No matter how important you think public education is for equality of outcomes, civil society, or great teen coming of age films, there's no way around the fact that it's blatant indoctrination. Just because it isn't always very effective indoctrination doesn't change the fact that you have as near as possible to a monopoly over the messaging crammed into the most impressionable fatty tissue on Earth. The best way to justify public school propaganda is that it counters all the corporate, redneck, pornographic, Christian, morally relativist, Sharia, gangsta, and tanorexic propaganda pouring out of every other cultural orifice. Sure, most often public school propaganda is the intellectual equivalent of the Full House theme song. But marshmallow fluff beats Michigan Militia in my book any day of the week.
It's no secret that, after history, literature is the easiest way to deliver a political payload to children's minds. And science fiction is probably more effective at delivering that messaging because it creates a gash of possibility wide enough to allow expectations to be reshaped. Below I'll go through a selection of sci-fi lit appropriate for teenagers, some of them tried curriculum favorites and others that I believe could warp young minds effectively with little need for lesson planning. All will be scored 0-5 on two variables. Political punch is just how hard the book hits you over the head with ideological messaging. Ambiguity is the flexibility possible in interpreting that message--the enemy of public education since it's inception.
Brave New World
Outlook: Constitutional Democracy, Cultural Conservatism, Classical Liberalism
Political Punch: 4
Ambiguity: 4
At last, a book to bring Rick Santorum, Mother Jones subscribers, and the Unabomber together under one roof. Whose outside of that roof? Everyone that prefers Playstation to civic participation, Percocet to regret, or oral sex to moral turpitude. In fact, I think they are building a Brave New World planned community right now in North County San Diego and you can still get beach-side timeshares. In my opinion, the key to effective use of BNW is to get them young, in the last excruciating months before puberty unfolds into adolescence. Pubies understand the fundamental lessons of social psychology better than anyone, because they know deep in their hearts they would do anything to avoid embarrassment, they would conform to any horrible ideal. So the main character's decision to push away from a deeply regimented, overindulgent society seems breathlessly heroic. Wait another year and the same kid will be puzzling why someone would turn their backs on free drugs and no-strings locker-room sex in order to go read books with bums. Wait another couple of years and a young adult will understand the tragic conflict between a manufactured utopia and the glare of authenticity, and all propoganda value will be lost. They might as well be reading haiku.
1984
Outlook: Libertarian, Anarchist, Free Market
Political Punch: 5
Ambiguity: 2
I read this book cover to cover as a teen because it offered more drama than a Party Of Five marathon. It has torture, morning wall-vodka, mystery, banned sex, pure evil, and thought police. That and it has it's own style of nihilistic wordplay, the best thing to my ears this side of sarcasm. But the social critique in 84 is so Sesame Street Of Darkness, so Santa Claus vs. Mothra, that it implicates almost all authority structures in the process. It implicates dictionaries. It implicates testing. It implicates public education. And most fundamentally, with every tragic and paranoid strand in it's being, it implicates teachers. The remote, heartless dictators we love to hate.
Snowcrash
Outlook: Socialist
Political Punch: 3
Ambiguity: 2
This cyber-punk classic is sexier than leather pants on your own personal post-racial ninja mind-slave. But it sneaks up from behind and jabs you in the ass with a booster-shot of inoculation against the belief that anything positive can come out of a world where governments are weak, by showing you a corporate hell-scape where people live in storage spaces, Canada has been reduced to one big RV park, every KFC franchise needs it's own drone army, and infection by a Christian brain-parasite seems almost appealing. Snowcrash is a very blunt instrument, and should effectively prevent the scourge of corporate gluteal shiatsu that passes for libertarianism in this country from taking hold in impressionable young minds--by showing it's logical and inevitable conclusion.
Dune
Outlook: Democratic, Green
Political Punch: 2
Ambiguity: 4
Royal houses ruling an endless desert getting rich off of underground resources needed for long distance travel. Oppressed desert peoples with a disregard for the law banding together to do violent mischief. Basically it's an Arab Spring with giant sand worms. There's also an environmental twist with real emotional heft, a thing as strange and wonderful as weight-loss beer. But then there's also the distracting Islam references, the blatant homophobia, and of course Sting. It's enough to make you remember all the reasons that you hate democracy. But I think most teens will just see a criminally gorgeous concubine, giant space bugs that need our help, and a desert war for freedom. Or most likely of all, they will see a book longer than their wildest attention span.
Ender's Game
Outlook: Technocracy, Military Dictatorship, Meritocracy
Political Punch: 3
Ambiguity: 3
Every kid, even the most rebellious, secretly wants to be the special chosen golden shit-king of everything. There is also a deep homespun knowledge in every 9 year old that without the recess lady something bloody and tooth-shattering could go down. And there is a blind faith in the bewildering raw-stimulation quotient of technology. Give them EG as early as possible if you want an army of goose-stepping professional resume builders able to praise Steve Jobs in the same sentence that they slam Chinese IP theft. But don't wait too long, or they might understand Ender as a tragic figure and the book as critique. And then the game is up.
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