what my problem is, I’ll spell it out. Here is a web site made by the government, funded with tax money. It teaches children that without paying lots of tax, all kinds of bad things will happen. But this is a political view: it is possible to imagine other ways that the world might work, including ways that involve low taxes and more services provided privately. So there are a range of ideas about tax. Education would involve teaching children about the full range of these ideas. Presenting one particular view as a fact is not education. Instead what is happening here is that the government is taking money from one generation in order to teach the next generation what a good idea it will be to take money from them. So not only is this not education, it is manipulation of children with the goal of making people think less about tax to make life easier for the government. This proves that the government should not be entrusted with the education of children.
These look like lovely books for your children, too.
Wonderful. From the sample pages it looks like they’re trying to say that Democrats are just like your parents. Ugh!
Oddly enough I think a lot of this stuff could be very educational for children of the right age along with some encouragement to think for themselves.