Teaching & Indoctrination
Being that I have slacked on my blogging duties as of late, I will have to comment on snow conditions on a later blog. The following blog addresses the past few discussions in class:
If there is surely a difference between education and indoctrination, I cannot locate that difference. I cannot find such a difference because I do not see the operation of the teacher/tutor bias as the influence that creates indoctrination. Of course, personal biases can have that effect if left unchecked, but we all have the ability, with minimal effort required, to filter out personal perspectives. Rarely is it a problem to have to deal with a teacher who is unwilling to explain/teach or entertain perspectives differing from their own.
The real problem begins when trying to answer: how do teachers/tutors filter out their personal perspectives? What perspective does the teacher/tutor now rely on?
A teacher usually relies on curriculum guidelines to ensure she is covering various topics and addressing them in such a way as to not be in favor of one view. A teacher will use a textbook, see what is commonly held to be effective or true, recall experiences from graduate school, or any other such ways to objectify their approach in the classroom. However, what has their view now become? Far from being an objective one, the teacher now has a collection of views that have come to coalesce through various societal, cultural and institutional approvals. Her curriculum guide is approved by the board of education. The education she received before becoming a teacher consisted of lesson plans that were, again, approved by the board of education. On a cultural level, she has been conditioned to give credence to various forms of arguments, in preference to other, just as valid arguments. It is the same with art: we are taught to value the portrait over the abstract; the novel over the collection of short stories; the sonnet over the sestina. Growing up in western civilization, we inherit the canonization of literature, painting, music, architecture, rhetoric, politics, etc. It is not possible to grow up and not be influenced by 1,500 years of your cultural past. You may define yourself as a part of it, you may define yourself against it, but you are never non-affected.
Consider: a literature teacher, proposing to teach an entire class on three Tom Clancy novels in place of an entire semester class on Shakespeare’s histories, is going to come up against strong resistance. A teacher, in some degree or another, must define him or her self in the context of their culture, their current culture as a chapter in a history of evolving cultures, and within the discourse community of a certain academic setting. Now, our teacher who wishes to teach Tom Clancy novels in place of Shakespeare has an enormous battle ahead of her. It is not technically impossible for her to find a way to convince the school board, faculty and student body to participate in such a class, but in order to do so, our teacher has the task of turning over 300 years of history that has continually said yes to Shakespeare and no to writers such as Tom Clancy.
I must say, I do not think Clancy should replace Shakespeare. Yet, it is an important illustration as it points out that we as teachers/tutors instruct from an institutional perspective, a cultural perspective, and a political perspective. We make choices on what needs to be taught and our community of colleagues help to shape the range of possible options. We find what we think works best from acceptable curriculum and implement that method in our teaching. Everything cannot be taught; therefore, Germany emphasizes Goethe, while the United States emphasizes Faulkner. Even in the realms of science and mathematics there is no ONE way. Once you are past the beginning stages of mathematics, it is used in new and creative ways. With the advent of string theory comes two schools: those who think it is fundamentally flawed; others who think we lack the mathematical language to accurately describe it. In other words, there are certain schools and teachers who are teaching their students the possible need for creating a new mathematical language (like Newton had to do); and yet others who insist the road to discovery lies within the investigation of current mathematical language. Also, in the past thirty years, the idea that there is one scientific method that all scientists use, as a sequence of rigid steps, has been discredited.
All of this illustrates one point: to teach is to instruct in the methods and knowledge you and your academic community think is best. Inherent in every course is, “I am teaching you this thing because . . . And it is important that you know this because . . . .” This means that other things are seen as less important for the student to know, other methods less effective. And this is as it should be—a teacher cannot teach everything, and choices (meaning exclusions) have to be made.
To view this as indoctrination may seem overblown—it is not explicit propaganda, no one is sitting behind a desk planning ways to control your thoughts (maniacal laughter implied), and no one is trying to make you believe something that is not true. The problem with the word “indoctrination” is that we immediately associate it with brainwashing and propaganda. For it to be indoctrination we believe someone wishes to blind us all into an unquestioning darkness, and then tell us how and what to think.
When looked up in the dictionary, the word indoctrination means simply, “to instruct in a doctrine, principle, ideologue etc. To teach or inculcate.” Is this not what teaching is? The teacher has a curriculum that the students need to learn/understand—a given set of principles—and the teacher does her best to ingrain those principles into the student. Of course, “indoctrination” comes with the added meaning of “to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief in relation to those principles.”
The partisan or biased belief that is given to the student is an inevitable one, transferred by hundreds of years of cultural history. Beliefs cannot be perspectiveless, a student will learn to view things through certain cultural and societal lenses, and therefore what is taught and what is learned are brought about by predisposed pathways set in by cultural determinism. Of course, it is not wholly deterministic (there are options), but they are limited, and the pathways are conducive to certain means, to certain ends.
In teaching, the curriculum is defined by time limits and the fact that it is taught by a single professor. That professor can try and give as many perspectives as possible within the semester, but as time shapes the classroom, a teacher and his department come to the decision of what is most important for their students to know, and how it is best for them to come about to that knowing.
In teaching, there is no intent to brainwash or foster dependent thinking; yet teaching is always the transfer of knowledge from a certain perspective chosen from a range of other valid possibilities. Teaching is an operation of choice—an operation of exclusion.
If there is surely a difference between education and indoctrination, I cannot locate that difference. I cannot find such a difference because I do not see the operation of the teacher/tutor bias as the influence that creates indoctrination. Of course, personal biases can have that effect if left unchecked, but we all have the ability, with minimal effort required, to filter out personal perspectives. Rarely is it a problem to have to deal with a teacher who is unwilling to explain/teach or entertain perspectives differing from their own.
The real problem begins when trying to answer: how do teachers/tutors filter out their personal perspectives? What perspective does the teacher/tutor now rely on?
A teacher usually relies on curriculum guidelines to ensure she is covering various topics and addressing them in such a way as to not be in favor of one view. A teacher will use a textbook, see what is commonly held to be effective or true, recall experiences from graduate school, or any other such ways to objectify their approach in the classroom. However, what has their view now become? Far from being an objective one, the teacher now has a collection of views that have come to coalesce through various societal, cultural and institutional approvals. Her curriculum guide is approved by the board of education. The education she received before becoming a teacher consisted of lesson plans that were, again, approved by the board of education. On a cultural level, she has been conditioned to give credence to various forms of arguments, in preference to other, just as valid arguments. It is the same with art: we are taught to value the portrait over the abstract; the novel over the collection of short stories; the sonnet over the sestina. Growing up in western civilization, we inherit the canonization of literature, painting, music, architecture, rhetoric, politics, etc. It is not possible to grow up and not be influenced by 1,500 years of your cultural past. You may define yourself as a part of it, you may define yourself against it, but you are never non-affected.
Consider: a literature teacher, proposing to teach an entire class on three Tom Clancy novels in place of an entire semester class on Shakespeare’s histories, is going to come up against strong resistance. A teacher, in some degree or another, must define him or her self in the context of their culture, their current culture as a chapter in a history of evolving cultures, and within the discourse community of a certain academic setting. Now, our teacher who wishes to teach Tom Clancy novels in place of Shakespeare has an enormous battle ahead of her. It is not technically impossible for her to find a way to convince the school board, faculty and student body to participate in such a class, but in order to do so, our teacher has the task of turning over 300 years of history that has continually said yes to Shakespeare and no to writers such as Tom Clancy.
I must say, I do not think Clancy should replace Shakespeare. Yet, it is an important illustration as it points out that we as teachers/tutors instruct from an institutional perspective, a cultural perspective, and a political perspective. We make choices on what needs to be taught and our community of colleagues help to shape the range of possible options. We find what we think works best from acceptable curriculum and implement that method in our teaching. Everything cannot be taught; therefore, Germany emphasizes Goethe, while the United States emphasizes Faulkner. Even in the realms of science and mathematics there is no ONE way. Once you are past the beginning stages of mathematics, it is used in new and creative ways. With the advent of string theory comes two schools: those who think it is fundamentally flawed; others who think we lack the mathematical language to accurately describe it. In other words, there are certain schools and teachers who are teaching their students the possible need for creating a new mathematical language (like Newton had to do); and yet others who insist the road to discovery lies within the investigation of current mathematical language. Also, in the past thirty years, the idea that there is one scientific method that all scientists use, as a sequence of rigid steps, has been discredited.
All of this illustrates one point: to teach is to instruct in the methods and knowledge you and your academic community think is best. Inherent in every course is, “I am teaching you this thing because . . . And it is important that you know this because . . . .” This means that other things are seen as less important for the student to know, other methods less effective. And this is as it should be—a teacher cannot teach everything, and choices (meaning exclusions) have to be made.
To view this as indoctrination may seem overblown—it is not explicit propaganda, no one is sitting behind a desk planning ways to control your thoughts (maniacal laughter implied), and no one is trying to make you believe something that is not true. The problem with the word “indoctrination” is that we immediately associate it with brainwashing and propaganda. For it to be indoctrination we believe someone wishes to blind us all into an unquestioning darkness, and then tell us how and what to think.
When looked up in the dictionary, the word indoctrination means simply, “to instruct in a doctrine, principle, ideologue etc. To teach or inculcate.” Is this not what teaching is? The teacher has a curriculum that the students need to learn/understand—a given set of principles—and the teacher does her best to ingrain those principles into the student. Of course, “indoctrination” comes with the added meaning of “to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief in relation to those principles.”
The partisan or biased belief that is given to the student is an inevitable one, transferred by hundreds of years of cultural history. Beliefs cannot be perspectiveless, a student will learn to view things through certain cultural and societal lenses, and therefore what is taught and what is learned are brought about by predisposed pathways set in by cultural determinism. Of course, it is not wholly deterministic (there are options), but they are limited, and the pathways are conducive to certain means, to certain ends.
In teaching, the curriculum is defined by time limits and the fact that it is taught by a single professor. That professor can try and give as many perspectives as possible within the semester, but as time shapes the classroom, a teacher and his department come to the decision of what is most important for their students to know, and how it is best for them to come about to that knowing.
In teaching, there is no intent to brainwash or foster dependent thinking; yet teaching is always the transfer of knowledge from a certain perspective chosen from a range of other valid possibilities. Teaching is an operation of choice—an operation of exclusion.
posted by Anonymous at 12:18 PM
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