I’ve been watching tv showing the video of the kids in school singing about how great Obama is and watching all these people yelling that indoctrinating our children is such a horrible thing to do. Why? Aren’t we indoctrinating our children every time we make the say the pledge of allegiance?
The pledge is to a country, not a person.
Yeah but it’s also to some make-believe entity, at least since 1954.
No, it’s not.
Because it’s up to the parents to decide what political and moral values their children get taught. The state shouldn’t be teaching these values to children simply because it is guaranteed to conflict with the values of large numbers of parents.
For me personally the idea of a state organising youth groups to sing the praises of the leader trips some alarm bells for historical reasons.
Certainly, and i think that’s a bad thing too. However at least the pledge is apolitical an amoral. It’s essentially teaching the children to value the things their society values. That’s less worrying to me.
In addition anyone who seriously to the pledge knows that it occurs and can ask their child to be excused. That makes it a considerably different to ad hoc Obama youth choirs.
The United States is a political entity and allegiance is a political concept. The pledge is about as political as it can possibly be. I also don’t see how it can be described as “amoral”; allegiance is also a moral concept, and the pledge explicitly advocates particular moral values (“liberty and justice for all”).
How is that not indoctrination?
It seems to me that the issue here is not “what’s wrong with indoctrinating our children” but rather “what kind of indoctrination of our children is acceptable, what kind is not, and why?”
apo·lit·i·cal
Pronunciation: \ˌā-pə-ˈli-ti-kəl
Function: adjective
Date: 1935
1 : having no interest or involvement in political affairs; also : having an aversion to politics or political affairs
pol·i·tics
Pronunciation: \ˈpä-lə-ˌtiks
Function: noun plural but singular or plural in construction
Date: circa 1529
1 a : the art or science of government b : the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy c : the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government
2 : political actions, practices, or policies
3 a : political affairs or business; especially : competition between competing interest groups or individuals for power and leadership (as in a government) b
The pledge is apolitical. It makes no attempt to influence government policy or to gain control of government. It makes no stance on political affairs between individual leaders.
Arguing that it’s political because the state is somehow a political entity makes no sense at all. By that argument the SCOTUS and the FBI are political entities.
Those moral values are enshrined in the constitution of the state. As I said, it’s essentially teaching the children to value the things their society values.
The constitution doesn’t mention anything about the wonderfulness of any specific leader.
It is. As I said at explicitly and clearly in the post you quoted.
Nope. I’ve already explained above why it’s wrong.
To me all indoctrination in public schools is to be avoided. That isn’t going to be 100% possible, but it should certainly be extended to any political or religious indoctrination which are guaranteed to be in conlfict with the beliefs of a great many parents.
The difference is between shaping children like a material - treating them like objects - and teaching them in the best ways that we know. The former says, “You will cheer and obey this man because he is always right.” The latter says, “These are my principles and why I hold them dear, and how you may judge a man and know when he is right.”
Yes, but there are plenty of people who don’t approve of that. The short version of this debate is that when a child is taught values a commentator agrees with, it’s just teaching, but if the commentator disagrees with those values, it’s indoctrination. It’s thrown around in the same manner as a lot of other loaded words, like how “fascist” comes to mean “someone who supports government involvement in some area I don’t approve of.”
To give a nuanced answer, it comes down to critical thinking. If you encourage or order a child to copy your opinions without thinking about it, that would be more like indoctrination, and if you tell them what you think but encourage them to evaluate the issue and come to their own conclusions, that would be teaching and not indoctrinating.
Parents probably have the right to indoctrinate their children in whatever way they like. Whether they should do this is another question. In some ways it’s probably impossible to avoid, but when it’s overdone it leads to an intolerant point of view.
Meant to add: I do think the song could be a mild type of indoctrination, but it’s not the kind of scary Nazi indoctrination some people are crapping their pants about. At worst I’d say it’s the kind of indoctrination you usually see in schools, where the lesson is that authority figures are always benevolent and doing their best, and always deserve respect. I don’t think it’s a good lesson but I also doubt it has much effect. The Obama song was part of a larger program that involved songs about other presidents, so it wasn’t just about obeying Obama, and it was performed by high school kids. High school kids usually have pretty firm opinions about authority figures by that point. The main point of such a program is to make the school look good, not to teach insidious lessons to innocent kids.
We are indoctrinating children by putting them on a bus and sending them to state education factories.
If you send your kid to public school and then complain about state indoctrination in any form, you’re a moron.
The issue here isn’t indoctrination so much as it is indoctrination on partisan lines within a state agency, which is generally considered to be illegal. The same reasons why Bush firing Yglesias is bad, are the same reasons why people singing songs about Obama in school are bad.
We all “indoctrinate” children every day (well, everyone who deals with children does). As far as I can see, whenever we teach children values such as sharing, treating others the way we would want to be treated, or not to litter, we are indoctrinating them. Our school systems have a long history of teaching children “civics,” or how to be a good citizen. Nothing wrong with that, I don’t think, as long as it’s kept to general values that the vast majority of people will agree upon.
The kind of indoctrinating people get nervous about is when it seems to be taken a step further, beyond just teaching the basic values, and teaches the children which organization, religion, or political party is the “right” one for ensuring those values are upheld. The basic value that there should be peace, for instance, is one that most people can agree on. Telling children that one political party’s foreign policy stance is the correct way or only way to achieve that is not appropriate, even if the teacher or the people who run the school are really really sure that it’s true.
The other factor is who is doing the indoctrinating. It’s not appropriate for a public school to support one political party over another or to support any religious views. The public school system is supposed to be for everyone.
Oh fine. Split hairs. It’s to a country under a make-believe entity, at least since 1954.
Did you honestly not know what I was referring to, or were you just being jerky about syntax?
What if people are singing songs about Obama because he is our first black president, and they think that’s something that history will remember since it is unprecedented and was once thought unlikely (at best) to happen, given black people’s former status as slaves in the US?
Would that be wrong, and how would the reasons re: Bush firing Yglesias apply?
It’s sort of like prayer in schools. If a student group gets the idea and wants to do it, then it’s ok. If it’s a behavior mandated by teachers then it’s not ok.
How it applies to Yglesias is the use of a Federal agency to advance a partisan agenda.
It’s often held to be bad, but you might be pushing your hand by saying it’s generally illegal. Some federal employees and civil servants are restricted in what kind of political activities they can engage in. There is no law against kids singing a song about the president in school.
And while I get your general point here, the comparison is extreme because no one who had any connection to Barack Obama was involved in this school song in any way. So that’s not very similar to the president or the president’s top advisers firing people from the Justice Department for partisan reasons.
Was the activity arranged by state employees?
Assuming it was a public school, yes.
Like I said, I get your point, and I think this was a dumb move. But as far as I can tell this was not illegal, and it’s comparable to the Justice Department situation only in the loosest possible way.
Are we going to discuss the specific case cited by the OP, or are we going to discuss indoctrination of children as an hypothetical? So far the line between them has been pretty fuzzy.
The case in point was a group of primary school children singing a song about “accomplishments” in specific regard to Obama as part of a series of such skits and programs the school put on for Black History Month. This was last February, shortly after the inauguration. The Superintendent of Schools for the school district, in a later letter to parents which apologized for the possible violation of the children’s privacy the unauthorized use of this video might have engendered made it clear that parents were informed in advance of the content of the song, parents attended the program, and none of them expressed any complaints about it before, during or after. If needed, I’ll fight the search hamsters and dig out the cite from the other thread.
Seems to me that praising accomplishments, and ***using as personification a man who overcame significant hurdles ***(color, name, socioeconomic background, broken home-- make a list!) along the way to a variety of notable achievements (Harvard Law Review, successful author, US Senator, ultimately President of the United States) is the kind of indoctrination that we should be pleased with.
Once upon a time we used to tell our children that “Anybody, by dint of hard work, can become anything they want, including POTUS!” and this is what makes America so special and so wonderful. Indeed, this is exactly the kind of “family values” belief that American conservatives could and did fervently profess. It follows perfectly from their *personal responsibility and personal effort *memes.
But now an actual “anybody” has done just that and become POTUS. Look at the conservatives scramble like roaches when the lights are switched on! “Oh no, can’t have our children praising his accomplishments, don’t want our kids to emulate that!! This is indoctrination like they had in the USSR. Or maybe under Hitler. Or somewhere. But it sure isn’t the same as what we meant…”
Disgusting hypocrisy.
Or shall we discuss instead actual indoctrination, if and when it might occur, instead of this disingenuous bullshit?
Missed edit window! Sorry, saw the forum. ETA:
[delete] Disgusting hypocrisy. [/delete]
Or shall we discuss instead actual indoctrination, if and when it might occur, instead of this [replace] disingenuous bullshit? = “foolishness?” [/replace]
There, that’s better.