Exposure does not equal indoctrination

When religious parents are challenged by secularists about indoctrinating their children in a faith they attempt to turn the accusation back on their accuser. In other words they commit a tu quoque fallacy. Besides being a farcically transparent attempt to justify their actions, they compound their error by misrepresenting the very meaning of the word indoctrinate. According to religious parents, just about anything a secular parent says or does around their children is construed as indoctrination. This is false.

The way secular parents interact with the world in the presence of their children cannot in anyway be construed as indoctrination. Neither does the simple exposure to books, movies, TV programs, magazines, Internet web sites, or in more general terms, contact with the prevailing culture, constitute indoctrination.

Parents recognize on one level that it is wrong to wall off a child’s life and attempt to isolate them to a single viewpoint and only allow them to mix with children of the same faith. Most of the time their attempts fail anyway because children eventually rebel. Forbidden fruit is always so much sweeter. Not surprising then that kids find ways to obtain the forbidden icons of their culture. Kids are not stupid, they recognize what they have been missing is so much more rich and rewarding than the narrow old fashioned religious world their parents would restrict them to.

Here are some of the definitions I find under “indoctrination”:

• cause to accept a set of beliefs uncritically through repeated instruction. (Compact Oxford English Dictionary)
• to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle (Mirriam-Webster)
• cause to believe something: to teach somebody a belief, doctrine, or ideology thoroughly and systematically, especially with the goal of discouraging independent thought or the acceptance of other opinions (Encarta World English Dictionary)
• to repeat an idea or belief frequently to someone in order to persuade them to accept it (Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary)
• to teach with a biased or one-sided ideology (Wictionary)
• to teach doctrines to; teach uncritically; (Ultralingua)

When someone is indoctrinated they are not allowed to challenge what they are being told or to investigate other options. For this reason the term indoctrination has a pejorative tone like brainwashing. On the contrary, when someone is educated the opposite is true and they are encouraged to ask questions, think for themselves, consider all the alternatives, and reason things out logically instead of accepting pat answers.

The tu quoque accusation betrays a profound lack of knowledge about the secular ethos, because secular parents raise their children to be self determining, autonomous adults. Accordingly, secularists value independence of mind and they insist their children think for themselves, be skeptical, and challenge what they are told. There is no comparison.

Nature has endowed kids with a questioning mind. Daddy, why is the sky blue? Why did my dog die? Why can’t I fly like a bird? It takes a lot of patience to field such queries, but the alternative: “God wants it that way” is really a cop out and worse yet, a form of intellectual murder. For the really tough questions it is ok to say you don’t know. Children must understand that there are limits to what humans presently know rather than be fed supernatural answers.

The only creed a freethinker has is to remain free of all creeds.

Posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 7:39 am in Parenting, Secularism.
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