Having spent the last fifty years as
a student, a teacher, an administrator, and a board member in a
variety of schools at all levels, I can tell you that I have yet
to meet a professional educator who will stand up and say
unambiguously: "We're here not to educate but to indoctrinate
your child."
Why is it that the one term gets
such good press and the other one such a bad rap? Why is it that
in most people's minds education is a high and lofty thing while
indoctrination is the work of Puritans and Nazis? Why is it, in
contemporary parlance, that liberals are portrayed as the
educators while conservatives get consigned to the role of
indoctrinators.
Why, as a result, does almost
everyone want his or her children educated, while almost no one
wants them indoctrinated?
In fact, the definitions of the two
words highlight no radical distinctions. "Teaching," "training,"
and "instruction" are part of both education and indoctrination,
according to my trusty desk dictionary.
Yet the two are different in modern
usage, and only a fool would deny it. Part of the difference has
to do with twentieth century distaste for doctrine. For most
people today, the word doctrine has a harsh, narrow-minded, and
intolerant sound. When evangelical ministers, youth leaders,
professors, and other leaders can go around saying, as they
regularly do, that they don't want to get hung up on doctrine,
it shouldn't be surprising that the population at large has a
negative view of the word. To call someone "doctrinaire" is
rarely a compliment.
Modern people, in fact, have been
taught that it's arrogant to assert very much at all to be true.
The becoming posture is not to affirm, but to question. Within
education, especially in the context of higher education, we are
told the assignment is to examine, explore, and evaluate, rather
than to assert, proclaim, or indoctrinate.
There's just enough truth in those
assertions to be believable. (But weren't we doing away with
assertions? Is somebody trying to indoctrinate us about the
nature of education?)
You have to be a pretty clumsy and
amateurish communicator not to have discovered that a frontal
approach is rarely the best means of being persuasive. It is far
better to walk tentatively about the subject, probing cautiously
here, poking hesitantly there, and joining everyone else in a
certain air of detachment before saying what you maybe believe.
Even the parent of a teenager knows that such a roundabout
approach is typically the best way to make a point.
But let's all stop pretending that
the disjunction is between the truly objective folks on the one
hand (the educators) and the sneaky, opinionated people on the
other hand (the indoctrinators). In fact what we're really
talking about are effective indoctrinators on one hand and
blunderbuss indoctrinators on the other. Some are deft at their
work (they're the really good educators), and some are awkward
and transparent in their efforts to win the hearts and minds of
their students.
Where is the effective educator who
has no mission? Where is the master teacher who hasn't got a
list of goals and aspirations for every student? What does it
mean to instill those values and those standards in the thinking
process of another human being?
No matter how it's done, isn't it
indoctrination?
Modern state education, pretending
to be valueless, is one of the greatest—and most
monolithic—purveyors of a value system in all of human history.
As such, while pretending to be open-minded, it is also one of
the greatest indoctrinators in all of history. That's what
education does.
But Christians have also often
tended to get especially gun-shy on these issues. We've become
scared to admit that we are indoctrinators. Instead, we should
admit it right up front. Then we should explain quite openly how
we go about the task of indoctrinating our young people and
anyone else who will listen.
We do it by saying crisply, clearly,
and winsomely what we believe. And then we say: Now let's take
all that apart. Let's see whether what we've affirmed can
withstand the light of day and the arguments of our opponents.
Let's explore whether we've left out some criticisms and
counter-opinions, which, if we had included them, would have
prompted us to make our assertions in a different way.
Do you call such a process
"education" or "indoctrination"? I suggest it's the best of
both.
A few days ago, I found myself
following a station wagon down the street. It was, of course, a
Volvo. The back end was plastered with a predictable array of
bumper stickers, including a pro-abortion slogan, a "Support
Greenpeace" encouragement, and a call for "Free Needles for
All." The sticker that really got my attention, though, in the
middle of the mess, was one that said: "A Mind Is a Terrible
Thing To Clutter Up."
I pity the teacher (or the magazine
publisher) who expects his or her assertions and proclamations
to be believed just because they've been asserted or proclaimed.
But I pity even more the critics of indoctrination who don't
seem to have a clue what they themselves are doing.
Back
to Equip
|
July
2005 
