If you seriously think that the teaching of factual information is indoctrination thenExi5tentialist wrote:Yeah but really all education is indoctrination. I think we should face up to that. To pretend otherwise is to assume moral high ground for your particular version of indoctrination. Back to the one and only truth again, I feelsurreptitious57 wrote:I am with Richard Dawkins on this. Children should not
be indoctrinated. They should be educated. The two are
mutually exclusive. The problem with faith schools is that
this distinction becomes eroded. Academies also can teach
in the same way. There should be a national curriculum with
inspectors with legal powers to walk in to any school anywhere
to maintain that educational standards are being maintained and
where religion is taught, it is done as a humanity, not as a science
It is laughable - or would be if it was not so serious - that some parents
want their children to accept uncritically what they are told when such info
is factually incorrect and proven to be so. No school, religious or non-religious
should be doing this. But the problem unfortunately extends beyond the school and
into the home where the state has no power to intervene. And that is rather sad. What
is even more so is that many of these parents are educated individuals who ought to know
better. I am all in favour of anyone believing whatever they want to - without exception - but
indoctrinating innocent minds who do not have the intellectual capacity to question what they are
being told is fundamentally wrong. Children should only be thought factual information initially and as
time progresses and their minds develop then they can be introduced to the concept of critical thinking and
questioning what they are told. But even then no one should be forcing dogma down their throats. Their minds are
still maturing. When they become adults then one can indoctrinate them as much as they want since hopefully by then
will have enough knowledge and understanding to recognise it for what it is. But a young child should not be exposed to this
we might as well not bother teaching anything at all now. The only legitimate argument
that would suffice here is if the factual information being taught was being done deliberately
to the exclusion of other information for political purposes. I do not think that at the very basic level
that such concerns apply. And teachers do not have the same freedom to impose their opinions on children
as parents do and there are no checks and balances on that even when it is quite obviously blatant indoctrination