Some Thoughts On Indoctrination - Part 2
When White (in Part 1) speaks of "the later production of good grounds for rejecting 'p' [some proposition]", he is offering the standard rational contract as a way of epistemologically mediating between belief and experience. Nonetheless, when one tries to translate what all of this means into concrete, specifiable terms, the idea of 'good grounds' tends to be rather vague, elusive and argumentative.
In fact, one cannot really speak about good grounds independently of some sort of an orienting or interpretive framework. This does not necessarily mean there are no such thing as 'good grounds' which are capable of providing accurate insight into a given situation, but the opening statement of this paragraph does stipulate that what constitutes 'good grounds' becomes meaningful to an individual only when those 'grounds' are part of an hermeneutical or interpretive system that the individual accepts as reliable or with which the individual is prepared to work because it has heuristic value - that is, it has some practical use or payoff.
In the foregoing context, one needs to understand, however, that meaningfulness is not necessarily co-extensive with, or equivalent to, truth. For, the former is often confused with the latter - in other words, because someone considers something meaningful, that person may - without justification - jump to the conclusion that what is meaningful must also be true, correct, or right.
Thus, we arrive at a point where the notion of 'good grounds' becomes entangled in an often complicated set of issues. In any given discussion concerning what constitutes 'good grounds', not only do we face the possibility there may be competing, interpretive, theoretical approaches to what constitutes good grounds', but there may be conflicting reasons within one and the same interpretive framework with respect to whether a given belief, proposition, 'fact', or idea should be retained or rejected.
As suggested in Part 1, a teacher might try to guard against simply imposing her or his views onto students by adopting a policy of tentativeness and open critical inquiry. Nevertheless, aside from the already mentioned issue (in Part 1) of the hidden curriculum in such a teaching methodology (which involves pushing a particular kind of interpretive framework - namely, the teacher's brand of open, critical inquiry), one needs to ask if serious damage might not be done in failing to help a child develop an unshakeable belief in, or commitment to, certain ideas, 'facts', values, or standards because the latter are considered to be, within certain limits, accurate reflections of what is the case with regard to some physical, social, conceptual, or spiritual issue.
Just because a teacher may feel there are no understandings or frameworks that are capable of accurately reflecting certain dimensions of reality, or just because a unanimity, or even consensus, of opinion cannot be reached in a given community, one cannot, therefore, conclude that no ascertainable truth exists. Moreover, if such understandings do exist, should they not be taught with the intention of helping to lead a student to an unshakeable belief in those understandings or frameworks?
The problem, of course, with the foregoing analysis is that even if one were to answer the above question in the affirmative, one is still left with a traditional problem of epistemology - namely, how to ascertain that what is known is true, and vice versa. Moreover, presumably, there would need to be some means of being 'certain' that what one found, and considered, to be the truth, was, in fact, the truth, so that what was 'known' had legitimacy as knowledge about the truth rather than just information concerning some aspect of experience.
Willis Moore, in an article entitled: 'Indoctrination and Democratic Method', pursues a set of, somewhat, similar themes to those of White (i.e., indoctrination as a function of intention), but wishes to throw issues of content and method into the mix, along with intention. While contrasting liberal (Dewey-like) and authoritarian (Moore's term for those who employ indoctrination) styles of teaching, Moore says:
"The authoritarian will attempt so to structure the teaching situation that certain basic truths are absorbed by the students and retained indefinitely against all opposition. This means that the cards must be stacked in favor of these 'truths', and this means that the teacher must use censorship, propaganda, and indoctrination even with persons the liberal would regard as capable of thinking for themselves. ... there is a tendency in authoritarian education to stress data, facts, and to neglect evidence or justification for these."
The liberal, on the other hand will, according to Moore:
"encourage the student to reason to conclusions for himself, even regarding such seemingly settled items as basic scientific principles and the multiplication table. He will try to help the student to develop the habit of looking for the reasons for accepted conclusions. The liberal teacher will encourage the critical attitude, the questioning stance, the tendency to balance possibility against possibility, alternative against alternative."
A very interesting facet of the foregoing contrast between liberal and authoritarian teaching styles comes to the surface when a third excerpt from Moore's article is considered:
"What I propose, as a modification of the older liberal theory of education, is that we frankly admit that learning necessarily begins with an authoritative and indoctrinative situation, and that for lack of time, native capacity, or the requisite training to think out everything out for oneself, learning - even for the rationally mature individual - must continue to include an ingredient of the unreasoned, the merely accepted. The extent to which every one of us must depend, and wisely so, on the authoritative pronouncements of those who are more expert than are we in most of the problems we face is evidence enough of the truth of this contention."
Moore admits, during the course of his article, that liberal education - at least as he has described it - is an idealized notion which, although it should be striven for as much as possible, can only be realized with varying degrees of success. Furthermore, perhaps if conceptually pushed, he might be willing to concede that in his article he had, to use his own imagery, 'stacked the cards' in favor of his liberal position by portraying authoritarianism in its most unpalatable and reactionary forms.
In any event, the third quote from Moore, noted above, raises a very real problem for Moore. More specifically, in the light of that third quote, he will have difficulty maintaining either of his positions concerning, on the one hand, liberal education, or, on the other hand, authoritarian teaching.
Obviously, if, as Moore maintains is so, we all depend, a great deal ("and wisely so"?) on the authoritative guidance of experts whose judgments extend beyond the range of competence and abilities of not only many students, but even quite a few teachers, then, there are very definite limitations to the extent to which students all can be schooled in various modes of critical inquiry through which, supposedly, students come to master the techniques of, and insights into, the balancing of - to use Moore's phrase - "possibility against possibility, alternative against alternative". After all, how can one balance off possibilities, one against the other, if one cannot properly understand or appreciate such possibilities, or if one is unable to choose which possibilities should be paired off for the purposes of balancing them against one another, or if one is not competent or able to evaluate the balancing process fairly and with 'proper' (whatever that means) regard for the relevant evidence and arguments.
In the light of the foregoing considerations, one is confronted with questions such as: where, and how, (not to mention by whom) the criteria, standards, or values are to be established through which determination is to be made about what is to be "the merely accepted" as opposed to that which is fair game for critical review and examination. Moore, naturally, would like to claim that, in principle, everything remains open, but this claim is extremely weak because, by his own admission: "...for lack of time, native capacity or the requisite training to think everything out for oneself", we (students parents, teachers, administrators, politicians), quite frequently, are forced into stances where we are expected to accept, or submit to, the pronouncements of so-called expertise.
Indeed, many individuals are often experientially and conceptually removed from the very evidence, techniques, methodologies, discussions, experiments, arguments, and understandings that are believed (by the "experts") to render a given theory, belief, principle, or idea, intelligible in any fundamental sense. Even if students are, somehow, able to grasp a degree of understanding with respect to a given theory or system of thought, they usually are not in any position to be able to justify or establish the legitimacy of that which they have struggled to understand.
Students may be given 'reasons' why acceptance of, or commitment to, a certain theory or idea is 'logical' or 'rational' or 'well-founded' or 'good grounds, but the reasons being given are, more often than not, dependent on the presumed truth or accuracy of one, or more, underlying assumptions, conventions, values, ideas, or theories. In other words, that which is taught as the justification for a system, theory or idea is often nothing more than a second-level or third-level derivation from an original set of understandings and experiences that tend to remain hidden from students, and, therefore, unexamined - or, if examined, are studied in such a restricted and cursory manner that no justifiable conclusions could be reached that would be capable of establishing, one way or another, the tenability of the various ideas or understandings which underlie any given theory.
For example, if the topic of classroom discussion were evolution (one could, as easily use, say, quantum physics or moral values or Freudian psychology, and so on, as a basis of discussion) and students were given an introduction to population biology in an attempt to demonstrate some of the quantitative strength of the evolutionary model, will the students in that class be given, or be even able to grasp if given - and, if grasped, be able to justify - the sorts of mathematical, biochemical, and zoological information which are necessary to put themselves in a position to be able to determine for themselves whether, or not, population biology actually demonstrates the accuracy of the evolutionary model?
To be sure, students may develop a certain level of understanding and appreciation of the model in question. As a result, they may be able to apply, for example, the right formula in the appropriate circumstances, and do so with some degree of insight concerning the basic model of population biology.
However as far as the question of the truth of the evolutionary model is concerned, none of what is grasped in relation to population biology (assuming it is grasped at all) will enable the student to establish the truth of either the evolutionary model or the extent to which population biology can be considered to serve as proof of the evolutionary model. In effect, students are being initiated into an interpretive framework whose underlying values, standards, assumptions, and ideas are largely unreasoned and unquestioned at the very points which are most critical and problematic.
Therefore, on the basis of the criteria put forth by Moore in the previous quotes, one has difficulty distinguishing his 'liberal' approach to education from the notion of indoctrination. In fact, once a theoretical framework (championed by experts or those in political power or both) is taught and accepted - a framework which, due to time constrains, ability and training, remains largely unquestioned and unexamined, one wonders what evidence would be capable of changing the adherence of students to such a system of belief or thought, or how these students would be able to recognize what constituted 'good grounds' for rejecting the theory, for, quite frequently, the idea of 'good grounds' under such circumstances comes from outside the framework which is serving as the lens through which students have been trained to see the world.
It is important to understand that the truth value of what is being taught does not significantly alter the foregoing argument. After all, ultimately, the so-called liberal approach to teaching that is being described, and advocated, by Moore is authoritarian and indoctrinatory in nature to precisely the extent that students - either through lack of ability, lack of training, time, or teacher incompetence - could not be brought to a point of grasping the minimally necessary body of data, methods, techniques, reasons, experiments, and arguments which create the epistemological matrix out of which a given theory, system, world-view, or hermeneutical framework is woven and from which understanding, supposedly, receives its meaning and justification.
Moore's liberal approach to education emphasizes the importance of being able to probe, question, critically analyze, and discover, for oneself, the truth, accuracy, legitimacy of some given theory. But, how can the liberal approach be realized when the underlying assumptions, data, experiments, problems, and so on, of some given theory are never examined, or if examined, not understood?
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