Some Thoughts On Indoctrination - Part 1
The "term" indoctrination" is often used to communicate a negative opinion concerning some given learning situation and, therefore, tends to convey a fairly definite connotation in the minds of many people. However, the denotative characteristics of the word are much harder to pin down to any sort of specific theme(s) which are held in a common understanding by most people.
Some individuals claim indoctrination is a function of the sort of intent underlying, say, a teachers interaction with a student. J.P. White, for example, argues in an article entitled 'Indoctrination and Intentions' that a child can be described as being indoctrinated when the intention of the teacher is to produce in a child the belief "...that 'p' [some proposition] is true, in such a way that nothing will shake this belief."
Others maintain that the most important dimension to consider in determining whether indoctrination is being practised in any given situation involves the kind of content being communicated from teacher to student. Thus, Anthony flew, in 'Indoctrination and Doctrines', maintains that:
"...indoctrination, where it is taken to be a bad thing, is a matter of trying to implant firm convictions of the truth of doctrines which are, in fact, false, or, at least, not known to be true..."
Still other individuals contend that the method or manner through which a certain content is communicated is the most important area to examine in order to be able to detect the presence of indoctrination. John Wilson puts forth this sort of position in his article, 'Indoctrination and Rationality', when he says:
"...it is also logically necessary to the concept of indoctrination that the indoctrinated person arrives at the belief by non-rational methods .... Any such belief will, necessarily, be (so to speak) dogmatic - that is, either the believer will not be able to give relevant reasons for it at all, or else the reasons he gives will not be true motivations of his belief - they will be rationalizations."
Of course, the foregoing examples, which represent different approaches to the idea of indoctrination don't exhaust the variety of ways in which people have interpreted this idea. Nonetheless, the above noted perspectives are sufficient to indicate that one faces a potential problem in trying to ascertain whether any of the aforementioned approaches to the idea of indoctrination - whether considered individually or in some, as yet, unspecified combination with one another - will permit one to gain some special insight into what indoctrination is or entails.
More specifically, if, indoctrination is 'wrong' or 'bad' - as opposed to education - then, grasping the nature of this process becomes quite critical if one is to take steps to exclude it from one's curriculum design. On the other hand, if the term continues to be immersed in a cloud of ambiguity due to contrasting views of what constitutes indoctrination, then, the resulting confusion cannot but spill over into the concept of education since the latter concept is, quite frequently, contrasted with the idea of indoctrination.
Even though theorists have placed differing emphases on various dimensions of the indoctrination concept (e.g., intent, content, method), there, usually, is an underlying current which flows through and around each of the above noted dimensions. In other words, when criticizing indoctrination, most commentators, regardless of their particular approach, generally wish to show that indoctrination interferes, in some fashion, with a student's access to, or attainment of 'rationality'.
For example, when someone like John Wilson says that intentionally getting a student to develop an unshakable belief in some proposition constitutes the basis of indoctrination, in effect, he is actually arguing that under such circumstances a student is left in a vulnerable position because of the individual's inability (due to indoctrination) to take into consideration subsequent data or arguments which may bear directly on what the student, after indoctrination, now believes, unshakably, to be true. As a result, the student is unable to change her or his conceptual stance in accordance with the demands of changing data and evidence.
Thus, White (previously mentioned) contends in 'Indoctrination and Intentions' that:
"...the teacher with intention - (to produce unshakable beliefs) - intends so to fix 'p' [i.e., a given proposition] in the child's mind that the later production of good grounds for rejecting 'p' will not lead the child to give up 'p'"
Consequently, for White, indoctrination prevents a child from being open to the rational process - a process in which one comes to recognize, accept, and utilize 'good' grounds in order to change one's understanding of how the world is. Thus, one of White's basic concerns is that when a student is given an unshakable belief that some given proposition 'p' is true, then, subsequent exposure to good grounds for rejecting 'p' will not lead the child to giving up belief in 'p' - something which, according to White, and many others, is, clearly, not a rational thing to do.
White, however, has set up the issue in a, somewhat, problematic manner, for, among other things, he, apparently, overlooks the possibility that some proposition 'p' might be true, and, therefore, for someone to develop an unshakable belief in that proposition would not be without some degree of justification. In fact, if a proposition 'p' were true, one might wonder why anyone would object to a student's being led to an unshakable belief in the truth or value of 'p'.
Presumably, White would not be concerned with the intention to get a child to develop an unshakable belief in true things. After all, is not the process of providing 'good grounds' done with the intention of demonstrating why certain grounds are 'good' and should be accepted in a relatively unshakable sense - otherwise, how 'good' could the grounds be?).
Instead, White is preoccupied with those situations in which a child is pushed toward an unshakable belief in something which the subsequent emergence of 'good' grounds indicates should be rejected. Nevertheless, on the one hand, this perspective seems to assume that good grounds, inevitably, will be forthcoming that are capable of undermining the tenability of some proposition 'p', and, on the other hand, White appears to be assuming that agreement can be reached on what constitutes "good grounds".
At this point, someone might want to argue that because our collective understanding of things, in general, is changing at such an accelerating rate, one might have difficulty pointing to anything which one could teach with the intent of bringing children to an unshakable belief in it, without risking the possibility that evidence or grounds would very likely be forthcoming in the near future that was capable of demonstrating the untenability of such a belief. Consequently, someone arguing in this way might contend that the safest approach to learning would be to approach education with a certain amount of tentativeness associated with one's intentions, thereby, hopefully, creating an atmosphere where both teacher and student would be able to revise their ideas and beliefs in the light of new evidence and arguments.
While the foregoing position has certain advantages, it also entails a number of potential problems. First of all, one plausibly could argue that the above perspective represented a subtle form of intentional indoctrination - in White's sense of the word outlined earlier - since such an approach tends to create the impression that there is nothing which is capable or worthy of winning a teacher's and/or student's allegiance as a candidate for developing an unshakable belief - nothing, that is, except the framework of critical inquiry which advocates the importance of constantly maintaining a constant, vigilant openness with regard to all ideas, values, theories, and so on, including the theory of critical inquiry.
Although this has a nice ring to it, the fact is, critical inquiry does not exist in a value-neutral atmosphere. For example, all too frequently, "good grounds" is synonymous with the interpretive or orienting framework being pushed by a given teacher or school system, and all of the attention of the student is directed not toward ascertaining the fundamental legitimacy of a given critical framework, but in learning how to apply that framework and how to interpret experience in terms of it.
Critical inquiry means different things to different people because the interpretive or orienting frameworks out of which they operate begin at different starting points and are shaped and directed by varying assumptions and conceptual priorities. This is an obvious point, yet, its ramifications repeatedly are overlooked when people contend that the spirit of critical inquiry should be the guiding principle in an educational framework.
For example, whose conception of critical inquiry should be adopted as a starting point. Or, whose standards and values should be used in deciding whether or not such an initial starting point constitutes "good grounds" or should be abandoned?
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