I can’t tell you how much this article disturbed me …… OK I’ll try.

Recently, the Washington Post reported on research concerning our propensity to believe myths or untruths. In fact, not only are we more likely to believe falsehoods that are repeated over and over -- something one would expect -- we’ll believe them even in the face of denials, if those denials involve repeating the original false information. (As in, “I did not kick my dog.” Listener’s translation: “You are a dog-kicker.”)

It seems our minds are quite willing to believe either what we want to believe, or have been told to. And it’s not just silly urban legends: These beliefs have real consequences. As the Post noted, 59 percent of Turks and Egyptians, and 56 percent of British Muslims, believe Arabs were not responsible for the 9-11 attacks. Across the Atlantic, one in three Americans think Saddam Hussein was “personally involved.”

It’s probably obvious why this bothers me, but let me explain. I can’t think of anything that’s more important than the truth. And telling the truth -- or, at least, trying to get the facts straight -- is what journalism is all about. But if our minds are programmed to believe all sorts of fabrications, we reporters have our work cut out for us.

And so do the schools. Have you ever heard someone who had little or no knowledge of public education (and, perhaps, your connection to it) tell you how abysmal, how unsafe, how money-sucking -- whatever -- the schools were? I have. And I wonder how much of that comes from the mark of failure that influential detractors have been able to affix to them.

In his 1981 inaugural address, Ronald Reagan famously declared, “Government is not a solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” Is it any coincidence that two years later a high-level commission would expand on that theme, declaring in A Nation at Risk that, had these government schools been foisted on us by a foreign power, we would consider it “an act of war?”

There are plenty of bad schools out there, but it’s not Canada’s fault. And fixing them will take more than sanctimoniously saying, “It’s the government’s problem.”

That Post article does offer one bit of hope. Not everyone believes the myths. “But the mind’s bias does affect many people, especially those who want to believe the myth for their own reasons, or those who are only peripherally interested and are less likely to invest the time and effort needed to firmly grasp the facts.”

The key, then, is to move the “peripherally interested” into the mainstream -- to show them why they should care about their schools, and learn the truth about them, learn their real problems as opposed to those fabricated by people who may not have the best interests of the public schools at heart.

It will take a lot of effort.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor