Indoctrination
Indoctrination is instruction in the fundamentals of a
science, or other system of belief (such as a
philosophy or
religion).
The
National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual defines indoctrination as "the initial security instructions/briefing given a person prior to granting access to classified information." Set within the contexts of religion, this would serve perfectly as a definition of the preparation for receiving
esoteric knowledge not generally available to the world-at-large, a preparation that is a prerequisite for
initiation into a
mystery religion. Compare entries for
Gnosticism or
Mormons or
Catechism.
At
Princeton the Cognitive Science Laboratory's "WordNet 2.0" defines "indoctrination" as "teaching someone to accept doctrines uncritically." [
1]. Another serviceable partial definition, drawn from the website of The Henry Wise Wood High School [
2] is "To teach systematically partisan ideas— propaganda." This definition opens the most basic difference between
indoctrination and
education: indoctrination teaches the
doctrina that structures a subject, as observed from
within, whereas
educatio literally "leads out" from a subject, one that is being dispassionately observed from
without.Indoctrination, as deception by the other, coexists with self-deception at many ideological levels, which include politics, economics, and religion. Like viruses it spreads itself with inexorable consequences.
Noam Chomsky has been quoted saying, "For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of '
brainwashing under freedom' to which we are subjected and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting instruments."
The subtle effects of a highly indoctrinated environment may rise unexpectedly to the surface in examining a culturally-freighted term such as "knee-jerk
skeptic": the hearer recognizes immediately the cognate expression "knee-jerk liberal", describing a person considered to be
thoughtlessly and inappropriately liberal, instinctively and on all occasions. Then the sub-text presents itself: it has been assumed. As Robert Jay Lifton has argued, in his discussions about thought-reform and totalism, the objective of these phrases or slogans is less to continue reflective conversations than to replace them with emotionally appealing phrases, for example, the opposing slogans "blood for oil" or "cut and run," both of which replace productive dialogue about objectives in the Iraq war.
A recent study of child abuse in
Samoa found that, "Religious indoctrination was significant in the promotion and prevention of abuse and family violence, depending on one's perspective," [
3] thus suggesting that the effects of such indoctrination could vary from the positive to the negative.
Religious indoctrination is a subject of academic interest. An upcoming volume,
The Costs of Autonomy: Personal Essays on the Morality of Religious Indoctrination is planned to analyze the effects of religious indoctrination on academics.
*
Behavior modification*
Boot camp*
Self-deception*
Propaganda*
Manipulation*
Overcoming Religious Indoctrination Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc
