SansPretense

This is part two of a series of essays on education, whereby I, your most humble blogger who really doesn’t take himself as seriously as he’s trying to sound, attempt to flesh out my infallible opinions on the difference in indoctrination and education. Part I can be found here.

The US Bill of Rights, those first ten sacred amendments to our Constitution, are not meant to be legal rights that the State bestows on citizens. They are human rights bestowed on us by our Creator. Therefore, the amendments are actually restrictions on the government (rather than freedoms given to the citizenry) assuring the basic liberties of our society. They also provide a blue-print for a path to totalitarianism. “Start whittling them away, one by one, and it opens the way for tyranny. Any totalitarian government must restrict the arming of the population to prevent revolt (2nd amendment), control the courts, police, and justice divisions, control the competing institutions of power (religious institutions, for example), raise the State above all other institutions (by turning it into a religion and deifying the leaders), and limit and control speech, including the press. This control of communication (and thus control of ideas) is not only done through legal censorship, intimidation tactics by the State, police officials, Party supporters against the opposition (which are propagandized to be the incarnation of evil - all of them - and made to be hated and feared), and public humiliation and stigma, but also, and perhaps more importantly, through hijacking the educational institutions of the society. (OK, I’m tired of finding links - I’ll never get them all, so deal with it.)

At all levels of education - primary, secondary, and higher - we teach students to think for themselves. To an extent, we are indoctrinating our kids to pass on our values. There is nothing wrong with this in and of itself. Teaching kids to take pride in their nation, for example. is a good thing. Making the State into an infallible god, however, is NOT. Indoctrinating with one idea leaves room for students to think for themselves, while the other strives to remove any sense of individuality from the student in order to promote efficiency in collective action.

A formal education serves the purpose, in the humble opinion of this writer, to broaden and deepen the knowledge and thinking skills of children and adults through active engagement of debate, writing, problem solving, and literary review, among other things. This is done in a way that provides experiences and knowledge that the student may not gain through home schooling or narrow vocational training, formally or informally. Indoctrination, especially when disguised as education, seeks to do the opposite: it prevents students from thinking for themselves in exchange for programming certain ideas and values into their mindset in a hard to alter way. Usually this is done in without consideration of parental wishes, as the ideas that need to be indoctrinated run counter to the wishes of many parents.

Consider, for example, the taking of first graders to see their teachers lesbian wedding. Most of the population is against homosexual marriage. The purpose of the “field trip” and every other lesson on homosexuality aimed at young children is not to stimulate debate or learning. It’s to indoctrinate them so that homosexual relationships and marriages are normalized. Is it working? Consider that younger people have a much positive view of homosexuality than older adults. Is this a bad thing that opinion is changing? Not necessarily. This example is not a judgment for or against homosexual relationships. It’s merely an illustration of how education is being subverted and used to indoctrinate society against the wishes of parents. Instead of promoting an honest debate, proponents attempt to stack the deck through educational propaganda. The decision on whether we as a society should accept homosexual marriage as equal to heterosexual is being made for us through the indoctrination of children. Shouldn’t parents have a say so in this?

Similarly, the push to teach Intelligent Design in science classes contrary to scientific principles is an example of the Christian Right attempting to normalize the “theory” through classroom instruction. Having a discussion on what makes a “theory” scientific would be instructive to any student of appropriate age, however, presenting a theory as science that runs counter to the scientific method (fodder for a different post) is a distortion. I do understand the concerns of parents, though. If evolution is presented in such a way that it comes across as replacing religion, then this is indoctrination. Instead, teachers should strive to get students to critically think through the theories. It should be presented that science seeks to describe the world using physical observables, which means excluding the divine. This does NOT rule out the divine, however, and a discussion on this philosophy should be part of a high school course.

Of course, the ability of schools to undermine parental values through indoctrination is made much easier by complacent parents. Indeed, studies which I don’t feel like digging up show that parental involvement in education is a primary factor for improving grades and test scores (or maybe I just made that up/mis-remembered?). Parents who are not asking questions and talking to their kids allow the educational institute to take a free reign on instilling values in students. It should be remembered that students gain an education not only formally, but informally through parents and extra-curricular activities.

Might be continued in part III?…