Education vs. Indoctrination
A surprising number of people (some of whom are even educators by profession) don’t seem to understand the difference between education and indoctrination. While at times indoctrination may be used to educate, the fact is that they are two very different things.
Education is a process of teaching people things. Indoctrination is something which may or may not be used as part of that process. Indoctrination is a particular type of education… usually a pretty poor form of education. The simple way of saying this is that education is the process of educating people about how to think while indoctrination is the technique used to tell people what to think. When schools tell children to memorize facts, they are using a sort of form of indoctrination in the process of education. But then students are usually encouraged to ask questions about those facts and perhaps even question the facts themselves. This is where indoctrination ends and thinking begins.
I bring up this topic, because religion is notorious for using indoctrination and in criticizing education or at the very least thinking that their indoctrination is education. When people go to a religious house of worship, they are told to repeat the words from the holy book, or to recite from something that someone else has prepared. There are no questions asked about the material, because religion has no answers.
Fundamental religious believers are also notorious for home-schooling their children. This isn’t to say that all fundamentalists home-school, but I am saying that if you home-school, you are probably a religious fundamentalist. There are of course some exceptions. The thing about home-schooling is that it is very easy to get into indoctrination mode. This is especially true with religious home-schoolers.
Science doesn’t have all the answers, but science is also aware of what answers they have and what answers they don’t have. Also, all of science is open to questions and re-evaluations. In short, science encourages education and critical thinking which religion does not. Religion claims to know the answers, but can’t justify those answers with any evidence at all. Religion discourages questioning one’s faith and when people do question religious faith they are called “bigots” or “intolerant.”
When religion tries to answer questions about their faith, they usually do so dogmatically with arguments which had been refuted centuries past. When religion is called out on this and exposed, religion always falls back to blind faith which is a way of shutting down questions and critical thinking. It is a way of maintaining the indoctrination.
There is a big difference between religion and reality and that is the difference is how we know things. Religion uses indoctrination while science and other reality based disciplines encourage critical thinking and questioning as part of the education process.
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, education, Religion
