Is it ever a good idea to indoctrinate children?

@Real Music,

Quote:

So, if the Bible is accepted as a history book, it would then be seen as evidence.

Of course, if we consider that the Bible begins with a chr0nological inaccuracy concerning creation, and other errors such as the sun standing still in the sky for several hours, etc., then determining that it is evidence would be a determination based on your indoctrination.

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@Glennn,

Glennn wrote:

So you're saying that it is because of my indoctrination that I believe that a woman should not have sex forced on her?

Pre-colonial Native American cultures believed that it was a woman's obligation to have sex with her husband in arranged marriages. Do you believe that it was because of their indoctrination that they believed this way?

There is no experiment we can run to determine if modern American culture is correct, or if Native American cultures were correct. Different cultures have different beliefs.

You are just as indoctrinated as they were.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Quote:

I don't think a certain degree of indoctrination of children is possible to completely avoid, nor is it desirable to attempt to do so. The age of the child and their capacity to understand complex concepts is, I think, always an important consideration.

Correct. If you're a Christian church-goer, and you take your child with you to church, your child does not have the capacity to understand the belief of the parent and everyone else there who is engaging in the practice of belief according to the accepted doctrine. That's how indoctrination works . . .

Also, it is unlikely that a Christian parent will tell their child that they might be wrong about the existence of their god.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Thank you Finn,

Reading your post, two things struck me.

Your children all became politically conservative... even the atheist. My children are all pretty politically liberal... even my son who is currently serving as an Army sniper (he has now has some interesting stories about how he has learned to related to his almost exclusively conservative buddies). That our kids followed our political leanings is not at all surprising... I certainly indoctrinated my kids.

In spite of my differences with you Finn, you and I as Americans are remarkably similar. We have the same views about liberty, and equality, and democracy and property and a sense of fairness. We have more in common with each other than we would with any other culture in history.

Going through my son's boot camp taught me this more than anything. I had very little in common with the other families in my son's class; Army families tend to be very conservative.. But, we all were going through the same thing and we came together with the same purpose and supported each other. Our differences no longer mattered.

I think we should remember this more.

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Someone can be indoctrinated into a political belief or political ideology. Someone can be indoctrinated in a particular form of government such as capitalism or socialism. Someone can be indoctrinated by patriotism of one's own country.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

Do you believe that it was because of their indoctrination that they believed this way?

I believe that humans will sometimes take what they want, and then go about making believe that it's natural for them to do so. You seem to be of the mind that rape is okay if that's what the local rule book says. I think that if it was your daughter who was being forced to have sex with someone she was not drawn to, you would no longer defend such things by calling it culturally acceptable and therefore good. You are letting culture be your conscience.

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@Glennn,

Father and mothers of pre-colonial Native Americans gave their daughters as young teens to husbands. They gladly did this, and they expected their daughters to do their duty. They believed as strongly in their cultural beliefs as you believe in yours.

As an American you and I would call that "rape". They didn't see it that way. They say it as marital responsibility.

In an earlier post you suggested that the difference between teaching and indoctrination was experiment. Yet you have not suggested any experiment to suggest that our culture is superior to Native American cultures that had child brides.

Since you have no experiment, it is you who are letting culture be your conscience. You are following your own local rule book... on this issue your belief is in lockstep with almost all modern Americans.

You are just not being honest about it.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Your children all became politically conservative... even the atheist. My children are all pretty politically liberal... even my son who is currently serving as an Army sniper (he has now has some interesting stories about how he has learned to related to his almost exclusively conservative buddies). That our kids followed our political leanings is not at all surprising... I certainly indoctrinated my kids.

If I had indoctrinated my kids with my political beliefs they would all be liberals since that was what I was when they were in their formative years and most pliable.

One has been pretty much a conservative his whole life (sort of like that Michael J Fox TV character). The other two didn't see the light until they were in college or had graduated, and I doubt I could have indoctrinated them at that age even if I used hypnosis.

I'm not denying that I've indoctrinated my kids on somethings, just not politics. I would like to think that I helped bring them to the light, but that's about it. Unless your kids are exact intellectual replicants of you you must have imparted the value of critical thinking somewhere along the way.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

That's interesting Finn. I am curious about your transformation. Was younger Finn liberal across the board... did you think Carter was a good president? Did you think Reagan was a crook? Were your parents liberal?

I know of people who separate social conservatism from fiscal conservatism. I also know that people often tend to fall in the same part of the political spectrum as their parents... there are exceptions of course, but in general this is the trend.

(Of course, the fact that I have taught my kids critical thinking so well is the reason that they are intellectual replicants of me Wink

.)

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@maxdancona,

We've had this discussion before. I recall pointing out to you that your idea of pairing up men with girls who are neither their emotional, mental, physical, or intellectual equal is a self serving idea; one which you support by claiming that it is only our culture that causes you to look unfavorably at such a thing. You don't seem to understand that saying such a thing is an admission that you have no way of knowing right from wrong because you're a victim of culture. And then you contradict yourself by telling Finn that you believe in equality. How could you believe in equality when you admit that your cultural indoctrination has put you in a place where every belief is suspect?

To emphasize the irrational nature of your ideas concerning cultural influence, you even used it to suggest that cutting off a girl's clitoris only seems barbaric to us because of our cultural indoctrination, and that we therefore have no right to judge it as female mutilation.

Here is an experiment that you can perform. When your daughter meets a boy whom she is drawn to, and they become closer as time goes by, explain to her that despite her feelings and her choice of mate, you know better than her, and that she will therefore marry someone whom she is not drawn to. It would be so interesting to hear you explaining to her that it is only her cultural upbringing that causes her to not want to marry the man she doesn't want to marry.

Of course, no experiment will suffice because you will claim that the results will have been influenced by culture.

1 Reply

@Glennn,

Quote:

Here is an experiment that you can perform. When your daughter meets a boy whom she is drawn to, and they become closer as time goes by, explain to her that despite her feelings and her choice of mate, you know better than her, and that she will therefore marry someone whom she is not drawn to. It would be so interesting to hear you explaining to her that it is only her cultural upbringing that causes her to not want to marry the man she doesn't want to marry.

Of course, no experiment will suffice because you will claim that the results will have been influenced by culture.

This experiment has already been done, of course. Parents in Native American cultures, and Hindu cultures, and Chinese Culture and countless cultures have done exactly that. And parents and children all agreed it was the way to do things.

Ironically, arranged marriages was one of the reasons given by European colonizers as to why Native American cultures should be subjugated.

You are mostly correct in this post, but you are missing a key point. I am a modern American. I have been indoctrinated in mostly the same way you have been. There is no contradiction when I talk about my belief in equality... since clearly I am speaking through my own cultural understanding of equality.

The only difference between you and I is that I admit the fact that I am speaking as a modern American.

My culture is important to me, and it shapes my beliefs but it isn't superior to the other cultures we replaced. My willingness to respect the beliefs of the Yanomami culture; an to accept them as no worse than my own beliefs (no matter how different) doesn't mean that I can't hold to my own cultural beliefs.

Cultural superiority isn't necessary.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

This experiment has already been done, of course. Parents in Native American cultures, and Hindu cultures, and Chinese Culture and countless cultures have done exactly that. And parents and children all agreed it was the way to do things.

You presume to speak for the children when you have no idea how they felt or feel about being offered like a piece of property. The truth is that children seek to curry favor with their parents. It is also true that children seek the approval of their peers. There is so much more that is part of the equation here that you refuse to acknowledge. So far, your defense of such practices amounts to your belief that you're not capable of discerning right from wrong because you've been corrupted by your culture. You've even come to the place where you're not willing to condemn female mutilation because you might not be thinking straight about it.

You claim that my aversion to placing an emotionally and intellectually immature girl into the bed of an adult is due to my cultural indoctrination. But the truth is that you refuse to acknowledge the inequality of such a pairing. In your own words, describe what such a couple would have in common. What interests do you imagine they would share? What would they talk about?

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@Glennn,

You are basically saying "My beliefs are right, and other cultural beliefs are wrong". Is there anything more to it than that?

There are many cultures that practice arranged marriages, and many people in these cultures that have had happy, productive lives with arranged marriages. You don't seem to be able to accept this basic fact.

You keep stating that your beliefs are right (and since they are my beliefs as well, I would have a difficult time arguing with you). But you give no "experiment" that we can do to say that you are right... and by your own definition, that is indoctrination.

Your argument is based on the modern American concept of "equality". Can you propose an experiment to show why equality is important? You were indoctrinated to believe that equality is important; if you are honest, you have no objective reason to think that it is. That isn't the case in many other cultures.

The initial question is whether it is a good idea to indoctrinate children. It seems you agree that indoctrinating children to believe in equality is a good idea.

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I would think that Jesus' followers would say he was teaching. The Romans or Pharisees would say he was indoctrinating. Moses got the bright idea to say a burning bush gave him 10 commandments. Name dropping can help sell one's indoctrinating as really teaching?

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@maxdancona,

I believe he's arguing against cultural relativism. So it's not just that his beliefs are right and others' are wrong. It's that his beliefs align with moral absolutes that distinguish right from wrong, while others' do not. These moral absolutes are not derived from culture. Many people do not believe in moral absolutes, but assuming everyone did, the notion that children can be indoctrinated into believing principles that are objectively true doesn't really make sense, I don't think.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

And parents and children all agreed it was the way to do things.

If this were true, then, everything would still be set exactly as it had always been. The world's societies would stagnate. They'd never advance in any way. At some point, some child rebelled, likely a whole lot of them did.

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@Sturgis,

The implication here is that modern Western societies are more advanced than any other society. Is that what you are saying? And, how would one measure that? The problem with cultural absolutism is that right and wrong seem to always align with the dominant culture.

The idea that Western Culture won out because our children discovered more "advanced" ideas that the children of other cultures somehow missed is problematic given our actual history with other cultures.

We should not forget that we consciously repressed the cultures that came before us. Often our culture won out at the barrel of a gun... when we encountered cultures that didn't share our values we labeled them "barbarian" and then wiped them out.

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@maxdancona,

No, max. What I was saying was that according to you all the children and parents agreed. I then indicated that if this were the continued cycle, stagnation would occur and no advancements would ever happen. It was not in any way assailing a particular culture or elevating another as in being some way superior.

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@Sturgis,

Then I mostly agree with you. My only quibble is with the word "advance". Societal changes have more to do with adaptation based on changes in environment or societal need than movement toward any end goal.

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@maxdancona,

Okay then, we're good.

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Is it ever a good idea to indoctrinate children?

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