Educational Indoctrination: Schools Teaching Theory as Fanatical Fact

In Head Start, I learned to make butter and play-dough. In first and second grades, I was taught reading and writing and math. Throughout my early education, I learned the academic necessities: history, government, reading, writing, math, grammar, science.

But sometime in the late 70s when I was in 7th and 8th grades, there was a change. We started getting these horrible boring classes on pollution -- not just one or two, or information in the context of science class, but days and days, in multiple subjects, on pollution and acid rain and global cooling (yes, children, it was cooling back then, not warming). And this went on for multiple years.

The intended effect, I think, was to turn all the kids in my class into fanatical supporters of cleaning up the environment -- a noble idea. The actual effect was to make the stressful, boring years of middle school even duller and less motivating.

Later, in high school, it eased up a bit. But the indoctrination trend seems to be here still, and strengthening. Disturbingly, theories like global warming (yes, it IS just a theory, no matter what famed physicist Al Gore says), the damage done by DDT to the environment (a discredited theory), and the workability of communism and socialism (another set of discredited theories) are being taught to my children and yours as Fact.

In addition, they're slated to learn things like: sex before marriage is not bad; being gay is normal and even good; competition is bad; war is bad; the only right way to function in the world is in groups. Individuality is bad, though nonconformity is okay if it's done in the proper way.

Some of these things are right, or partly right; others are flat wrong. But right or wrong, is it really the school's business to teach my kids these things? Teaching right and wrong, moral and immoral, should belong to the church and the home. Teaching absolute right and absolute wrong is even worse, taking advantage of a child's malleable mind to shape it according to a vision of perfection the teacher or some group has.

When you teach absolutes, it can only be called one thing: indoctrination. This is, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, teaching a person to accept a system of thought uncritically. A responsible educational system should be teaching children to look at both sides, to see the negatives of each side, and to make their own judgments.

To not teach children to look at both sides shows a lack of faith in one's own belief. It shows that the beliefholder is not certain that belief holds up under the stress of opposing evidence. It also eliminates a child's opportunity to learn critical thinking, a vital skill in today's dynamic world.

Let's eliminate indoctrination from our schools, from our churches, homes, social groups. If we could replace indoctrination with free and critical thought, our world would be better and our young citizens of tomorrow competent adults instead of overgrown infants, as too often happens today.