They are just being more overt with it, now. The thing about educating very young kids is that you can very easily tell them almost anything, and very few of them will ever return to question that 'fact'. How many people believe that people only use 10% of their brains? That was a wonderful little gem floating around when I was in grade school. The Ascension concept in Star Gate was even built around it. Which - whatever, fiction can justify itself on anything real or imaginary - but by having the emissaries of education from the empire of wonders tell us lies about how the world works, it instills a false sense of knowledge and a disinterest in inquiry/discovery.