[eucyclos]

I can give a very simple example - in my high school history class, the cold war was presented as a conflict between communism and democracy - despite the fact that on an economic field the conflict was clearly between communism and capitalism, while on a political field proponents of both systems were happy to subvert the democratic process whenever someone had the audacity to vote for the wrong economic system.

Ooh, as I was typing I thought of a better example - remember the four food groups? eight to twelve servings of grains per day? Less obviously propaganda, though I'd argue the farm lobbies pushing it count. But harms in terms of its link to obesity and heart disease are pretty damn stark.

Given that school children are a huge captive audience of future consumers/voters/employees it would be incredibly strange if the curriculum wasn't the target of all kinds of special interest groups that aren't perfectly aligned with public interest.

[lapcat]

> remember the four food groups?

LOL this cannot be a serious reason for homeschooling. You're trolling me, right? Please tell me you're trolling me.

[eucyclos]

You're tempting me to start doing just that. Maybe focus on keeping the conversation productive in keeping with HN's community guidelines.

[lapcat]

> Maybe focus on keeping the conversation productive

I didn't and don't want to have this conversation. Technically, I didn't even ask alphazard what they meant, and in any case, I didn't ask anyone else what alphazard meant, as if someone else could magically interpret alphazard's cryptic remark any better than I could, which they can't, as proved by the multiple different unsolicited answers I received.

I was perhaps morbidly curious what the atheist was objecting to in public schools when they nonetheless seemed perfectly fine with conservative religious homeschooling.

[WalterBright]

> remember the four food groups?

1. Calories

2. Carcinogens

3. Caffeine

4. Cholesterol

[WalterBright]

Stalin wasn't elected. Neither was Gorbachev.

[eucyclos]

North Vietnam's leaders were. So was Iran's.

[joemazerino]

The notion of being "elected" when you have a gun pointed at you at the ballot casting is silly.

[WalterBright]

You always know the elections are shams when the communist candidate gets 95% of the vote.

[victorbjorklund]

technically North Korea has had elected leaders since the founding. They have elections in North Korea. Doesn’t make me convinced North Korea isn’t a communist dictatorship.