One of the buzzwords being hurled around by those fearful of change and progress is “indoctrination.” As though opening people’s minds is going to make them all gay or trans or woke or something.
All teaching is indoctrination.
Again: All teaching is indoctrination. Every time a person is exposed to anything that somebody else likes or believes in they are potentially being indoctrinated. Religion, in particular, is indoctrination. Religions have doctrines!
The whole point is not that there is indoctrination but who has control over it. The people raving about indoctrination want to make sure that only their own views can be used to indoctrinate others. And that nobody else’s have any validity.
Indoctrination ranges from “try this food, you’ll like it” to “listen to this band” to “here, have a toke.” It also includes “if you don’t do exactly as my religion says, we will shun you and you will go to hell.”
I prefer less coercive indoctrination. Liberal education is based on the idea that we learn to evaluate things. That too is a form of indoctrination. The food, the band, even the toke. I might like the food. I might not like the band and try to indoctrinate right back—welcome to the cult of Anna Moffo! The toke might have positive or negative effects.
I remember the things my parents indoctrinated me into—or not.
Daddy wanted to teach me to enjoy orchestra concerts. So he took me to see the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Villanova University Field House. I must have been about 10. There was going to be a Brahms symphony, I don’t recall which one. But first: Hindemith. Mathis der Mahler. I was 10. I hated it and demanded to be taken home. Daddy was very upset, disappointed. But honestly what was he thinking? That was way beyond my ability to take in at that age, precocious though I was. Despite that experience I grew into a music lover. There was, of course, much further indoctrination via LPs of more suitable pieces at home.
Daddy also wanted to train me to play squash like he did. And go fly fishing like he did. Much of his indoctrination failed because it was what he wanted and he wasn’t observing my innate tastes and desires and talents—and lack thereof. That’s the thing about indoctrination: it works when the indoctrinee can receive the training. And even then it might not take root.
Mother indoctrinated me into something that did take root. Wine. After Daddy died she and I went to London for a week. An amazing week of cultural treasures. Nureyev in The Nutcracker. Don Giovanni with Siepi. After a performance at Covent Garden she took me to a restaurant and taught me how to order wine with with my meal. I was 15! Piesporter with trout. Responsible drinking. Her indoctrination stayed with me, even as I also experienced the peer-pressure driven indoctrination of drinking to get wasted at college.
One of the most pervasive cross-cultural forms of indoctrination is the belief that bread is life, baking is love, and flour+fat+sugar=comfort. When these things were rare this might have made sense. As they became common they created endocrine problems that have no cultural balance. Spinach, canned (ugh), gives Popeye his strength, but he pops it open and swallows it whole without tasting. That’s the only positive cultural image of a vegetable I can think of! We teach our children that vegetables are necessary but no fun and that sweets are what we deserve as a reward. Of course the sweets appeal to our taste buds. And the bitter things warn us of toxicity even when none is present. But our whole world is full of images of cakes and pies being offered and various forms of bread being broken and shared. Wonderful images. But indoctrination all the same.
Back to where I started—yes, liberal education can result in people thinking that it’s OK to be gay or trans or woke. It doesn’t necessarily make them gay or trans (but is liable to make them “woke”). It IS however likely to allow people to figure out if they are gay or trans. And that permission, given by open-mindedness, is the main thing that a substantial portion of this country wants to prevent. As if denying information would result in everybody being straight. Instead, the gay/trans people without access to information are more likely to be repressed and miserable. Apparently as long as they are legislated out of sight that is sufficient.
The deeper issue here is the parental desire to control children and have them be what the parent(s) want them to be. That is the prime function of religion. To do as our ancestors did. Becoming a cobbler because we have always been cobblers is a practical outcome. Believing that other people are evil is a logical extension. Group identity creates a sense of safety. Our reptile brains are still in tiny villages, fearing conquest and destruction from outside. We have not evolved along with the world around us.
And the hardest lesson is letting our children be who they are. Summed up by Kahlil Gibran:
Well said, Richard.