Social Cohesion

Social Cohesion Without Government Control

A government may help people understand social problems, but it must never attempt to control their beliefs, lawful speech, family life or personal choices. Education should develop informed and responsible citizens—not obedient followers of an official ideology.

Societies naturally change as people exchange ideas, develop new technology, encounter different cultures and respond to new challenges. Government can provide education and reliable information to help people understand these changes. It should not manipulate society towards a predetermined political or cultural outcome.

FuturePlan proposes a clear boundary: government may educate, explain, warn and encourage, but it must not indoctrinate, compel beliefs or punish people merely for expressing a lawful opinion.

People must remain free to decide how they live, what they believe, which ideas they accept and how they raise their families, provided they do no unlawful harm to another person and accept responsibility for their actions.

What Is Social Engineering?

Social engineering occurs when a government or powerful institution deliberately attempts to change the beliefs, behaviour, relationships or culture of a population to achieve a preferred political or social outcome.

Not every public education program is social engineering. Teaching people how to recognise fraud, understand nutrition, resolve disagreements or respect the rights of others can provide useful knowledge without controlling personal decisions.

The danger begins when education becomes indoctrination, disagreement is treated as disobedience, private conduct is unnecessarily regulated or government decides that only one opinion may be heard.

Education Is Not Indoctrination

Education gives people knowledge and teaches them how to think. Indoctrination tells people what they must think and discourages them from asking questions.

A genuine education program should present verifiable facts, identify uncertainty, explain different viewpoints and allow students to examine the evidence for themselves.

A government-approved belief should never become a test of whether a student, teacher, employee or citizen deserves equal treatment. People must be free to disagree with government policy and with one another.

The purpose of education is to prepare people to think, decide and act responsibly. Its purpose is not to manufacture political conformity.

Freedom of Speech Is Essential

No nation can remain free, creative and prosperous without freedom of speech. New ideas emerge because people are able to question accepted beliefs, criticise those in authority, expose corruption and propose different solutions.

Freedom of speech must protect opinions that are unpopular, uncomfortable or offensive. If protection extends only to opinions approved by government or accepted by the majority, it is not freedom of speech.

People must be free to criticise political policies, religions, corporations, public institutions, social movements and government officials. They must also be free to defend those institutions and ideas. The answer to a disputed opinion should normally be evidence, reason and more speech—not government censorship. Any organization, religion, or ideology that does not accept our common law rights and freedoms must be banned from any government organization, and if an organization or religion is found to endanger the rights and freedoms of the citizens because of their own inflexible rules, it must not be allowed to operate in the nation.

Government should not decide that a person’s lawful opinion is misinformation merely because it contradicts an official position. Public authorities may correct claims, publish evidence and explain their conclusions, but citizens must remain free to examine and challenge them.

Freedom Does Not Remove Responsibility

Freedom of speech does not create a right to commit fraud, make a direct threat, deliberately incite an imminent criminal attack or repeatedly target a person with unlawful intimidation.

The law should distinguish clearly between expressing an idea and causing an identifiable harm.

A law restricting conduct should identify the actual or reasonably foreseeable harm. It should not rely upon vague labels that allow officials to punish lawful disagreement.

Anyone accused of crossing the boundary between expression and unlawful conduct must receive due process, know the precise allegation, see the evidence and have a fair opportunity to answer it.

Government Must Stay Out of Lawful Private Life

Government exists to protect rights and administer necessary public services. It does not own the people and should not attempt to manage every part of their lives.

Adults should be free to make personal decisions about their relationships, beliefs, lawful associations, health, food, lifestyle and family arrangements. Other people may disagree with those choices, but disagreement alone does not justify government intervention.

Government intervention may be justified where there is credible evidence that one person is committing fraud, violence, coercion, neglect or another identifiable harm against someone else. Any response must be limited to preventing or remedying that harm.

The fact that a government believes another choice would be healthier, safer or more socially desirable does not automatically give it authority to compel that choice.

The Proper Role of Government

Government can help people make informed decisions without taking those decisions away from them.

• Provide accurate and understandable public information.
• Teach practical civic and social knowledge in schools.
• Publish evidence supporting public recommendations.
• Offer voluntary support, counselling and dispute-resolution services.
• Protect people against provable violence, fraud, coercion and unlawful discrimination.

Government should explain what it knows, acknowledge what remains uncertain and allow people to reach their own conclusions. It should never conceal important evidence merely because disclosure may weaken public support for an official policy.

Education for Social Cohesion

Social cohesion does not require everyone to share the same beliefs. It requires people with different beliefs to live together peacefully, respect one another’s rights and resolve disagreements without violence or coercion.

Education should help young people understand racism, prejudice, bullying, propaganda, cultural differences, personal responsibility and peaceful conflict resolution. These subjects should be taught without assigning collective guilt or telling children that their value is determined by their race, sex, religion, family background or other inherited characteristic.

Every child should learn that individuals must be judged by their own character and actions. No child should be blamed for conduct committed by unrelated people who happen to share an aspect of that child’s identity.

Beginning in Primary School

Education for freedom and social responsibility should begin in primary school with simple, age-appropriate concepts that children can apply in daily life.

• Every person has value and should be treated fairly.
• People may look, live, speak or believe differently.
• Disagreement does not make another person an enemy.
• Children should tell the truth and take responsibility for their behaviour.
• No one has the right to bully, threaten or deliberately harm another person.

Children could practise listening, taking turns, checking whether a claim is true, apologising when they cause harm and resolving ordinary disagreements peacefully.

Primary education should not force children to adopt adult political positions. Its purpose would be to establish fairness, honesty, empathy, courage, responsibility and respect for the equal rights of others.

Expanding the Lessons Through Education

These simple ideas would be expanded as children matured and became capable of examining more complicated questions.

Older students would examine genuine historical and contemporary controversies. They would compare primary evidence, identify emotional manipulation, recognise conflicts of interest and explain competing arguments in their strongest reasonable form.

Students should be assessed upon their understanding, reasoning and use of evidence—not upon whether their conclusions agree with the teacher, school or government.

Teaching Racism and Equal Rights

Students should learn how racism has caused exclusion, injustice, violence and lost opportunity. They should also learn that racism cannot be defeated by teaching new forms of racial hostility or assigning collective blame.

The central principle should be equality before the law. Every person possesses the same fundamental rights, and every allegation of harmful conduct should be decided upon evidence relating to the individuals involved.

Schools should teach students how to recognise genuine discrimination, support a person who has been mistreated and use fair procedures to resolve complaints.

Students must also be allowed to discuss immigration, culture, religion, history and public policy without automatically being accused of racism for asking a question or expressing a reasoned concern.

Respectful Discussion of Personal and Social Issues

Schools will sometimes need to discuss sensitive questions involving culture, religion, relationships, identity, health and family life. These subjects should be approached carefully, truthfully and without humiliating any student.

No student should be bullied, threatened or denied equal educational access because of a personal characteristic, belief or lawful choice. At the same time, protecting a student from mistreatment should not require every other student to affirm a contested political, philosophical, religious or scientific position.

Students may be expected to behave respectfully. They should not be compelled to state a belief they do not hold, disclose private information or participate in political activism.

Where a subject remains genuinely disputed, teachers should explain the disagreement, present reliable evidence and distinguish established facts from opinion, prediction or interpretation.

Teacher Retraining

Teachers cannot provide this education effectively unless they understand the principles they are expected to teach. Existing and future teachers would therefore receive specialised re-training before delivering the curriculum.

Teacher training should use practical classroom examples. Teachers would learn how to respond when students strongly disagree, how to correct factual errors without humiliating anyone and how to prevent a discussion from becoming personal abuse.

Retraining would not require teachers to abandon their private opinions. It would require them to distinguish those opinions from their professional responsibility to educate students fairly.

Teachers Must Not Become Political Instructors

A teacher occupies a position of trust and authority. That position must not be used to recruit students into a political movement, pressure them to adopt an ideology or punish them for reaching a different conclusion.

Teachers could explain their reasoning when appropriate, but they should identify personal opinion as opinion and make clear that students remain free to disagree.

Classroom materials should include genuine competing views where a serious dispute exists. Students should not be shown a token opposing argument designed to make one side appear foolish or immoral.

Political campaigning, compelled activism and ideological loyalty tests would have no place in compulsory education.

Parents and Curriculum Transparency

Parents should be able to see what their children are being taught. Curriculum outlines, required reading, videos, external programs and assessment standards would be publicly accessible.

Schools would provide reasonable notice before introducing particularly sensitive or age-dependent material. Parents could ask questions, examine the educational purpose and challenge material they believed was inaccurate, politically biased or unsuitable for the child’s stage of development.

Parental involvement would not permit one family to prevent every other student from receiving ordinary civic education. Disputes would be considered through a transparent review process based upon age suitability, educational relevance, evidence and protected rights.

Safeguards for Students and Families

Public Health Information Without Coercion

Government has a proper role in researching health risks and providing people with reliable information about nutrition, disease, medicines and preventable illness.

Public information should disclose the supporting evidence, known risks, uncertainty, conflicts of interest and reasonable alternative opinions. Recommendations should be corrected openly when new evidence shows they were incomplete or wrong.

People should normally remain free to make their own health and dietary decisions. Any proposed compulsory measure would require clear evidence of a serious and direct danger to others, defined limits, independent review and public accountability. Government should ensure that it provides full disclosure and evidence about any ideas or products that could be potentially harmful to society.

Governments could encourage healthier food by requiring honest ingredient and nutrition information, supporting independent research and educating people about the effects of heavily processed diets. Information allows people to choose; propaganda and concealed evidence do not.

When a Law May Be Necessary

Education should be the first response to most social concerns. A law should be considered only when credible evidence identifies a significant harm that voluntary action, education or an existing remedy cannot adequately address.

Before restricting any right or freedom, the proposed law would need to answer five questions:

1. What specific harm is the law intended to prevent or remedy?
2. What credible evidence demonstrates that the harm exists?
3. Why are education, voluntary action and existing laws insufficient?
4. What is the least restrictive effective response?
5. How will the law be reviewed, challenged and repealed if it fails?

A government claim that a law is beneficial would not be enough. The evidence, expected effects, costs, risks and possible alternatives would need to be published for the people to examine.

The People Must Decide the Final Law

Where a new law affecting speech, conscience, privacy, family life, bodily autonomy or another fundamental freedom was considered necessary, the people would participate in developing it and vote upon its final wording.

The process would follow FuturePlan’s Citizens-Initiated Referendum principles.

The national legislature or a regional government would not be permitted to show the people one proposal and enact materially different wording after the vote. Independent verification would ensure that implementation faithfully reflected what citizens approved.

Fundamental Rights Must Remain Protected

Public voting alone is not enough to protect liberty. A temporary majority should not be able to abolish the fundamental rights of an individual or minority merely because it has greater numbers.

Every social law would remain subject to constitutional protections for life, liberty, property, equality before the law, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech and due process.

The guiding principle would remain simple:

Every person is free to think, speak and act as they choose, provided they do no unlawful harm to another person and accept responsibility for their own actions.

No Government Social-Credit System

FuturePlan rejects any system that scores citizens according to political loyalty, lawful opinions, associations, purchasing decisions or compliance with preferred social behaviour.

Government services, licences, employment and ordinary participation in society must not depend upon whether a citizen supports the government or repeats an approved ideology.

Information collected for education, healthcare or public administration would not be repurposed to construct political or behavioural profiles. Government surveillance must never become a tool for enforcing conformity.

Independent Review of Educational Material

Civic and social education materials would be reviewed by a balanced and publicly accountable body that included experienced teachers, parents, child-development specialists, civil-liberties advocates and citizens with different viewpoints.

Membership, declared interests, meeting records and curriculum recommendations would be published. No political party, corporation, activist organisation, religious body or government department would be permitted to control the review process.

Citizens could challenge factual errors, missing evidence or persistent political bias. Corrections and reasons for decisions would be recorded publicly.

Measuring Whether the Education Works

The program should be judged by whether students become more capable of thinking and acting responsibly—not by whether they repeat approved opinions.

• Can students distinguish fact, opinion and persuasion?
• Can they explain opposing arguments fairly?
• Can they disagree without bullying or violence?
• Can they examine evidence and identify unreliable claims?
• Do they understand their rights and responsibilities?

Schools would not measure success by recording students’ political, religious or social beliefs. Private opinions are not government performance data.

A Staged Education Program

Social Cohesion Through Freedom

A peaceful society does not require uniformity. People can possess different beliefs, cultures, religions, lifestyles and political opinions while remaining united by respect for one another’s rights.

Government should provide the knowledge people need to understand social problems and cooperate with one another. It should then trust citizens to think, speak and make lawful choices for themselves.

Education beginning in primary school can teach children fairness, honesty and personal responsibility. As they mature, those lessons can expand into freedom of speech, constitutional rights, critical thinking, racism, propaganda, evidence and democratic participation.

Properly trained teachers can guide this education without directing students towards a government-approved ideology. Parents and citizens can protect its integrity through transparent curricula and independent review.

Where a law is genuinely necessary to prevent an identifiable harm, the exact proposal should be developed openly and submitted to the people. Government must explain its case, opponents must be heard and the citizens must make the final decision.

Government should educate the people, protect their rights and provide honest information. It must never claim ownership of their minds, beliefs or lawful private lives.

Further Reading and Original Sources

The following links appeared in the original version of this page and have been preserved for readers who wish to examine the subjects and competing perspectives further: