Me Myself
Back to my username
Of course you do, he made it up.
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Why making your children follow your religion truly is brainwashing
- Thread starter 1137
- Start date
Of course you do, he made it up.
Isn't it in the rules that you have to cite copied-and-pasted sources like this?
"Psychologist Lev Vygotsky proposed that children learn through interactions with their surrounding culture. This theory, known as the socio-cultural perspective, states that the cognitive development of children and adolescents is enhanced when they work in their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD for short). To reach the ZPD, children need the help of adults or more competent individuals to support or scaffold them as they are learning new things."
(source)
To be fair, though, 92.57% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
[I know, I know and I'm sorry. I just couldn't resist]
Here's a question I don't believe I've seen in this thread: What if a child, who is maybe 5 or 6 years old (possibly even younger), asks if he can be part of the faith. Do you believe that a small child in Kindergarten is old enough to choose a faith? What if he or she asks if he or she can join a different faith than the parents?
Kalidas
Well-Known Member
Yes it was thanks for that. I forgot to paste the source link.
Back to your last statement. Piaget outdated? His theories are STILL used to this day.
Yes silly me there is only cognitive thinking I meant cognitive development and logical thinking.
Behaviorism is a small part but it a big reason why parents will want their children to learn about their religion.
I would like to mention I am against FORCING religion on children but see zero issue with children involvement.
Kalidas
Well-Known Member
Back to my friend. She has no religion her son decided to be a Christian. She had no problem with this.
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Cognitive development isn't my specialty (I don't think I've ever done a study with infants, actually), but I'm not totally ignorant of it. Outdated doesn't always (or even usually) mean the person isn't used at all. But Piaget's ideas were formed largely through anecdotal observation and therefore (naturally) many have been shown to be false. The work with infants by Renee Baillargeon and Elizabeth Spelke in particular was groundbreaking, not just for revising our theories regarding cognitive development but also because they were the two foremost developers of modern experimental paradigms (the big one being habituation). A lot of what Piaget held to be true was based on the fact that infants are slower to develop their motor skills than their cognitive skills. As such, they can't show their cognitive skills unless the proper experiments are done such that they don't have to use motor skills. Thanks to some ingenious techniques, we now know that things (e.g., object permanence) that Piaget thought were learned later seem to be present almost from birth. Piaget just didn't know how to test these things.
I figured you probably meant something else. I tend to type too fast and leave out words or combine words I didn't mean to so I'm used to doing the same thing.
Maybe conditioning is a big reason why. It is generally acknowledged that the behaviorists did get certain things right and conditioning is a very real thing. However, behaviorism refers not just to the processes behaviorists studied but to the idea that this is all that there is: the mind is a blackbox that cannot be studied. These things are no longer believed. Certainly, you are correct that parents do recognize their children are impressionable and want them to learn what they believe is correct. This includes religion. I was raised Catholic. I'm glad I was, even though I'm not a believer. I'm even more glad my parents, particularly my father, played devil's advocate so often to try to get us to think critically.
Sounds reasonable to me.
Kalidas
Well-Known Member
YES much of what Piaget said has been proven false, yet his stages still have held fairly well. We learn through use of our motor skills first, then we use basic cognitive thinking, then we use higher reasoning, then come logical thoughts about abstract ideas. It is probably his only theory still standing, if not altered a bit.
That was the part of behaviorism I agree with. I do not adhere to Lockes "blank slate theory"
I was raised Christian my parents NEVER forced religion on me and thus I was able to bond with them and yet learned a lot about others. Now I am a Hindu. Involve your kids in your lives but don't force them into your life.
Me Myself
Back to my username
Enai de a lukal
Well-Known Member
What a silly post. Clearly something I or someone else said has caused you to feel insecure, so much so that you had to write a bunch of irrelevant blather simply to prove you've read some stuff, regardless of whether it has any bearing on the claim in question (it does not). Do I want more of it? Not unless you can manage to say something that even remotely has something to do with what I've said.
Who would've imagined that, eh? Mind-blowing.
Also a shocking observation- and yet, clearly this doesn't mean that you want to involve your child in EVERY aspect of your life; there are some things that are age-appropriate, and some things that are not.
I can't wait.
Again, very enlightening stuff, but not relevant.
While I'm pleased you've finally worked your way around to finally addressing the matter at hand, none of this implies that at ages 2-11 children are in a position to critically evaluate ethical and metaphysical proposals, such as those offered by religion/lack of religion. Hell, many adults aren't in a good position to do this- the whole matter is murky at best. And since oftentimes much of a person's self-image and worldview is influenced by ones religious commitments, having a child have to decide the issue when they are ill-equipped, or have effectively had their parents make the decision for them (as is often the case, when children begin their religious education at the same age they begin formal education), seems inappropriate and irresponsible.
Your use of Skinner here is a stretch at best. In any case, you've managed to show that you probably attended college for at least some period of time, or at least are competent at using Google, but are not capable of synthesizing or bringing anything you've read to bear on a given topic. But you're feeling insecure, and had an emotional reaction to what I said and felt you needed to say something, even if it was largely irrelevant blather. Now, perhaps if you'd like to continue now that you've had a moment to cool off, you can address why you think young children are cognitively or emotionally equipped to critically and responsibly evaluate and decide on the sorts of complicated ethical and metaphysical questions raised by religion- or why you don't think this is a problem.
Enai de a lukal
Well-Known Member
Then wtf are you objecting to? Good gravy, people need to read more carefully. This is ALL most of the posters on this thread are objecting to. Nobody is saying you can't bring your child to church, read the nativity stories on Christmas, tell them about your faith, or anything like this- only that indoctrinating your children, effectively deciding their faith for them by using ones authority and influence as a parent to teach ones children the articles of your faith (usually starting at a very young age) as a matter-of-fact, beyond any question, failing to responsibly inform them that there ARE other forms of religion (even the absence of religion, or atheistic ideologies like secular humanism)- THIS is what I, at least, am saying I have a problem with, and I think many of the other posters here are saying something similar.
As I've stressed, ones religious views often form a rather large part of a persons identity. Ones views about ethics and morality, which in turn influence our behavior, are often tied to our religion. Our views about death. Our views about the world, and our place in it. Oftentimes our religion forms or informs our social groups. We could go on here, but the point is that religion is very personal, and should be something a person decides as autonomously as possible. Do parents like to have their children share their religion? Can it be something parents and children can bond over? Sure, but does that outweigh the fact that in most other aspects of life, we allow and even encourage people to choose for themselves- their spouses, their careers, their hobbies, their political views, etc.- and that religion is no less significant? It shouldn't. Its ironic that the defenders of early religious education (indoctrination) have cried of a double-standard here, when the inconsistency truly lays on their side- as a culture, we value independence and autonomy, such as in the above mentioned areas of life- we are highly individualistic. But religion remains an exception. And I see no good reason why it should be so.
They're certainly not "merely" that. And I'd be interested to find out why you think that religious beliefs enable spiritual formation at all... though you'd first need to tell us what you mean by "spiritual formation", since it sounds like a term that can be taken many ways.
A child raised in a home with religious parents already has a "cultural context". We're talking about cases where the parents go one step beyond this and insist that the child give intellectual assent to the same beliefs they do.
It's not just a matter of a "Catholic, Jewish or Muslim context"; it's a matter of a context where nothing but Catholicism, Judaism, or Islam is tolerated. Don't you see something wrong with that?
If you're going to respond to my posts, please actually read them all the way through first. I'm not a teacher; I was a volunteer coach. And the decisions about the party weren't made by me; they were made by the teacher in charge.
But I disagree about your notion of duty, and I think you're mischaracterizing the situation.
- the religious beliefs of the student weren't the issue. The reason that the whole thing became an issue was that the parents were worried that the student might believe that eating non-halal meat was okay; they were trying to curtail their kid acting in accordance with his own beliefs.
- reasonable accommodation is fine, but that was already achieved: if someone's at a party where food is served that they aren't allowed to eat for religious reasons, they can just bring their own food. Nobody was forcing anyone to eat anything.
- it's impossible to accommodate all religious beliefs. Many decisions will violate someone's beliefs no matter what. For instance, I've gone on from coaching a robotics team to organizing a tournament. What day of the week do you think we should hold it? It can't be during the week; that conflicts with school. The only remaining possibilities are Saturday and Sunday, which are both a religious "day of rest" for at least some of the kids who might want to attend. No matter what choice I make, some religious beliefs won't be accommodated. Edit: Heck... I refereed at a tournament that was held over Easter weekend last year, and I think this was fine, since the alternative would have been to not hold the tournament at all.
Koldo
Outstanding Member
It is incredible how you have completely misrepresented what he said.
Going to the party was a problem to the religious beliefs of the parents, not the student's.
Curious George
Veteran Member
I am not sure it was a silly post. I think that he was connecting the dots for you to see that any parent raising children will indoctrinate their child. However, in child development they refer to this as socialization. If we are going to stretch the definition of indoctrination to encompass the preferential treatment given to one religion that might later bias a child's religious choice then all teaching of children even facts are also indoctrination. Hence, Vygotsky's sociocultural approach to cognition.
Enai de a lukal
Well-Known Member
This claim was neither made nor implied by what he posted- which was, as I said, simply a bunch of irrelevant blather trying to demonstrate that he's read some experts on some subject, even if it has no bearing on the claim he was objecting to. I guess he was hoping that I was one of those folks who gets intimidated by citations of experts, or technical speak- unfortunately, while I don't have a degree in child development or psychology, I'm not unfamiliar with Skinner or Piaget, and, more importantly, I am quite capable of identifying bull$ht when I see it.
Simply dropping some names doesn't turn a post into a sound argument- and its hard to find a more perfect example of this than the post in question.
Curious George
Veteran Member
I think that it was there, but perhaps I am seeing something where there is nothing.
I would certainly agree that there was a lot of name dropping- however, I think that the intent was to show that many different areas of child psychology disagree with a suggestion that this "indoctrination" is something we should avoid.
Enai de a lukal
Well-Known Member
That may well have been the intent- unfortunately, as we can see, things didn't go as planned, since nothing he said contradicted my claim. That communities are crucial in child development, that parent/child interactions build bonds and trust, and assist in learning, that children begin developing complex/abstract reasoning during a certain age, and so on, do not form an argument against my claim that religious indoctrination at a young age is an unnecessary compromise of the childs autonomy and right to self-determination of their own self-image and personal identity (or, at best, such an argument would be non-sequitur).
There are still some people claiming that it is not?
Me Myself
Back to my username
Self identity is subjective, the parents are free to create it at will and it is not immoral inless it is clearly harmful. They will put on a lot of other subjective things in there like values and likes and dislikes for several things on hir life and surroundings.
Having a religion be part of your identity i not harmful. The parents love the religion, they want it for their children and they teach it to their children and they have the capacity to eeject it anyways because honestly, no children is 100% obidient anyways.
There is nothing wrong with teaching your kids something that you love that has brought you structure and good values and identity.
Having a religion be part of your identity i not harmful. The parents love the religion, they want it for their children and they teach it to their children and they have the capacity to eeject it anyways because honestly, no children is 100% obidient anyways.
There is nothing wrong with teaching your kids something that you love that has brought you structure and good values and identity.
You've never watched Toddlers & Tiaras, have you?
Toddlers & Tiaras - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia