Why Postmoderns Train—Not Educate—Activists

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | March 20, 2019 | Stephen Hicks

[reaganaut1]

Here’s why indoctrinating children makes perfect sense to postmodernists.

Postmodernism is a sprawling movement centered on the conviction that the modern world’s most distinctive achievements—among them the rise of science, technology, individualism, universal rights, democratic-republicanism, and liberal capitalism—should be treated with suspicion or outright contempt.

Most of us encountered old-fashioned indoctrinators in our education. Indoctrinators think this way: There is the One Truth. I am in possession of it. So important is it that students must believe it. Alternative ideas are a waste of time—and a temptation to unformed minds—and should be shunned. So as a teacher I will use my authority and my power to instill only the correct ideas.

Our modern ideal of liberal education fought a long battle against that view. Truth matters, yes, but it is often complex, and exposure to contending theories and their leading advocates is the best way for students to sort it out. Students also need to develop their own strength of mind to be able, independently and with confidence, to handle the new, complex issues they will encounter all their lives.

John Stuart Mill’s now-classic statement of the liberal-education ideal argued passionately that students must learn not only the best answers but also their contenders, and that a trained mind will know not only the reasons for the best answer but also the strongest criticisms of it. And not only that, they will know the best arguments for the contender positions and how to respond to them.

Institutionally, then, Mill argued that schools should hire teachers from diverse viewpoints—for only by exposure to the expert and passionate articulation of varied viewpoints will students get a first-rate education.

[imardmd1]

This article tries to give a bad name to "indoctrination" (=teaching a system of coherent beliefs) which cuts into the correct teaching of Bible truths as the foundation for further exploration.

Where the method is "First, teach Truth" by instilling Biblical doctrines, then examine such of its adversaries or supplements as they appear, robs the confrontation of falsity in its many forms of the power to bewilder and overcome the novitiate.

Properly used, indoctrination is a superior tool to prepare the human spirit to overcome adversity. Being only confronted with an undifferentiated dogs breakfast of theories, many of which are poisonous, is not good preparation, IMHO. It is only a form of intoxication; at the end, spiritually lethal.

[Rich21IE]

“Truth is out, and racial/gender/class/ethnic-group conflict prevails. But then, what is the purpose of education?”

Therein lies the path of chaos.

[Truthoverpower]

The key aspect of liberal indoctrination is to teach hate dissed trust and unhappiness

in the end it will be it’s own undoing because most conservatives own happiness peace and stability

This is because all of our beliefs are based on timeless principles expounded on in the Bible and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights

So the liberalism do use your green new deal pack the court kill babies and that way everybody to victim

h things will come and pass in common pass and sooner or later with everything like exposure just like Islam they will be seeing is faulty and will be discarded under the asheap for history

[sparklite2]

Indeed. The injection of orthodoxy into the minds of children too young to critically exam it is, IMO, a form or child abuse.

[imardmd1]

Indeed. The injection of orthodoxy into the minds of children too young to critically exam it is, IMO, a form or child abuse.

Too bad you do not take a Biblical view of how to bring up children to know and love God.

Are you willing to allow your own children to feed themselves from the garbage pail when they are too young to critically evaluate the source and the nutrition value of what they are filling their body with?

You do not seem to understand that absolving yourself from the responsibility of selecting their mental diet is a form of child abuse. Apparently you are trying to offer counsel how to raise infants to be reliable and responsible mature adults to someone who already has, and knows what he is talking about.

Your theory is one of the poisonous ones. Hope you never have a chance to subject an infant to it, or influence anlother gullible idiot to accept it.