On indoctrinating students
It's actually not in my job description.
In a weekend Twitter conversation about the lack of a cohesive domestic or foreign policy from the Republicans and their inability to show their work, include links, and do something besides flinging poo, someone I don’t know posted my photo from work and suggested I was indoctrinating students at my college.
It’s a pretty good photo, taken by a professional photographer and my only quibble is I wish the professional had told me to smooth out my wrinkled shirt collar.
Anywhoo…
It’s a common accusation against professors, that we are in classrooms trying hard to convince students to be political progressives. There are even websites devoted to “unmasking radical professors,” and they don’t mean radical conservatives. (The linked website is a product of this organization and here’s more you might want to read.)
The accusation is problematic on several levels.
The statement presupposes that college students are stupid and will fall for indoctrination. This has not been my experience in two decades on college campuses. Most students would call you on it, loudly and cheerfully.
The role of the teacher, in my mind, is to teach a student to explore for the rest of that student’s life and that means exploring their own political beliefs, as well, no matter what those may be. Take nothing at face value. Look at the source. Demand the truth.
Another issue with the worry about radical professors assumes someone with firmly-held political beliefs must then proselytize. That’s ignorant. I do not believe we all should agree on politics, on religion, on anything. It’s in the discussion where we hammer out what’s the best solution.
Is that “indoctrination?” No. That’s encouraging critical thinking. But whatevs. I’ll just keep asking “Why do you say that,” as I do, every day, in class.
Liberals indoctrinating kids. What an amazing piece of projection. It's the other way around. Conservatives (as well as churches) are the masters of manipulating the information we get when our brains are most plastic. Give me the child and I'll give you the man.
I am the proud owner of a three-digit IQ, and yet I emerged from Webb City High School sincerely believing that the U.S. had been the "good guy" on the domestic and international stage all through its 200-year history. It was us against the evil King George, the evil Kaiser Wilhelm, the evil Nazis, the evil Tojo, the godless Commies. Amazingly, every time, the good guys triumphed over evil. Even the Civil War was a victory for the good guys in the Union (I had no idea that our state was for all practical purposes a Confederate state).
There was never any mention of our imperialism. No mention of the "false flags" we used to start the Spanish American War and the Vietnam War. The many many atrocities committed in our names against Native Americans, Blacks, Filipinos and Japanese. The Korean War, which we basically lost, wasn't studied. It was a fact desert. College is where I began to learn about the inconvenient truths. Where I was assigned to read books like Hiroshima and the Autobiography of Malcolm X and The Making of a Quagmire.
That fact deprivation wasn't an accident. Somebody was shaping the "history" we learned. I'm not sure who was pulling the strings in Missouri at that time, but you can see the process proudly, nakedly on display right now in Texas. https://www.aacu.org/article/the-whitewashing-of-history
A lot of our classmates didn't get to have the experience we did. In addition to never learning to think critically, they're also still fact deprived. Both factors are why so many are Republicans and why Trump got 70+% of the vote in our former Congressional district. 53% of college-educated voters identify as Democrats while 40% identify as Republicans. That is not a coincidence.
I think you're right. I also have a strong impression that you're a superb teacher.
But my response tends to be different. I think that's there's indoctrination at universities, though less than in undergraduate schools, through advertising, and in families.
When I taught economics I was in fact trying to indoctrinate students to become skilled, well-informed, and honest economic thinkers, whether in reading news or deciding how to vote or receiving investment decisions under uncertainty and across time. I had colleagues indoctrinating students indoctrinating students to develop and use chemistry and biology and visual arts and German-speaker and so many other toolsets and perspectives.
Society specifically asks that public schools indoctrinate students to be "college-ready" or "prepared for the workplace," and often to be this or that sort of citizen. Quite overtly.
Commercial advertisers seek to indoctrinate recipients as consumption-oriented and as consumers of their products. Families indoctrinate their children as members of societies, in roles they think advantages or inevitable.
In economics, I certainly met economists as teachers and as colleagues who were putting across their perspectives through honest argument or by slipshod sneering. Since I went to and taught at relatively balanced institutions, I experienced this from both leftie and righty economists.
But there are a lot of voices out there. Your goal, and my goal, and what I think should be the goal of everyone, is to help children and adults of all ages, including ourselves, to develop into alert, informed, curious, and honest readers of our complex universe and all the many arguments occurring about it.