Dude you education is just brainwashing with extra steps, all you are doing is making things harder on everyone, use the machine on the kids!
Heh... Any social conditioning is "brainwashing", if you look at it deeply and cynically enough. And yes, that includes school.
While it may seem like a slam-dunk to just use the machine to force-feed things into the kids' minds, I think our MC has realised a very important set of problems with this:
- First of all, any teaching/conditioning done by those machines is based on a highly militaristic society involved in an "eternal" war, which mores and customs do not match up with this world's society.
The MC is not going to make "pod people" that would only antagonise the locals, because
they would notice the radical change in behaviour.
There's some classic SF about that...
- Second, not every child may be suited for "Education". And there's no telling what would happen to their minds if things go Wrong.
In the Galactic Empire there are no doubt specialists who can tailor "Education" to the individual, but that expertise is not present here, and whatever
is possible is geared to people who have been pre-conditioned and pre-selected.
- The Empire is, for all practical purposes,
gone . Until further notice.
Conditioning people with loyalty to something that isn't there, and may never materialise is plain stupid.
The practical and tactical matter of the situation is that according to all available data this world is all they've got to work with, at least for the foreseeable future.
So you work with what's available, under local conditions.
- People have different aptitudes, and this world does have that medieval method of education through apprenticeships that people are used to.
It is
far easier to introduce "school" into this to pick out the few bright bulbs from the masses who
may be suited for "Education" and let the rest train naturally according to their aptitudes under tutors.
The way our MC is setting things up is much less likely to make unwanted waves than force-feeding unneeded things into kid's minds.
In the end, as powerful as the Landing Team is, and even if they have something close to a small army already, there are
vastly more people on this planet. Some of whom are still unknown entities, not under "control" , and some probably quite antagonistic.
They still need to operate in relative Stealth Mode to survive.