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Desrtopa comments on Teaching rationality to kids? - Less Wrong Discussion
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This might be obvious, but the more leeway you have with the child's overall education, the more effectively you can teach them. There's an enormous difference between what you could teach a nine year old that you're homeschooling and a nine year old you're babysitting. The average child has already developed a lot of habits to unlearn, and it takes a lot of control over their environment to keep them from reinforcing them.
What I try to do is improve outcomes for the children of relatives and friends. I want to use readymade teaching materials and the authority of their authors precisely because I won't have much time with those kids and they have no reason to take me seriously.
If three out of ten actually read it and one out of those three starts to think more rationally at an age where such a shift has amplified impact, I estimate the cost of ten copies well worth that.
Unfortunately, the kids don't have much reason to take the authors or their materials seriously either, unless you give them one. Schoolkids generally learn the contents of their study materials (to the extent that they do so at all) because the authority figures in their own lives make them, not because they acknowledge the materials as valuable sources of information.
The more intellectually curious will study materials that they personally find interesting, while the more conscientious will study materials which will impress people they think are worth impressing.