free association

I heard on the BBC's Moral Maze (8/7/09) a woman trying to support legal discrimination against homosexuals. As part of her misguided attempt to place her religious conviction above basic decency and law she said that freedom is the ability to associate freely.
She was talking about how beautiful it would be for a Christian school to employ only Christians, in both teaching posts and in other posts (such as a gardener) such that everyone reinforced the same idea.
"The principal that's running the school needs to be free to employ a staff that believe in the same things that he believes in. That's the beauty of association around a doctrine; around a creed. That's true freedom."
I can understand this concept of freedom. It's a worrying idea though, because although we have vast amounts of information available to us nowadays, there is a great deal of bias and ignorance in society because people do not use that information.
The idea that it's beautiful that people can insulate themselves from other opinions, and indoctrinate children in one set of unfounded beliefs without any challenge at all is a revolting one. Schools especially must expose children to all options, including evidence-based beliefs. But even other walks of life suffer when people are insulated from opposing beliefs. With insulation we get intolerance, misunderstanding and misinformation.
If I return to a free market metaphor, people can only choose the best purchase with perfect information; this is a basic principle of economics. The same is true for ideas: it is a disruption of the market of ideas to prevent people having access to ideas. It is deceitful to hide better ideas in order to convince people to accept your own. It is an admission of inferiority and a disruption of the freedom of others.
Of course, if an adult chooses freely to associate around a doctrine it's a trickier issue. People who exclude other opinions are entitled so to do.
A person can ignore new knowledge and associate only with charlatans, and by so-doing gain misguided opinions. We might think of ways to persuade people not to be so lazy, and not sink into the morass of bias that is human nature, but the best way is through education. If we can teach children about the virtue of free-thought; about how valuable freedom is, and how what separates us from the other animals is our thinking mind and ability to overcome our instincts, then our children will be less likely to give in to the human desire to reinforce beliefs and biases, and will be more likely to use the information that our current society can provide in such abundant amounts.
The problem of too much information is like the problem of too little: both lead to inadequate decision-making. However, the problem of too much information is an inbuilt human instinct (as we can see from TED talks on human psychology) that we can fight. The problem of too little, which is what this woman wanted to impose, is not something that those subjected to it can avoid.

The freedom to associate around one opinion might be a freedom, but it is against our duty as members of a democracy. A voter's duty is to inform himself of both sides of any issue about which he cares so that he can make the best choice. Our society cannot survive as a properly-functioning unit if we focus on rights and freedoms, and never on duties and responsibilities. It will dinsintegrate into unconnected and misunderstood 'free associations' of biased and intolerant groups.
When we get a citizenship test, we must have a section that asks about issues, and opinions on both sides, and we might need to administer something similar to voters. Ensuring that voters do their duty by considering the issues is a difficult problem, but one that needs to be addressed.