"I've become aware in recent years that no one really controls anything in terms of their behavior. Sure you have some conscious free will "

That seems contradictory to me.

First off, if I decide to sit with my legs crossed a particular way, say, isn't that controlling something in terms of my behavior?

So I'm not even sure what you believe to be the case that you want other people to realize/to be taught.

Whatever it is that you believe to be the case, exactly, I have no idea how you think it could solve particular problems. You say it could solve every problem in the world, so let me pick one: let's say rush-hour congestion in big cities--clogged roadways, subways, etc. How would "realizing that no one really controls anything in terms of their behavior" solve that problem?

Ultimately determinism merely states that things are as they are because they could not be other than as they are. So, in a very real sense, the whole idea of education (of any sort) as a curative is entirely contradictory to the basic premise of determinism. Indeed the very notion of a cure for ills, be they personal, local, national or international is meaningless from a deterministic point of view. Such 'problems' as there are could not not be. If everything is out of our control, then nothing is in our control. You can't have your cake and eat it.

For such reasons a lot of people think determinism (at least, absolute determinism) is a load of dingo's kidneys which leads to a particularly tricky paradox for determinists. It is, if determinism is true, impossible for people who think determinism is a load of dingo's kidneys not to think that determinism is a load of dingo's kidneys, so it is utterly pointless to argue or teach otherwise. Yet if determinism is true then people who argue or teach that it is true cannot not argue or teach that it is true. What fun philosophy can be!

Sorry but this is a posting for people already familiar with determinism, not to debate it itself.

The idea of fate is pretty common. I don't think education would increase the ranks of determinists because people mainly avoid determinism by means of a strong emotional bias toward freedom of the will.

Determinism is not fate or destiny or anything like that, but you are right that people have a strong emotional bias against learning that we don't have "as much" control as we think. Like I said, you can exercise all the free will you want "within the bounds of your brains awareness", which you don't control.

We can insist that every change have a cause, but maybe this is just a hard-wired prejudice. We see change, assume some past event or rather the sum of past events is necessarily linked to that change. The change "couldn't have just happened." But can we establish this deductively? Joe was sitting on the couch. Then he got up and opened a bag of potato chips. Therefore all history preceding this opening necessitated this opening. It was logically impossible for him not to open the bag of chips, given all that preceded. But why should it be logically impossible? True, we see that environment has been used to predict behavior to some degree, but to get from this remembered utility to logical necessity seems to require hidden axiom(s) like the uniformity of nature and the principle of sufficient reason.

I remember finding something like this is Freud, long ago, and it caught my attention. Free association is a window into the subconscious because one assumes that this association isn't free at all, for every
event must have a cause. The psyche must be machine like, for machine-likeness is the way we make sense not only of physical reality but even of spiritual and metaphysical reality, or so it seems to me. But is this projected machine-likeness really there? Once we become conscious of the PSR and the uniformity axiom, does this not give us a little more distance from their projection onto the "Absolute"?

Formally, the Principle states (PSR): For every fact F, there must be an explanation why F is the case.
...
The PSR is closely related, if not fully identical, to the principle “ex nihilo, nihil fit” (“From nothing, nothing comes”). One of the most interesting questions regarding the PSR is why to accept it at all. Insofar as the PSR stipulates that all facts must be explainable, it seems that the PSR itself demands an explanation just as much. Several modern philosophers attempted to provide a proof for the PSR, though so far these attempts have been mostly unsuccessful. Another important problem related to the PSR is the possibility of self-explanatory facts and self-caused entities; particularly, one may wonder how these are distinguished from unexplainable, brute facts and uncaused entities. One may also wonder whether the PSR allows for primitive concepts that cannot be further explained. — http://plato.stanford.edu

Beyond these doubts about determinism, there's also the question of whether it is indeed good social software. If it eases guilt, it also threatens the pride in accomplishment and the notion personal responsibility (which might have to be invented if it didn't exist.)

Like I said earlier this is not a posting about debating determinism but as for your example Ill touch on it quickly. You're still too zoomed in on some sort of fate angle of looking at determinism. No, you're right its not logically impossible, but that's not the point. And no, all history preceding "did not" necessitate the opening. Your still not really grasping it. I have read posts on this forum made by people who really do grasp what I'm getting at and I was hoping to get a response from one of them so this isn't really for you.

Well I did address why it's not taught at the end of my post. Not everyone believes that the world would be improved by a universal belief in determinism. It would seemingly have to be an abstract belief, for we would still bear the burden of decision. We would still "suffer" freedom. Determinism might ease a sense of failure (it was all that I was capable of), but it would also function as a universal excuse (I couldn't help myself).

What's bothering me lately is that it seems like if the rest of society was aware of this fact pretty much every problem in the world could be solved. — Shade

How? Can you give an example? It seems to me that even if everyone believed in determinism, all it would do is make people think problems were inevitable. At best that might foster a more stoical attitude to life. At worst, it would lead to more apathy.

Why isn't there more of an effort to educate people about it? — Shade

Because the consensus you seem to think exists on the issue, doesn't actually exist. Because philosophy in general isn't taught widely. And because (as Mongrel mentioned) most people wouldn't believe it anyway as their experience of having free will would remain undiminished by the claim they don't.

As an aside, picking up on Mongrel's reference to fate, people in some cultures take this very seriously. And the result can be quite negative. In Thailand, for instance, it impacts people's attitude towards safety. Thais generally take far fewer safety precautions when driving, for example, and when you ask them why, they may say something like "I'm going to die when I'm going to die" as if they have no say in the matter. And regarding accidents, they may consider a religious bauble they have in their car as more preventative than their own ability to act. Not good.

Sorry but this is a posting for people already familiar with determinism, not to debate it itself. — Shade

Wait, so you're just going to ignore addressing my question re how teaching what you said you realized would solve a specific problem? I'm familiar with determinism, by the way, but I was addressing what you wrote, as you wrote it. You should take responsibility for that and answer queries about it and objections to it.