It’s a perfectly valid criticism and one that’s been levelled at the experiment before…. I’m not so sure in the light of the Milgram experiments and the Zimbardo stuff. The kids may have been in on it, but children are easily influenced and easily swayed to act obediently towards authority. The Hitler Youth was sustained on such principles.

Perhaps the experiments would’ve been a bit of fun for a week or so, but the wider point of how you teach children to think about the world is a valid one. I have lots of questions about how children are no longer being taught to debate or engage in meaningful discussion and the knock on effect that has on our society and it’s functionality.

Plenty of bad faith arguments get made on my articles all the time – and this definitely wasn’t one of them. There’s always room to debate such things so thanks for commenting. :o)