Indoctrination or Education: non-standard considerations
Part 2
Indoctrinate
(noun)
1.
to instruct in a doctrine,
principle, ideology, etc., especially to imbue with a specific partisan or biased
belief or point of view.
Is it indoctrination if a professor deliberately sets out to
change student opinion? Or must they be deliberately pushing an unbalanced,
partisan or biased point of view? Perhaps we should also ask, if students fail
to acquire more refined opinions have they really been educated?
Professorial Opinion
A key factor is whether or not the professor indicates that he
or she is expressing their personal opinion. A professor teaching a film class told
me he recently showed a clip that coincidentally involved a suicide. A number
of students spontaneously expressed the opinion that suicide was cowardly. The
professor responded, saying that in some circumstances suicide could be understood as the ultimate
expression of will.
Is this response indoctrination? I
don’t think so. He only suggested another way of looking at it. And, by
expressing this view, he provided students with the opportunity to reconsider.
The ultimate expression of will?
What about this being a film class? Suicide was hardly in
the course syllabus. Should professors withhold their opinion when a topic strays
like that? Should a professor of mathematics, for instance, avoid expressing an
opinion on, say, holocaust denial, if it somehow comes up? Of course his or her
silence would constitute a lesson in itself.
I remember my 9th grade biology teacher telling our
class that his fundamentalist religion prevented him from teaching biology from
an evolutionary point of view. Subsequently he struggled mightily to teach the
subject without mentioning evolution.
A biology teacher dodging this centrally important topic is
patently ridiculous. But he was the only high school teacher I ever had with
the courage to take a moral stand on anything. The rest conspicuously dodged
moral commitments; and by so doing taught moral cowardice.
Teaching How
The type of teaching engaged in is another consideration. Consider
teaching students how to do
something. Biased instruction in how to
type teaching are typically minimal. Let’s consider a straightforward example: how to pack a parachute. I observed this
type of teaching at the Parachute Rigger’s School, Fort Lee, Virginia. The instructor’s
job is to make certain all students follow the exact same time-tested procedures.
There is one best way and master riggers repeatedly remind
students that every parachute must be packed in exactly the same way. Lives
depend on it; and that includes the packer’s life because he or she has to periodically
jump with one of their own randomly chosen chutes. The official motto of Army
parachute riggers is: “I will be sure always.” And they had better be.
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| A parachute rigger in the trademark red cap |
A parachute rigger in his trademark red cap.
Do professors teach anything as straightforward as parachute
rigging? Sure they do. Mathematics, engineering, foreign languages and the
sciences come immediately to mind. Properly using a sling hygrometer (it
measures relative humidity) is not a matter of opinion. Neither is balancing a
chemical equation or computing structural stress loads. And professors teaching
these kinds of skills have the least opportunity to give themselves over to indoctrination.
But teaching how is not always one-dimensional. At
times there are several acceptable ways to do things. I was an apprentice
barber, for example, and I learned various ways to produce a first-rate
haircuts. The master barber resisted the temptation to only teach me the one he
favored. He demonstrated all the techniques and it was my job — given
individual customer characteristics —to discover which ones worked best for me.
Of course he also made it clear there were some things you must always do and some
you must never do. Most were related to hygiene.
I was also told to choose my own tools. It was a multi-chair
shop and varieties were available. I tried them all. (This was more choice than
I ever had as a secondary school teacher. There district “leadership” chose my teaching
tools. Chief among them the textbook.)
Sometimes those teaching
how ignore legitimate alternatives. Why?
Conceit, vainglory or insecurity comes to mind. In any case, students deserve
to be taught every legitimate alternative. Otherwise it becomes indoctrination.
Even when teaching
how is carefully done, however,
professors can be accused of indoctrination. Here is some teaching
how that I did that could have backfired. To improve their ability to
appraise educational policy, I taught students how to identify slogans. I defined
them as statements containing vague key terms that can be variously
interpreted. Because of their vagueness they can generate a broad but very shallow
consensus. Then I provided them with the mission statement of the Red Lion, PA.
Area School District. (I used Red Lion’s because I taught there.) Here is Red
Lion’s statement: “In partnership with
our communities, to prepare all students to reach their greatest potential,
thus becoming responsible and productive citizens.
I asked them to identify any slogans in this statement. Then
I told them to list any unresolved questions that these vague terms concealed.”
Students typically came up with questions such as these: What does this “partnership” amount to? Who decides what counts as a
“community?” What sorts of “potential” are to be developed fully? And why assume
that developing student “potential” always produces “responsible” and/or “productive”
citizens?
Teaching students to think in this way might make some school
administrators unhappy. It also provokes parents who feel threatened by critical
thinking. In a sense, then, this lesson provoked “dangerous” thoughts. For example,
upon learning about slogans one of my students blurted out: “The Ten
Commandments!” “What about them? I asked. “They’re all slogans!” she replied.
One reaction to critical thinking
Insights such as these can be unwelcome. But teaching critical
thinking is hardly indoctrination. It is an antidote.
Teaching That
The temptation and opportunity to indoctrinate increases when
it comes to teaching that. In other words, teaching “facts.” Why?
Because what counts as a “fact” depends on the authority relied on. For instance,
it is a fact that the earth is over 4 billion years old only when one relies on
the authority of science. But not if you rely on a literal interpretation of
the Bible. Then it is, perhaps, 6 to 8 thousand years old.
In too many cases the relied upon authority is the professor
him or her self. In other words, they have succumbed to teaching their
particular “truth” as the one and only gospel.
I recall debating a colleague in the humanities regarding
the definition of romanticism. He insisted that his definition was the only correct
one even when I showed him other definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary. He
even refused to expand his definition when I demonstrated that F.L. Lucas
actually identified 11,936 different meanings in his Decline and Fall of the Ideal of Romanticism (1948). When that kind
of false certainty is taken into the classroom, indoctrination is assured.
In disciplines such as science, mathematics and engineering,
the matter of authority is relatively unproblematic. These disciplines properly rely on the consensus of their academic
community. But things are not so straightforward in the arts. Here there is
more debate and disagreement; and, consequently, more room for indoctrination.
We should keep in mind, though, that students can compare
the gospel according to Professor Smith with the gospel according to Professor
Jones and reach their own conclusions. Indoctrination is maximally effective
only when all disagreement is expunged. For instance, in schools such as
Liberty University or Oral Roberts University the Bible, as interpreted by one
or another preacher, is the ultimate authority. Hence the physical universe is officially
designated as the direct creation of God —the one and only great designer and
lawgiver. Consequently, life science professors must teach the “true belief”
that the man-made concept of evolution is patently false.
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| Oral Roberts had his own interpretation of the Bible |
Should life science professors give equal time to creation
“science” in order to avoid indoctrination? (You might recall George W. Bush advocated
this when he was President.) No, because creation “science” is not science, but
religion. Why? Because it relies on an a
piori faith commitment rather than empirical evidence.
That is why schools that teach creation “science” and the
supremacy of the Bible over all other forms of knowledge are not institutions
of higher education, but institutions of more elaborate indoctrination. Liberty
University and Oral Roberts University come immediately to mind.
Teaching To
Teaching to must evoke far greater student commitment
than teaching how to. You can teach
someone how to read, for example, but that doesn’t mean you have taught him or
her to read. Likewise, you can teach someone how to be a Roman Catholic.
But that is no guarantee you have taught them to actually be Roman Catholic.
Successfully teaching someone
to do something, that is to actually
embrace it, is orders of magnitude more difficult than teaching them how to. It can
come down to fostering a deep and abiding love in students for what they are
learning to do. Imagine a ballerina who practices until her feet bleed because while
she was learning how to dance, she also
was learning to dance.
This also applies to just teaching someone how to
read, versus teaching them to read. The later occurs when a student
reads because he or she wants to. They have learned to enjoy reading for its
own sake. The teacher who accomplishes this transformation deserves special
respect.
Does teaching to require indoctrination? Not when it
is the artful fostering of a love or passion. Unfortunately, artful cultivation
is not the only way to foster a deep passion — particularly if it is religious
or political. The other way involves daily programming, preferably from early
childhood, in isolation from competing messages. Doubt and dissent are unwelcome
— even punished. Students are repeatedly told how they should think, act and
feel. Shame and guilt are instruments of control; and students are encouraged
to believe that they are being inducted into a special group that stands apart
in important ways from the great mass of humanity. What kind of teaching is
this? It is indoctrination, in spades.
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| Nazi indoctrination taught them to die for the Fuhrer |
Education and indoctrination are two very different things.
They both involve teaching and learning. But that is where the similarity ends.
