Starship Troopers

After rewatching Starship Troopers, I borrowed the book from a friend, and I've started reading it, taking some notes along the way. Here's the first batch:

interesting that heinlein too required a history class (history and moral philosophy), not too different from my proposed history, law, and ethics class. his class was mandatory and had no grades, not even pass fail. of course, that seems right given that citizenship isn't a right. (i too thought that the class should be taught, mandatory, but thought that there would be no passing requirement regardless of voting rights to encourage learning; but i didn't think that'd work either).

another interesting thing is a character, mr dubois i think, said "you can lead a child to knowledge, but you can't make him think", or words to that effect. which, of course, is my own take on mandatory schooling above.

having only a service for citizenship exchange didn't really make sense. as noted by myself and others, it doesn't guarantee intelligence, and that was the whole point of my gripe about the voter pool. although not spelled out, by having the h&mp class above, heinlein espressly advocated governmental education. it is the combination of a properly educated (in h&mp) person with a service-secured citizenship that made heinlein's government.

"What we obtain to cheap we esteem too lightly... it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated." Thomas Paine.