Teaching without Indoctrination:
Implications for Values Education
Teaching without Indoctrination:
Implications for Values Education
Charlene Tan
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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(Dedication)
To
Lim Pin
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION
v
FOREWORD
ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
xi
xiii
PREFACE
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The Problem of Indoctrination
1
CHAPTER 2
Teaching without Indoctrination:
Understanding the Liberal Democratic Context
13
CHAPTER 3
Teaching without Indoctrination:
Understanding Rationality and Belief Inculcation
25
CHAPTER 4
Teaching without Indoctrination in Civic Education
41
CHAPTER 5
Teaching without Indoctrination in Moral Education
53
CHAPTER 6
Teaching without Indoctrination in Religious Education
67
CHAPTER 7
Teaching without Indoctrination:
Towards a Community of Reflective Practitioners
81
NOTES
93
103
REFERENCES
vii
FOREWORD
One may certainly argue for the case that dialogue comprises the essence of the
Socratic method. Despite not being written in this form, however, there is no
denying the unmistakable Socratic undertones in Professor Charlene Tan’s volume
on indoctrination and its consequences for values education.
It would be very difficult indeed to find an overt, unqualified expression of what
she herself thinks or believes in any of the issues she deftly puts forward. Instead,
we find a skilful use of paradox and irony, relentlessly pursuing the clarification of
concepts and ideas while showing exquisite respect for her different characters’
views and opinions. This could only be done after an earnest effort to understand
their positions in the best possible light and having succeeded in the endeavour.
This book presents a comprehensive, well-structured and enlightening survey of
the problem of indoctrination as manifested in scientific, moral, religious and
social fields within the context of an intellectual milieu that prides itself in being
liberal and democratic. Ever the gadfly, Professor Tan alerts us —like few others—
of the hidden dangers of inhabiting such a primary culture. For surely there is
nothing more pathetic and disconcerting than a dogmatic liberal democrat, be it in
style or in substance. And, unfortunately, as many could attest, such individuals do
abound.
In the craft of intellectual midwifery which she masters, Professor Tan has but
one prescription: constant reflection, but not of the solipsistic or sterile kind.
Rather, she advocates fearless questioning within the bounds of a community of
learning, which is what schools should ideally be, wherein we all recognise
ourselves to be at once students and teachers. For today, as it was in Socrates’ time,
an unexamined life is simply not worth living.
Professor Alejo José G. Sison
Rafael Escolà Chair of Professional Ethics
University of Navarra
Pamplona, Spain
ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
My research interest in indoctrination began more than a decade ago when I
embarked on my postgraduate research on the topic. Since then I have continued
to explore the topic and related issues through my doctoral research,
publications, conference presentations and teaching. In the process, my thoughts
on indoctrination have been challenged, refined and strengthened with the help of
many academics, educators, students and friends. I would like to take this
opportunity to acknowledge the invaluable help I have received from the
following individuals who have enriched my academic journey.
First I am very grateful to my doctoral supervisor Professor Kim-chong
Chong for his constructive comments on an earlier manuscript and his many
years of guidance and encouragement. He has inspired me to pursue knowledge
and to love research and writing, just like him!
Special thanks go to Professor Alejo G. Sison for graciously taking the time to
read the manuscript and write the foreword; and Professor Ten Chin Liew for his
insightful comments on Chapters 2 and 3 in an earlier draft.
A debt of gratitude is owed to Professor Paul Standish, Professor William Hare,
and Associate Professor John Williams for reading and commenting on articles I
have written on indoctrination. The ideas from these articles now form sections of
this book.
I am also thankful to Michel Lokhorst, Peter de Liefde and other staff from
Sense Publishers for their editorial assistance; my good friend Fua Lee Na for
proofreading the manuscript; my colleagues especially Hairon Salleh, Ng Pak Tee,
Jude Chua and Connie Ng for their support and friendship; and my family
members for their unwavering love and care.
Any mistakes in this book remain my sole responsibility.
Soli Deo Gloria.
Charlene Tan
Singapore
October 2008
xi
PREFACE
Many people today view indoctrination pejoratively. Hardly any teacher in her
right mind would exclaim proudly that she enjoys indoctrinating her students.
Similarly, any parent who desires her child to be indoctrinated will meet with much
opposition and castigation. In the wake of events such as the September 11 2001
airliner attack on the New York Trade Centre, the 2002 and 2005 Bali attacks and
the 2005 London bomb blasts, there is a general perception that suicide bombers
are victims of indoctrination. For example, it has been alleged that bombers are
recruited and indoctrinated through religious schools run by Hamas (Goldenberg,
2002). It is also claimed that official organs of the Palestinian Authority have
indoctrinated Palestinian children to an ideology of self-sacrifice and martyrdom
through suicide-bombings (Burdman, 2003).
But other writers have alerted us to cases of indoctrination that are more
insidious, unexpected and controversial. For example, Franklin (2004) argues that
the Labour governments in the United Kingdom, in trying to rely on advertising to
promote key areas of government policy, blurs the line between education and
indoctrination. Copley (2005) avers that secular indoctrination takes place when
vocal secularists use the media to instil secular values and exclude religion from
the public sphere. But not everyone views indoctrination negatively. A recent
example is pastor Becky Fischer who organises ‘Jesus Camp’ and states that it is
not wrong for her to indoctrinate the Christian children in America (Ewing &
Grady, 2007). It is also interesting to note that the etymological meaning of
‘indoctrination’ simply means ‘instruction’, and indoctrination obtains its
opprobrious meaning only from the early twentieth century onwards.
Despite many decades of research and debate, philosophers are still unable to
agree on a common definition of indoctrination and the specific reasons that make
indoctrination so pejorative. Given the currency of the problem of indoctrination in
our modern world, there is a need to have a clearer understanding of indoctrination,
the problems it engenders in values education, and the ways to avoid indoctrination
in teaching.
This book explores the concept of indoctrination and argues that indoctrination
refers to the paralysis of one’s intellectual capacity, characterised by the inability to
justify one’s beliefs and consider alternatives. Indoctrination can occur in any
discipline, including religion and science, and even in liberal education where
students may be indoctrinated, not in the content, but in the style of belief. To
avoid indoctrination, this book suggests that educators adopt a reflective
framework that seeks to develop the rational capacity of students within a primary
culture. A primary culture refers to a substantive set of practices, beliefs and values
taught to students in a necessarily non-rational way. Based on this foundation,
intellectual discourse is then introduced to the students where alternative beliefs
and the epistemological underpinnings of these beliefs are explored.
xiii
PREFACE
The second part of the book discusses how indoctrination in civic, moral and
religious education can be avoided through a correct understanding of
indoctrination and an application of our reflective framework. The last chapter
addresses the question of how educators can avoid indoctrination in a school-wide
and sustainable manner. It is argued that there is a need to fortify the reflective
framework with the creation of a community of teachers who are reflective
practitioners.
This book hopes to serve as a platform to inform academics, educators,
policymakers and educational stakeholders on the topic of indoctrination, and to
stimulate further reflections and discussions on indoctrination and related issues.
Through such a process, it is hoped that the educational community will continue
to explore and implement improved teaching practices for our students to learn
values without indoctrination.
xiv
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The Problem of Indoctrination
INTRODUCTION
Indoctrination is commonly regarded as reprehensible and antithetical to education
or some educational ideals such as autonomy, rationality or open-mindedness. The
pejorative meaning of indoctrination, however, is fairly recent as ‘indoctrination’
and ‘education’ were used interchangeably more than half a century ago, with
indoctrination referring to instruction.1 In contrast to ‘indoctrination’, the term
‘education’ has consistently been regarded as salutary, whether it is the Platonic
view of ‘education-as-drawing-out’ that is linked to rationalism, or the Aristotelian
view of ‘education-as-moulding’ that is associated with empiricism (Magnell,
1994). Commenting on the relationship between indoctrination and education,
Magnell (1994) writes:
Education-as-moulding would seem to raise greater concerns about indoctrination than education-as-drawing-out. But the matter is not so simple.
Not only is there no clear-cut distinction between education and indoctrination,
but indoctrination can proceed under either view. Selective drawing out can
be as effective for eliciting dogma as cruder methods of moulding (p. 13; also
see Plato, 1937; Aristotle, 1941).
Educators are particularly suspicious of certain domains that are perceived to be
more susceptible to indoctrination. Religious and political doctrines have been
singled out as paradigmatic examples. For example, Coulson (2004) asserts that
militant Islamist schools in Islam-majority countries such as Pakistan and
Indonesia are indoctrinating thousands of students with an ideology of intolerance,
violence, and hate. Copley (2005) observes that European history has made many
people in Europe very wary of religious indoctrination. It is believed that
indoctrination occurs in the teaching of doctrines because such beliefs determine
the conduct of the adherents and are invariably screened from criticisms about their
validity, be it empirical, normative or conceptual. Arguing that the teaching of
doctrines is indoctrinative, Kazepides (1983) writes that the “teaching of religious
doctrines does not and cannot aim at enriching and developing the human mind but
at completely controlling the expression of all opinions…(p)eople will live under
an absolute, palpable tyranny, though without being able to say they are not free”
(p. 264, also see Kazepides, 1982a, b). Indoctrination is also frequently associated
with dictatorial governments. For instance, Lott Jr (1999) avers that totalitarian
governments indoctrinate by using public education and public ownership of the
media to control the information that their citizens receive.
1
CHAPTER 1
Since indoctrination is widely understood and used in a pejorative sense, what
exactly makes it so pejorative? And if religious education is tantamount to
religious indoctrination, what exactly makes religious beliefs so indoctrinative?
Educators have attempted to answer the above questions in the past few decades
without much consensus and success. The traditional approach is the ‘conceptual
analytical approach’ where a proper definition of indoctrination in terms of a set of
necessary and sufficient conditions is used. Embedded in this approach is the
assumption that indoctrination is antipodal to education. Hence qualities which
define education are qualities which are necessarily absent from indoctrination. For
example, if education involves knowledge and understanding, then these two
qualities are necessarily lacking in an indoctrinated person.
Using the conceptual analytical approach, philosophers surmise that
indoctrination could refer to one or a combination of the following four criteria:
content, intention, method, and result. The content criterion points to the presence
of certain beliefs or doctrines which persist without regard for the grounds of
validity. As mentioned, the paradigmatic cases are religious doctrines such as the
belief in God, and political doctrines such as Marxism.2 The intention criterion, on
the other hand, states that it is the intention of the teacher to suppress the critical
dispositions of the students to believe in something without justification. The third
criterion focuses on the method where the process of indoctrination involves
accepting certain beliefs blindly or irrationally without evidence. Finally, those
who rely on the result criterion assert that indoctrination is present only if the
student ends up committing to beliefs that are impervious to proof.
Despite many debates from the 1960s, which climaxed in the classic book on
indoctrination edited by Ivan Snook (1972), and right into the 1980s, none of the
criteria could present a satisfactory account of indoctrination that demarcates it
from education. If indoctrination refers to certain beliefs that persist without any
regard for the grounds of validity, then a fortiori indoctrination could also take
place in teaching. For example, the multiplication tables or Newton’s theories are
often taught and learnt by rote in schools without any justification presented. Yet
we would not say that indoctrination has taken place. On the other hand, it is
conceivable that indoctrinated beliefs such as anti-Semitism are taught with
reference to some form of evidence such as the historical fact that the Germans
were commercially marginalised by the Jews.
Similarly, the method criterion fails since all of us form some beliefs
uncritically and intuitively without evidence at some point in life. For example, we
tend to take beliefs such as ‘The sun will rise tomorrow’ for granted without a prior
investigation of the evidence available but we cannot be said to be indoctrinated. If
the content and method criteria are too broad to accurately demarcate
indoctrination from education, the intention and result criteria are too narrow to
accommodate all cases of indoctrination. Educators have pointed out the possibility
of unintentional indoctrination, as well as indoctrination that does not produce the
desired result. The only consensus after much ink has been spilled is that none of
the above criteria, whether taken singularly or collectively, is necessary and
2
INTRODUCTION
sufficient to identify indoctrination as a pejorative concept (see Tan, 1995 for
further discussion).
One positive outcome, though, is that educators have realised that the
underlying assumption of value-neutrality for conceptual analysis is false. Writing
more than a decade after the indoctrination debate in the 1970s, R.S. Peters (1983)
speaks for many when he avers the following:
(C)onceptual analysis has tended to be too self-contained an exercise. Criteria
for a concept are sought in the usage of the term without enough attention
being paid to the historical or social background and view of human nature
which it presupposes (p. 43).3
Consequently, philosophers have increasingly pointed out the shortcomings of this
method and inferred that indoctrination may be an essentially contested term.
Despite the failure to conceptualise indoctrination, the efforts of philosophers
are not totally wasted. While it may be impossible to stipulate a set of necessary
and sufficient conditions for indoctrination, we can observe the common source
that makes indoctrination reprehensible. This is the lack of rational justification for
one’s beliefs, or the absence of evidence. This observation is corroborated when
we recall the four criteria used to conceptualise indoctrination. All of them, be it
content, method, intention or result, point to the absence of justification in the form
of ‘grounds of validity’, ‘evidence’ or ‘proof’. The common conviction is that our
beliefs must be rationally grounded and open to change when challenged by bettergrounded beliefs. Laura (1983) notes that ‘evidence’ is the dominant concern in the
conceptual analysis of indoctrination, while Neiman (1989) points to ‘rational
methods’ as the focal point in the four criteria. The lack of rational justification for
one’s beliefs is the ordinate factor that sets indoctrination apart from education. As
we shall see later, it is in this light that indoctrination poses a pedagogical dilemma
for educators and parents.
CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS
The lack of success in conceptualising indoctrination in the last century led most
philosophers to give up the endeavour and move on to examine other issues in
philosophy of education. Snook (1989), writing close to two decades after the
publication of his influential book, declares that the debate on indoctrination is
over:
For my own part, I would not wish to continue the debate on indoctrination
though I still believe it to be an important notion. I believe we are as clear
about it as we could ever be. We now have to use it in concrete instances to
discuss ideas such as evidence, truth, and objectivity and see it as centrally
involving a question about the legitimacy of certain kinds of influence on
people’s minds. The analysis is quite subsidiary to the substantive questions
such as ‘how, if at all, should religion be taught to the young?’ (p. 64)
3
CHAPTER 1
However, like a blot that refuses to go away, indoctrination continues to pose
thorny problems in the educational arena. The lack of clarity on indoctrination
hinders a number of related issues from being clearly comprehended and resolved.
This chapter shall highlight a few cases plaguing educators, philosophers and
policymakers.
First, the indoctrination debate poses a pedagogical dilemma for schools.
Burwood (1996), for example, argues that “(m)any children, of various races, are
simply indoctrinated by their parents, be it in religion or general morals, and it is
the school’s duty to promote a critical awareness in all areas” (p. 434). This
presupposes that the school authorities are aware of instances when their students
are indoctrinated by their parents. But without any definition or exposition of the
term, Burwood has entrusted the teachers with a duty that is difficult, if not
impossible, to fulfil. Burwood’s assertion, if accepted, also restricts teachers from
expressing their views freely for fear of indoctrinating their students, choosing
instead to be neutral, especially on debatable subjects. This is pointed out by
Gardner (1989):
(I)n educational writings indoctrination is frequently seen as involving the
teaching of a particular type of content, a content made up of doctrines of a
religious, political, or even moral nature which, or so it is claimed, are not the
sorts of things we can be sure or certain about. The inference to be drawn
here seems to be that if doctrinal material is to be handled at all in the
teaching situation, it should be handled neutrally (pp. 113–114, also see
Gardner, 1993a; White, 1982).
This ambivalent status of indoctrination also perpetuates the mistrust of religious
education in schools. This issue is especially relevant as there is a renewed interest
in many countries to promote religious and/or spiritual education in schools (Tan,
2008a, forthcoming). Governments in different countries have supported the
introduction of religious education in schools. Examples are the cases in England
and Wales (Hand & White, 2004), Norway (Leganger-Krogstad, 2003), and
Pretoria (Department of Education, 2001). In a 2001 study conducted by the Office
of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations, 35 countries
indicated that their state schools provide religious education throughout primary
and secondary school (United Nations, 2001). The study further reports that nearly
half of the responding countries (62 countries) have introduced multi-religious
education in their schools. The desirability and viability of such an enterprise
would of course depend on the possibility of separating indoctrination from
religious education. Not surprisingly, some philosophers have voiced their concern
of indoctrination in religious education (e.g. see Kazepides, 1982a, 1983; Carr,
1995, 1996, 1999; Mackenzie, 1998).
Related to this concern is the relationship between religious and moral
education. Some have called for the teaching of moral values through religious or
spiritual education. It is believed that religions provide the moral, social and
cultural framework that is necessary for moral commitment to take place. For
example, Bolton (1997) opines that since ethics within a religion is moulded by
4
INTRODUCTION
tradition and shaped by doctrine, such an approach is “much more holistic and
comes with empowerment as well as imperative” (p. 202, also see Greer, 1983;
Iheoma, 1986; Haydon, 1997; Taris & Semin, 1997; Carr, 1995; Smart, 1995).
But what about the perennial worry of indoctrination that proceeds from
religious education? Rather than encouraging indoctrination, these proponents
believe that the teaching of different religious systems, coupled with critical
questioning, would bring about ‘de-indoctrination’. For instance, Bolton (1997)
claims that the “very pluralism of multifaith ethics, different visions of alternative
futures, together with the philosophy of critical solidarity, makes RE [religious
education] about de-indoctrination, rather than indoctrination” (p. 204). But what
does Bolton mean by ‘indoctrination’ and ‘de-indoctrination’? Without providing
the reader with a definitive idea of what indoctrination consists of, Bolton’s
optimistic claim about religious education is far from convincing.
Another problem arising from indoctrination is the compatibility between openmindedness and firm commitment. It is posited by some educators that an openminded person is not one who holds on to firm beliefs as this entails indoctrination
(e.g. see Gardner, 1993, 1996; Hare & McLaughlin, 1994, 1998; Gluck, 1999). The
fear of indoctrination is also part of the motivation to advocate an ethics of belief
and critical thinking as educational ideals since, as the argument goes, these ideals
ensure that felicitous qualities such as truth and knowledge would rule out
indoctrination. A well-known proponent is Degenhardt (1986) who directly links
an ethics of beliefs to indoctrination:
In an ethics of belief we have a set of values that we teach with confidence
because they cannot be rationally called in doubt. Moreover, short of things
going badly wrong, they are values that are opposed to the closedness of
mind which we fear from indoctrination (p. 111, also see Degenhardt, 1998;
Dearden, 1986).
A final example concerns the debate on the parental right to give a religious
upbringing to their children in a liberal society. The concern by some is that such
right, if granted, would give the green light for parents to indoctrinate their
children. Others, however, have argued that parents have the right to indoctrinate
their children in religious beliefs. For example, Hand (2002) writes that “(t)o
impart a religious belief one must use a form of leverage other than the force of
evidence; and this, it seems, is necessarily indoctrinatory’ (p. 545). But what
constitutes indoctrination in this case? Philosophers from different quarters have
fought over this issue, with different philosophers using different conceptions of
indoctrination (e.g. see McLaughlin, 1984; Callan, 1985a, b; Laura & Leahy, 1989;
Gardner, 1991, 2004; Hand, 2002, 2004; MacKenzie, 2004; Tan, 2004a, b).
This problem is aggravated in the context of a liberal democratic society since it
values liberal values such as rationality, critical thinking, open-mindedness and
autonomy. As I have adumbrated earlier, indoctrination is believed to be
antithetical to the proper development of rational autonomy. It is noteworthy that a
number of litigation cases in the United States were triggered by religious
fundamentalists who wanted to shield their children from a liberal education. For
5