The word indoctrination has a negative connotation, and
while that connotation is often appropriate to the use of the word, it is not
always so.
We tend to see indoctrination as akin to brainwashing, and
sometimes it is, but actually, the word indoctrinate simply means to teach. (It
comes from the Latin root docere, to teach, which provides the “doc” in the
word. This root is shared by words such
as docent, doctrine, and document).
Indoctrinate means to teach someone a set of basic
fundamentals, ideas, or attitudes. The
teaching usually occurs via some sort of persistent and repetitive teaching. While it can include doing so with a partisan view
that does not allow for questioning of those basics, one can also indoctrinate without a demand
for unquestioning acceptance and with an encouragement of critical thinking about them.
In essence, when your elementary school teacher made you
learn your multiplication tables by repeating them over and over, and telling
you there was but one answer to 2 x 2 or 2 x 6, she was indoctrinating you with
the basic fundamentals of multiplication.
These basic fundamentals are essential to a deeper understanding of and
a progression in math.
I would argue that every parent by necessity indoctrinates
their children with certain necessities of that family’s way of life. Certain basic hygiene, eating, safety, and
other behaviors are instilled in children from the time of their birth. Children
learn that certain behaviors are expected of them in the home and later as they
venture out of the home. Some are
necessary for survival; others to be a functioning part of the family unit. If certain rules of interaction within the
family were not shared (indoctrinated) via the parent-child relationship, then
the family would likely be less peaceful and lose some of its stability and
cohesion.
I would argue that the same is true within societal groups
and communities. Without a certain
amount of shared ideas and attitudes, a stable group will become unstable and
eventually lose that which has tied the members of the group together. The indoctrination of these basic ideas and
attitudes are implicit in parent-child relationships but are more overt within
larger groups.
Humans are social animals and are shaped not only by their
parents but also by a larger cultural context of the society in which they
live. It is certain shared basic
concepts, instilled within the children of a particular society at an early
age, that allows the society to hold together and effectively work as a unit
for the good of its people.
Different societies have always held different doctrines,
fundamentals, and traditions. It is
these things which both set them apart from other societies and hold them
together as one. In the first century
BCE, the Roman poet and philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus is alleged to have
said “what is food to one, to others is bitter poison.”
Those doctrines, fundamentals, basics of any society must be
conveyed to new generations in order for the society to work. We often think of this as some sort of
necessary “socialization,” a word that generally has a better connotation than
indoctrination. Yet, the repeated teaching
and practice of a society’s fundamentals is, indeed, indoctrination. Regardless of label, the point is, that to
maintain social order within any given society there must be some teaching and
instilling of the basic doctrines of that society.
These basics are often conveyed via such things as: shared holidays and manner of celebrating
them; shared foods; shared folk songs, traditions, dances; shared games; etc. Some are more substantive: shared knowledge of the society’s history; shared
basic values of how one will treat other citizens of the society and how the
society will be governed. The key is
that the teaching of the basics of things such as these, the indoctrination of
them into the society’s children, are necessary to make the group within that
society feel that they share a history and a future with their group and hence will
unite, working together to maintain and improve that society.
Elementary schools in this country used to teach American folk
songs and folk stories from our history.
Children grew up knowing and having these stories and rhythms in common.
For many these national fundamentals
were accompanied by fundamentals of their own smaller groups – a region of the
country, their cultural heritage, their individual family practices. While some of the traditions of smaller,
included groups might vary, all Americans also had certain American traditions
and values in common.
Because we used to truly be a melting pot, we celebrated
holidays in common, though with ethnic variations based on our ancestry. We had civics classes that taught us about
our form of government. We learned
American history, our accomplishments and our failures.
This was all a form of indoctrination, but, because it was
also accompanied by instruction that America protects diverse viewpoints and
the ability to speak them, we were not being brainwashed that there was only
one acceptable view. Instead, just as
the math teacher who teaches the multiplication tables as facts also teaches
that these can be used in creative and diverse ways, children used to learn
certain foundations and history of our country while also being taught that
these foundations allowed them to have their own views and use their mind and
their creativity to better themselves and the country which they share with
those both like and different from them.
We no longer have that in America. America has always been a multicultural
society, but it is no longer a melting pot. That is, immigrants have always come to
America with their cultural heritage, but upon arriving have also desired and
been able to assimilate into American culture while still maintaining that heritage. Americans, in addition to other fundamentals
of American culture, were indoctrinated with the fundamental concept of
respecting others with differing viewpoints and different heritages than one’s
own.
In entering the American melting pot, all joined in those
basic fundamentals that are shared by all Americans and which make up the
fundamentals of American society; by so
doing, America while rich and diverse culturally, has maintained its identity
as one united country.
But, now, no one is taught (yes, indoctrinated) in those
basic fundamentals. In today’s
multicultural America, the cultures no longer mix; they have little other than
their basic humanity to share and hold them together as one society. Those American fundamentals that children
used to learn in school are no longer taught for fear of offending someone or
some ethnic or cultural group, or simply because one group objects to
celebrations that do not belong to their own group. There
is no willingness to assimilate. There is no tolerance for diversity within a greater and cohesive whole.
We no longer have a melting pot that unites us all; instead
we have a completely unmixed salad where each culture or identity group
maintains its own complete and unique identity within the land of America but
without any joining together in the fundamentals that have always made America
a unique and united society.
It is easier to hate a country that you have never learned
to love. Note, I am talking about the country
itself and not whichever politician or political party happens to be in power
at any given moment. Throughout their
history, Americans have always exercised their First Amendment rights to
protest various activities and policies of those in power. But, the difference today is that along with
such protests there seems, on the part of many, to be a genuine hate against
the country itself.
Without basic fundamental commonalities, a society loses its
cohesiveness. It falls apart into
separate societies; those societies can sometimes live peacefully side by side
but can also just as easily slip into warring factions.
America has been and will always be multiracial and
multicultural. The question is, are we
willing to include some teaching – some indoctrination - of all our citizens in
basic fundamentals that will hold us together as one, or are we going to allow
every different group to maintain its own and separate fundamental doctrines while
objecting to those of others so that we lose our cohesiveness as one nation and
instead devolve into separate and
competing tribes?
We must not be afraid to indoctrinate our children with
those American fundamentals that allow them to hold a pride and an identity in
America as their country. Those fundamentals may evolve, even change as
they have done over our history, but they are necessary to creating the melting
pot, the glue that holds us together as one people. Indoctrination is not always a bad word and
it is a necessary piece of any successful nation.
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