[moron4hire]

Behavioral Psychology really needs to be a general studies topic, introduced to secondary education.

I remember my local high school's motto when I was growing up was something like, "we're not here to teach, we're here to create good, informed consumers".

Never mind the obvious problems with that statement, but just considering it on face-value: how can people become good, informed consumers without having some kind of exposure to the concepts of how easily information can be collected about and used to manipulate people?

I don't expect most high school students to inculcate the full breadth of the topic, just as so few seem to actually learn and retain anything about history, social studies, or even the freaking alphabet (I've met way too many people who think the English alphabet has 25 letters). But currently, the general populace has no idea the extent to which they and their data can be manipulated. It would be enough if all they learned was "you and your data can be manipulated".

[glial]

> we're here to create good, informed consumers

Wow, whatever happened to trying to create good, informed citizens?

[moron4hire]

Yeah, it was definitely "consumers" not "citizens". That was one of the parts that struck me right away.

Glad I didn't go there.

[andrepd]

>I remember my local high school's motto when I was growing up was something like, "we're not here to teach, we're here to create good, informed consumers".

I don't get it, was this the actual real motto, or something people said tongue in cheek?

[moron4hire]

It was painted on the wall in the school office. The part where my memory is hazy is the number of additional adjectives used on "consumer".