Some Thoughts On Indoctrination - Part 4
At the end of his article 'Indoctrination and Religion', Flew criticizes John Wilson for a question the latter had raised (in an article entitled 'Indoctrination and Rationality', and, again, in another article: 'Indoctrination and Freedom') concerning whether or not the teaching of
"children to see things in a certain way via the descriptions and language we offer them"
is an instance of indoctrination. According to Flew:
" ... a toothless religion of the sort indicated by Wilson - just one of the ways of seeing the world - a religion which neither had, nor was intended to have, nor was thought to have any factual content, could scarcely raise a question about indoctrination; and therefore cannot be directly relevant. No doctrines; no indoctrination."
Flew's comment tends to indicate that he really has missed the point at issue. No where in the articles in question does Wilson describe religious ways of seeing the world as being necessarily devoid of factual content, let alone as something not intended to have such factual content - although Wilson did acknowledge that:
"In so far as they are false and unreasoned empirical beliefs, or authoritarian moral and unreasoned ones, then, Flew is right."
How Flew came to the conclusion he did with respect to Wilson's stated position is difficult to say, for Wilson clearly seems to be a raising the following question: what do we call the teaching of beliefs whose factual content cannot be determined but involves a logically self-contained framework similar, in some respects, to formal logic or mathematics? Wilson's major preoccupation in raising this issue is whether courses that teach such ways of seeing things "increase or diminish the child's rationality, in the sense of his appreciation of and control over reality"?
While Wilson is committed to using "the reason and fact method" as a basis for establishing the nature of rationality, he seems willing to leave room for the possibility of acceptable kinds of indoctrination if such indoctrination can be shown to increase rationality in some way. In other words, if a way of seeing things (e.g. a system of thought, paradigm, world-view, orienting framework) cannot be shown to be false, then, the given 'way of seeing things' might still be factual even if one cannot show this to be so.
For Wilson, the payoff, so to speak, for permitting this sort of teaching would be an increase in the appreciation of various dimensions of experience, as well as the predictive control to which such appreciation might lead. However, Wilson seems not to have realized some of the possibilities inherent in his suggestion, for, a 'way of seeing things' that is a function of an underlying interpretive or orienting framework goes beyond the property of appreciation, and, instead, encompasses a whole spectrum of organizational, evaluative, directional, analytic and judgmental methods of orienting oneself, interpretively, toward any given situation.
Furthermore, a 'way of seeing things' may have very little to do with predictive control. In fact, to suppose everything which can be known will be, or should be, subject to such control, if that 'way of seeing things' is to be considered rational knowledge, is a mistake. Indeed, knowledge does not just involve recognizing what can be controlled predictably, but, also, consists in being able to recognize what is beyond our control, whether predictable, or not.
Another point to be made in conjunction with Flew's previous quote is implicit, if not explicit, in much of the foregoing discussion. This point concerns Flew's statement: "No doctrines; no indoctrination".
First of all, one is somewhat surprised to see Flew claim that 'a way of seeing things' which was not factual, nor intended to be, was, therefore, not a doctrine. This sense of surprise arises in conjunction with his earlier contention (discussed in Part 3) that "... indoctrination... 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."
If something is shown to be false, it certainly is not factual (although facts may be associated with, or mixed up in, such a falsehood) and, yet, Flew calls them doctrines. Therefore, why he should make such an, apparently, complete reversal during his criticisms of Wilson is rather puzzling.
In any case, the more important consideration is this: whereas Flew is arguing that to teach, as true, "doctrines which are in fact false or at least not known to be true", constitutes the essence of an indoctrinatory situation, one of the themes being developed within my series of articles is that almost all, if not all, interpretive/ orienting frameworks (including science and mathematics) contain numerous elements that may be false and, certainly, are not known to be true in any fundamental, absolute sense of the term.
We are surrounded by theories and the assumptions upon which they rest: the standard model in quantum dynamics, relativity (both special and general), gravitation, thermodynamics, psychology, economics, political science, education, and so on, to name but a few. Yet, no where in all these theories have matters been decided in a such a definitive manner that one could say, without any fear of being proven wrong in the future, that: this understanding (i.e., some theory or system) is what reality, fundamentally and essentially, is all about. And, even if this could be said, how would we know it to be so?
Even in something as, supposedly, logically rigorous as mathematics, there are numerous problems in relation to the idea of provable truths. All one has to do is think about Godel's incompleteness theorem for arithmetic or the considerable work done in mathematics about issues that are said to be 'formally undecidable', to know there is hardly any, if any, area of human understanding which would not entail indoctrination in Flew's sense of the term outlined above because doctrines, of one sort, or another are involved - that is, ideas which are not known to be true, even if they are not known to be false.
To be sure, there are a great many theories that use various 'facts' to account for certain aspects of experience and, in the process, seem to reflect something of the character, or quality, of different phenomena. As a result, this 'happy' relationship between theory and experience helps make possible a certain amount of quantitative description, prediction, control and understanding (as well as derivative technology).
However, compared to what we know (and even that not absolutely), what we don't know presses in on us from all sides like a vast ocean surrounding a flimsy ring of dikes. Doctrines not known to be true are a fundamental and, apparently, unavoidable part of our rational lives, for they play essential roles within the interpretive/orienting frameworks into which we are initiated, both within and outside of 'formal' education.
In an article : 'Indoctrination as Mis-education', Brian Crittenden distinguishes between what he calls "teaching (S)" and "miseducative teaching (M)". Teaching (S) refers to that kind of teaching which is intended to assist people to become "educated", and since - in Crittenden's view - this is the reason for why schools exist (i.e., to produce educated people), he puts the parenthetical symbol (S - for school) after the word "teaching" in order to differentiate such teaching from teaching in general. According to Crittenden:
"What seems to be essential to the concept of schooling throughout the long history of the institution is that it involves initiation into the best available body of theory for explaining and interpreting man and his world and for guiding human action, along with the various methods of inquiry through which the theory has been developed; and the acquisition of skills for applying, at least in part, this theory and the methods of inquiry."
Aside from the problem of specifying what the phrase: "best available theory" involves, as well as grappling with determining what, precisely, are the differences between, on the one hand, the 'theory' of schooling and the 'practice' of schooling, or, on the other hand, whether schooling, traditionally, actually has had the aim Crittenden attributes to it (e.g., the work of Ivan Illich, Everett Reimer and Paulo Freire, among others, would have something very different to say here), there is a further area of interest raised by Crittenden's preceding statement. This issue of interest centers around the idea of the 'theory of inquiry'.
In contrasting 'teaching (S)' from "miseducative teaching (M)', Crittenden claims:
"The content of teaching that might, under certain conditions, be referred to as indoctrination (M) are those bodies of belief and knowledge, their methods of acquisition and justification (and the consequences in attitude and action entailed by their acceptance) which constitute a general 'view' of life."
The "under certain conditions" referred to in the above quote are specified a paragraph later when Crittenden states:
"... I think that any teaching, within the specified area of content may be judged as 'indoctrination (M)' when either of the following conditions is fulfilled:
(i) If the teacher presents the specified content in such a way that he violates the criteria of inquiry - unwarranted claims, suppression of critical evaluation of reasons and evidence, etc.
(ii) If the teacher uses any pedagogical method in the presentation of the specified content which is inconsistent with the requirements of the general nature of inquiry and moral principles..."
There are several points concerning the foregoing quotes that need to be made - one of which is of a preliminary and somewhat repetitive nature, while the second concerns the issue of the theory of inquiry and is, in the present context, the more fundamental consideration.
First, although Crittenden seems to have philosophy, religion and politics in mind when he speaks of "a general 'view' of life", nevertheless, on the basis of the discussion earlier in my article, seemingly, there is little, if anything, which can avoid being assigned to the broad category that is referred to as a 'general view of life'. While science may rest, to a great extent, on the rigorous and exacting standards of experimental methods that are open to a cybernetic process in which critical reasoning and evidence gathering are played-off against, as well as feed back into, one another, nonetheless, in many ways, science still represents a general view of life in terms of the 'metaphysics', so to speak, that are inherent in the underlying assumptions of its dimensions of critical reasoning, evidence gathering, and public accountability. For example, materialism, physicalism, positivism, rationalism, operationalism, realism, secularism, Darwinism, and humanism are all views of life that various individuals, have tried, either implicitly or explicitly, to incorporate into the foundations, or ramifications, of science.
Some might object to the foregoing contention and argue that science is concerned with facts and reason only, but this seems to be a rather naive view. Not only does such a position tend to overlook the metaphysical and arbitrary considerations that often go into determining what will count as a 'fact' or a 'reason', but this sort of objection entirely neglects the basic importance of interpretation in the scientific enterprise. Even when everyone recognizes a given phenomenon and makes it the object of scientific inquiry, this will not guarantee that everyone will reach agreement on how to interpret the body of evidence which is generated by such inquiry, nor does the existence of agreed upon areas ensure that the application of such interpretations will coincide one with another.
Unfortunately, for some, it is just a short step from claiming, for instance, that only observable phenomena are real, to saying that 'God does not exist'- or, to give another example, from saying that only what can be agreed upon publicly in a scientific manner is rational, to claiming that the religious or philosophical or subjective is irrational. Irrespective of what one's actual feelings may be about the issue of God's existence or the truth content of philosophy, one cannot deny, in any plausible fashion, that such steps, as have been suggested above, have been taken, quite frequently, in the historical as well as the contemporary practice of science.
Nor can one argue, successfully, that although the foregoing may have been the case historically, these tendencies are actually foreign to the process of science. Indeed, the attempt to make science into some sort of presuppositionless, neutral, aphilosophical set of methodologies from which undeniable 'facts' jump out in neatly labeled bundles of truth belongs with the idea of the perpetual motion machine - that is, people keep searching for it, but in the meantime they must admit they don't have it and aren't likely to achieve this in the foreseeable future. In short, and to state the position in its most categorical fashion: all scientists subscribe to a view of life and their view of life is intimately connected with their view of science, and vice versa.
Having said the foregoing, one must make an important distinction - but one that is, frequently, immersed in confusion. When Crittenden speaks of the "criteria of inquiry" he seems to speak of such criteria as if they are absolutes ... as if they were standards against which all ideas could be measured in order to determine their degree of truth.
Without wishing to contend there are no such absolutes (as indicated in Part 1, the assumption made in this series of articles is that there are), nevertheless, one needs to distinguish between two types of inquiry. On the one hand, there is what might be termed "shared inquiry", and, on the other hand, there is a process which might be referred to as "hermeneutical inquiry".
"Shared inquiry" is rooted in what appears to be generally accepted 'facts': namely, there are dimensions of human experience which are held in common and, as such, are imbued with a sort of 'semi-absolute' quality. In a sense such shared areas represent the points of overlap of human experience that exist in spite of the differences of interpretive or orienting frameworks which, otherwise, might differentiate one person's understanding of 'reality' from another individual's understanding concerning the way things are believed to be.
Many of these shared experiences concern our interaction with what seem to be intersubjectively identifiable features of, for instance, physical or psychological realms of experience. These features involve the ways in which we affect, and/or are affected by, different facets of such realms (e.g., objects, other human beings, forces of various kinds, and so on).
On one level, science, and different academic disciplines have taken this set of common experiences and tried to formalize our interaction with the latter by establishing various modes of inquiry, analysis and evaluation. Thus, our non-formalized experiences of, for instance, death, sickness, birth, gravity, animals, plants, weather, water, fire, earth, pleasure, pain, emotions, cognitive performance, spirituality, relationships, community, and so on, have become topics of study.
This study has been directed toward trying to establish agreed-upon qualitative and quantitative parameters and characteristics of possibility that are believed to be associated with various phenomena which are encountered in different areas of human experience. At the same time, such "shared inquiry" has given rise to a variety of ways of interpreting different aspects of the phenomena that make-up the focus of shared experiences and inquiry.
Shared inquiry only takes us so far and, then, we run into issues that are, under present circumstances, undecidable in any definitive, absolute manner - at least, in rational terms. Many of the areas involving uncertainty or ambiguity have involved critical, fundamental areas - such as: identity, purpose, reality, origins, human nature, community, morality, happiness, peace, and duty - which might have far-reaching implications for, and impact on, one's general approach to life if the ultimate truth about these matters could be known with certainty.
Since, as previously noted, there are issues which are undecidable in a way that, regardless of the interpretive or orienting frameworks into which people have been initiated, nonetheless, would gain the consent of people in general, one is left with areas of human experience which give expression to certain degrees of freedom in relation to one's possible interpretive orientation toward these realms of experience.
As a result, problems begin to emerge, when various people in, for example, education, want to take an absolutist position in areas of rational and formal undecidability and 'fix' the modes of inquiry or rules of reason that must be universally adopted - thereby, interfering with the interpretive degrees of freedom that are still warranted after all is said and done from a formalized, rationalistic perspective.
Hermeneutical inquiry tends to enter at the point where shared inquiry begins to break down. Among other things, hermeneutics seeks to focus on the issues, questions, and problems surrounding the experiences and processes to which the idea of 'interpretation' gives expression.
When individuals, such as Crittenden, speak about 'the' "criteria of inquiry", it is critical to differentiate between whether one is talking about an area which falls under the sway of shared inquiry or whether one is discussing a matter of hermeneutical inquiry. Losing sight of this distinction can lead, in education and other fields, to the imposing of methodological and evaluative demands that are epistemologically unwarranted, and, therefore, morally inappropriate.
Unfortunately, today in education, one often finds people talking at cross purposes with one another because they do not know how to draw the line between shared inquiry and hermeneutical inquiry and, as a result, continually mistake the latter for the former. This is especially the case because the realm of shared inquiry - that is, the areas of experience where we are prepared to agree upon - is a lot smaller than people suppose, and, yet, all too many people are seeking to thrust on to others a purely hermeneutical mode of inquiry while advocating that this perspective 'must' be taught to children as if it were a shared truth to which all could and/or should agree.
As has been suggested throughout this 4-part series of articles, indoctrination, of one sort or another, is, probably, inherent in every method of instruction. Furthermore, 'if' something is the truth, then, there seems to be no good reason why one should not try to instill in children an unshakeable belief in such a truth.
The real problem of indoctrination lies not with its presence, but in the confusion surrounding what is to be taken as the truth, and communicated as such to students. More specifically, because so many people have difficulty understanding the difference between shared inquiry and hermeneutical inquiry, they tend to be insistent that children should be taught the latter as if it were the former, and in the process, infringe on the degrees of freedom to which students are entitled in a context of ambiguity and methodologically undecidable matters.
Politicians, administrators, teachers, and, even parents, do not have the right to undermine these degrees of freedom. Rather, they have an essential duty of care to assist individuals to develop as clear an understanding as possible concerning these two kinds of inquiry (shared and hermeneutical), as well as the problems and questions that surround trying to understand where one leaves off, and the other begins.
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