In Uganda the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) forcibly recruited thousands of youth and plied them food, lack of food, threats and violence in order to make them stay as devoted members.
By all measures child soldier recruits were less able than adult ones in terms of strength, experience and tactical/organizing ability. So why were these the recruits of choice?
A) There are a lot of them but
B) The research suggests that children were pursued more aggressively and prized more because they were more easily indoctrinated and misinformed than adult recruits.
They would become true believers faster and easier. More likely to miss jumps in reasoning and logic.
The US military also relies heavily on near age 18 soldiers, even though age 28 soldiers are probably more skilled at most tasks. The US probably prefers younger soldiers because they are more easily indoctrinated, misinformed, and intimidated.
Which brings up the issue of schools.
It is easy to say that Republicans are anti-science and have a revisionist approach to history.
This is true, of course but the people who seem to be fighting hardest have the largest issue with social control around business and religious/moral/ethical frameworks.
The winner of such a fight gets to indoctrinate the numerous young people out there.
Once you are an adult who realizes that your younger self was unreasonably gullible, you should try to undo that bias, at least if you want to have accurate beliefs. If you can imagine how other powers would have instead tried to indoctrinate you, had they controlled your indoctrination, you might try to believe something in-between these
various indoctrination extremes.
Of course you should also add in whatever can be inferred from the fact that one particular power was in fact strong enough to win the contest to indoctrinate you. Though it is not clear why this would mean their indoctrination was more
true.
So what biases we expect from young school indoctrination? Perhaps excess respect for:
Teachers and their allies
Life value of formal education
Being quiet and doing what you are told
Governments like those that run schools
The region or nation where you lived
Having regular workday, like at school
The military is an especially capital intense industry, which makes it especially important to have skilled labor to complement all that expensive capital. All else equal, this would induce this industry to outcompete other industries for more skilled
workers, such as 28 year olds. So there must be some other factor that pushes them to hire 18 year olds. It can’t be pure physical strength and stamina, as few military jobs today require that.
This is all to say that it might not be the conscious reason that Republicans fight over school board issues and education issues but I think that the implicit desire is a deep type of social control and a type of homogenization of culture starting with children. They are the true believers of tomorrow. An uneducated population who operate as wage slaves will be easily directed.
Don't know where this leaves me exactly but I was thinking about it.