I believe that on HN you perhaps talk to the wrong audience for this argument. If the teacher really had the "hacker spirit" in teaching, the pupils will be too freethinking (as in hacker) to be suitable soldiers.
"If someone's freethinking, they'll think exactly like me"
I claim that my point nevertheless stands. I was explicitly talking about "hacker spirit". If you read up on the hacker ethics
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hacker_ethic&oldi...
you will find many points that will make such a person a really unsuitable soldier, for example "Mistrust authority — promote decentralization", which is at least in my worldview quite the opposite of the life as a soldier, where obedience, chain of command etc. are central.
The same holds for "All information should be free", which is quite in the spirit of Snowden and Assange, but quite the opposite of the values of being a soldier, where military secrets are (for good or bad) of importance.
This is the comment I was shooting at. I don't believe this. Instead I believe something far more terrifying.
"Society manages complexity by the occasional cull of the free thinker"
Lots of smart people can bring a lot of good change to a society and culture, but one needs to be very careful to think the majority of the population in that society will accept those changes, and the faster they occur, the more resentment builds. Suddenly you have politicians and activists pining for the 'good old days'. Suddenly a nice authoritarian figure pops up and tells the masses that he can fix all their problems. There are ample examples in history to see where this leads.
If you've taught kindergarten or middle school, you've probably helped raise a soldier.
Yeah ok.