Yes, we are. :sad4:
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Indoctrination.... Wrong or right?
- Thread starter Im an Atheist
- Start date
Yes, we are. :sad4:
Well, I don't know what British schools are teaching, but in America, our history classes outright lie. For example, in Kindergarted, we were taught that Columbus argued that the world was round when everybody else thought it was flat. (Wrong.) Also on that note, we were taught that Columbus got along perfectly with the natives. (Also wrong.) We were taught that the American Civil War was almost exclusively about slavery, when that issue was actually just a footnote.
Our English classes force children to read books that they would most likely have no interest in, and thus accidentally discouraging them to read rather than encouraging them with books that children actually DO like. (This wasn't too big a problem back in the Elementary school I went to, but in Junior High and High School, it certainly was a problem.)
On these issues I agree.
linwood
Well-Known Member
Yeah, I kind of figured you'd say something like that.So you're saying that even if I strongly believe in God myself, I should do everything in my power to convince my kids that He doesn't exist? In other words, I should make every effort to be a hypocrite. How would you suggest that I teach them to to value integrity?
Not at all, I was merely answering from my perspective.
I`ve told my daughter my beliefs because I think it`s silly to try to hide or deny what I am in the hope that "She finds her own way".
I`m her father she has a right to know "me".
I teach her everything, there is no reason I should neglect her understanding of religious belief simply because "it`s controversial".
The fact that "it`s controversial is even more reason to offer some guidance.
If one strongly believes in a god/gods then that person should most definitely let their children know that and explain to them why they choose this spiritual path.
As long as a parent teaches their child critical thinking skills the child will "Find his/her own way" regardless of a parents beliefs.
Indoctrination is a different animal entirely.
Frank Merton
Active Member
I don't think the anger that a non-believer (who may or may not have become an atheist) feels for his childhood religion and what was "done to him" and the emotional problems the person had escaping from this, is comparable to the antipathy theists often show to various heretics and so on. Of course, all of these forms of hostility are unhealthy and should be set aside as much as possible.
That outdoes me, but only a little. I wrote my own constitution for a country.
Frank Merton
Active Member
Of course it isn't possible, and someone who thinks they are being unbiased is only fooling themselves.
However, I don't think that is what people who have come down this way in the above messages exactly mean. Although one cannot be completely unbiased, one can be objective and skeptical (but avoiding being cynical). It would be less than honest to not be clear what you yourself think; otherwise the child is not able to assess your possible bias.
The real issue is not teaching children a religion, but indoctrinating them. It is more an emotional rather than an intellectual process that is repulsive.
Frank Merton
Active Member
I don't know what historians you are reading, but they sound Marxist and revisionist. As for Columbus and the flat world, I don't remember what I was taught in kindergarten, but in HS the truth was presented well enough. And just what on earth do you think the U.S. Civil War was mainly about?
Oh, dear, you were forced to read books you didn't want to read. How terrible for you! Were you also forced to memorize your multiplication tables? That must have been a horrible bore too.
Jacksnyte
Reverend
Actually, there were quite a few other factors that led to the Civil War. Slavery was not the sole reason for that war, no matter how much they try to simplify it in public schools. Ever notice how a large percentage of history teachers in the public high schools are coaches? Ever notice how coaches often just go through the motions of the teaching end of their jobs, and focus primarily on their coaching duties?
IMO, the decision to teach a person about religion as a child rather than an adult is usually about the emotional process. As the Jesuits say: "give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man." They're not talking about any sort of intellectual process.
Frank Merton
Active Member
That is true enough, but that isn't what they guy said. He was going on about slavery being hardly an issue at all, and I think that is factually dead wrong. Slavery was the main issue. Other issues, such as State's Rights, Tariff laws, frontier expansion, and so on, all also had the South's determination to preserve its "peculiar institution" as the main motivator.
The U.S. public schools are a mess; we all know that. It is typical of any socialist enterprise to progressively get worse and worse over time. That doesn't mean we should not stick up for them when they do teach the truth (my main problem is not that what they teach is false, but that they don't teach much at all).
Frank Merton
Active Member
It can be done in a rational, objective way. Most Thais (a Buddhist country with a large Muslim minority) take a year's course in the world's religions, and it amazes me how objectively the whole thing is handled.
Thanks for the Jesuit quote; I may use it one day.
Not completely. The mere act of teaching a child communicates something about what's being taught.
It's like a photo: the mere act of taking a photo of something says "the things within the bounds of this frame are important in a way that the things outside the frame are not." Your decisions about what to teach or not say something about the importance of what you do teach.
If you don't teach a child something, you're telling the child that it's unimportant. If you teach a child something, you're telling the child that it's important. And if you teach a child something in a very diligent and conscientious way, you're telling the child that it's really important.
It may be objective about the differences between religions, but it can't be objective about the importance of religion in general. Simply having a year-long course in world religions tells the student that world religions are a subject that's of supreme importance on par with things like history, science, math and languages. This approach is inherently biased against the idea that religion isn't that important in the grand scheme of things.
Frank Merton
Active Member
I have to respond with what I've seen, and I would say that most of the students who take the course end up believing in none of them.
(By the way, they also teach about the history and variations of atheism too).
Katzpur
Not your average Mormon
Thanks for clarifying that Linwood. Because you did, I'm going to share something that may actually support the concept of religious parents indoctrinating their children. Personally, I can state with conviction that I do not believe I was ever indoctrinated by my parents. They pretty much followed the same guidelines you described above. I was never made to feel guilty for not believing something I heard in Church and I was always free to explore other options.
On the flip side of the coin, however, is parents teaching their children by fear that if they don't believe what it being taught them, there will be not only horribly physical consequences (eternal damnation and torment) but psychological consequences here and now (you'll be dead to your family and friends). Such consequences would never be a threat in Mormonism, and that is the truth. I do see some LDS parents doing what I can, after having given it some thought, see as indoctrinating their children. Yes, it's to a lesser extent and not as damaging, but it's something my parents never did and that I never did while raising my children.
Once a month, we have what we call Testimony Meeting. It's held in place of our regular Sunday worship service. As a big part of the service, members are encouraged to go up to the pulpit and publicly express their faith in God, thank Him for the many ways they believe He has blessed their lives, and "bear their testimony" as to the truths taught in the scriptures and their conviction that the LDS Church is Christ's Church here on Earth. It's kind of a scary experience for people to go up in front of a couple of hundred people and speak extemporaneously for three to five minutes, or more. People of all ages are welcome to participate, in random order, as they feel prompted to do so. Since it does take a measure of self-confidence, most parents are pleased when their children take the initiative and go up to the pulpit they can barely see over. Their "testimonies" generally go something like this, "I want to bear my testimony. I love my mommy and daddy and my brothers and my sister. (*long pause and deep breath*) IknowtheChurchistrueIntheNameofJesusChristAmen." I'm sure they get quite a bit of praise from their parents after the service. I'm fine with children's testimonies where they simply express thanks to a God I am convinced they can have a sincere belief in at an early age. I'm fine with them saying they love to come to church and learn about Jesus." It's when a five-year-old claims that they know the [LDS] Church is true, that it bugs me. At that point, they know about 1% of what they will eventually come to know, if they stay in the Church all their lives, and they certainly don't have anything to compare it to.
In our last Testimony Meeting a very small child went up to the podium, accompanied by an older sibling. The child (maybe four years old) stood up in front of the congregation and glanced at his older brother at his side. The older brother then began whispering sentences, and even half-sentences, into the child's ear. The child repeated them into the microphone. Of course one of them was "I know the Church is true." My husband, sitting next to me, glanced over and probably saw my jaw tense up and my face get red, because he whispered to me, "Calm down."
I hate to say it, but I would agree that this child is being indoctrinated. He may not grow up afraid to give up his beliefs at some point, but he probably will come to rely on other people to tell him what he's supposed to think (on not just religious issues but political and social issues as well) for a long as he lives.
Katzpur
Not your average Mormon
I completely agree.
I also think that if a person feels strongly about anything, particularly about something like religion, it really is difficult to be objective. I would find it difficult to explain some of the doctrines of Catholicism, for instance, in a way that was truly objective, no matter how hard I might want to be able to. The mere choice of words can make a huge difference. I have yet to see a non-Mormon explain Joseph Smith's First Vision objectively. If a person thinks it's BS, that's going to come across in the way they speak about it.
Actually, that came from some second-hand knowledge (which, to my knowledge, is not Marxist. I don't know what revisionist is.)
Some quick research reveals that I appear to have been only partly wrong: the issue of slavery appears to have been the final issue which caused the South to secede.
Lucky you. We didn't get the truth until ONE Middle-School teacher who tried to force the original concept out of our heads. But even after that, I met people who didn't know the truth.
That quick research I mentioned above seems to indicate that the actual cause (or causes) of the war is kinda fuzzy and debated amongst historians. As I am not a historian myself (and in particular, U.S. history isn't all that interesting to me), I shall no longer take a specific stance on the subject.
Well, we were supposed to, but I didn't.
I did memorize those terribly catchy songs from Multiplication Rock, though. (To this day, I SUCK at math, and find it EXTREMELY boring... and yet I basically view it as the language of God. 
Guess there's a glimpse into my own hypocrisy.)Thing is, one of our teachers actually gave us a book that was written recently (called "Ender's Game"), and the students LOVED it. Wouldn't it be better to expose us to books we WANT to read, and therefore encourage us to read more books because we'd know that books can be great, rather than forcing us to read books we don't want to, and thus discourage most students from reading anything at all because books appear to be a real chore and headache to slog through? (I think I was one of the only students who kinda enjoyed "To Kill A Mockingbird"; all the other students HATED it.)
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And quick research does seem to indicate that.
Perhaps saying that they lie may be a bit inaccurate; but I don't think it's inaccurate to say that they are deceptive. After all, it does seem like they selectively choose what not to teach in order to instill a sense of nationalism. For example, from what I understand, schools often leave out the fact that Helen Keller was a socialist. (I don't remember if that was mentioned when I was in school; I didn't know what socialism was at the time, and even now I'm a bit fuzzy as to what it's relationship to communism is.)
Frank Merton
Active Member
Well I only said it "sounded" Marxist or revisionist; there is a lot of Marxist pseudo-science that tries to interpret all historical events in economic terms, so it would downplay the moral revulsion of the North against slavery and try to portray it as only an economic class struggle.
Revisionism is a recent fad in some circles (I think largely in reaction to the American involvement in Vietnam) that tends to downplay the admirable aspects of U.S. history, if not reject them entirely. This is, of course, silly. All nations have both admirable and dishonorable aspects of their history. Objective balance is what is needed.
There is a huge debate about this; I see nothing wrong with a little science fiction/fantasy like Ender's Game, but students will never understand their literary history if they aren't occasionally compelled to read things that are culturally difficult for them. The real world contains all sorts of things we have to do that we would rather not have to do, that are boring, tiresome, or whatever; it is good that students come to appreciate this. Children often need to be helped to grow up.
Frank Merton
Active Member
That Helen Keller was a socialist doesn't mean much, so I can see it being omitted. The hardest job of a historian is to select what to omit, since there is a virtual infinity of information available. Those who have some axe to grind, of course, want the stuff that supports their view to be included, and tend to paranoid reactions if it isn't.
I dare say all school systems have an understandable tendency to glorify their country, and I am not sure, so long as honesty is maintained, that this is such a bad thing. We should be proud of our native country -- it is a natural instinct and, so long as it doesn't become jingoism, I think it is healthy as it serves to motivate work to improve ones homeland.
Socialism is state ownership of business activity; Communism is common ownership of business activity. Since the transition to common ownership would logically require a period of state ownership, the two are easily confused.
I see.
Oh, I see. ... yeah, that's silly. I have plenty of problems with America, but it does have plenty of moments of glory in history.
Right, but that's a terrible method. I have worked with kids in the past, including the teenage culture, and they will NOT gain appreciation for our literary heritage if they're forced to read tiresome books where nothing apparently happens.
I'm not saying they shouldn't read things like Shakespeare, but in that they should be reading the comedies, which are typically enjoyed.
I think the homework itself is the better practice for dealing with the problems of the real world. I don't see why there would even be a debate; anyone who spends any interactive time with teenage culture would know not to expose them to literature they're not interested in.
Erebus
Well-Known Member
It depends. Indoctrinating a child with his values or her values is wrong. Indoctrinating a child with MY values is fine