Indoctrination Vs. Education - Add on to Shul Hopping #3

In my most recent shul hopping article I brought up the tension between indoctrination and education. In this blog post I want to expand on some of the points I attempted to make. I believe we must grapple with two issues. The first, the question of what is the difference between education and indoctrination generally, and the second, where does religious education fall in the spectrum between education and indoctrination. The second question rests upon our ability to distinguish between education and indoctrination so let’s start there.

Before that, let’s get one point out of the way. All education on some level entails indoctrination, but we usually refer to this process as socialization. We don’t ask children if they want to learn how to count, or how to do math, or if they believe that hitting isn’t right etc we just teach it to them without providing any tools to question these facts of life. So yes, all education on some level entails enforced teaching, but that is just a fact of society. You cannot live otherwise, but this does not nullify a real difference between education and indoctrination, our initial question.

The answer seems obvious, but at first glance, if I just asked you to tell me the difference between education and indoctrination it wouldn’t be so easy to answer. We might initially assume the difference to lie in the content of what gets taught. Education entails the teaching of truth while indoctrination entails the teaching of falsities. For example, teaching the Revolutionary war is educating, but denying the holocaust is indoctrinating. This handy definition/delineation falls apart at the seams when we start to get into questions that we cannot easily answer. We know facts of history, we know mathematical facts, but do we know facts about religion, metaphysics, or morality in the same way we know facts about math? Some people believe in Jesus as their lord and savior, some do not. If I then choose to teach my student about the greatness of Jesus, or Moses, or Mohamed or any religious figure did I just encroach upon the territory of indoctrination? Can we distinguish between knowledge and belief? Maybe education entails the teaching of knowledge while indoctrination entails the teaching of beliefs. Maybe though, we cannot qualify anything as indoctrination if the teacher presents it as a belief instead of knowledge. That makes sense, it seems. However, if we accept this definition then much of religious education (question 2) falls under the category of indoctrination, unless the teacher qualifies each statement as I believe etc, which most teachers do not do. Additionally, we must account for the relativity of knowledge. Not that I believe in moral relativism, or skepticism as a way of life, but each society believes in different cultural norms, in different versions of history to a certain extent, and in different moral codes. Some might level the claim against Western societies that we indoctrinate our children with the belief that selfishness is good, the oil of a capitalized society etc. while we claim that socialists indoctrinate their students against certain ideas etc. If so, then we fall into the trap of blurring the lines between indoctrination and education.

Perhaps the line between indoctrination and education rests not upon the difference in content alone, but also in the method of teaching. Perhaps education entails offering all knowledge as tentative, all knowledge as up to the student to accept as true or false while indoctrination entails the assertion that what the teacher says is always correct. Hence, even the teaching of truths like gravity, or 2+2=4 can be indoctrination if not explained why we believe these facts to be true, or if there is not room for questioning. But maybe not, maybe you need both untrue statements and forced upon statements. Still according to this definition, much of the religious education in our midst performs indoctrination because it does not at the same time offer critical analysis of its dogma. Its central stance is the correctness of its outlook and hence all questions are most likely answered with apologetics, at best, or not even asked. (For me, I am thinking mostly of Biblical criticism, a discipline that is not even taught at Yeshiva University’s master’s program in Biblical Studies.)

Others might define indoctrination as coercive education that involves coercive action. Under this definition, religious education only borders on indoctrination because we don’t necessarily force people to act in ways they do not want to. Though most schools I know of do “force” their students to pray, but not all, and this definition seems extreme.   

Besides these more conceptual questions, the question of education vs. indoctrination touches upon numerous practical, moral, and religious questions. For example, the American ideal of education is to teach how to make analytic decisions about life and knowledge i.e. we to how to think, we teach the value of freedom for each person to have the ability to make their own decisions in life. Religious education teaches the opposite both in content and in manner of education. It teaches one path, the path of that denomination, and while it provides room for questioning it does not provide room for choosing another path. (You can decide to leave a right wing school and go to a less right wing school, but the school forces your hand to leave or accept what we have to teach. Additionally, teaching all the different religions would allow for the best choice to be made, not simply giving the right tools to analyze one religion…) This sounds anti-American and slightly nefarious, but I think part of our discomfort with this issue stems from our the implications of the word indoctrination.

When we think of the word indoctrination we think of evil people forcing people to learn idiocy or to do stupid and even harmful actions. We think of indoctrinating people to hate, indoctrinating stereotypes. To then put religious education in this group smacks of blasphemy. But maybe indoctrination gets a bad rap because it has been misused. Originally, the term was innocuous not pejorative as it simply meant the teaching of doctrine, and perhaps, there is no way around the need for indoctrination in a traditional society (In the military, as per Wikipedia, the military calls the first stage of psychological training indoctrination, in a non-pejorative manner. One of the main purposes and goals of a traditional society is self-perpetuation. The question then is how best to accomplish this goal, but we cannot get around that if your goal is to pass on certain values then an effective way of doing that is presenting that value as the only value, and providing the experiences that rest on that value. If I grew up all my life thinking in creationism it will be hard to convince me otherwise. The tradition will survive in me, most likely.

Let us say you believe in the value and values of Judaism. Let’s say you think they allow a person to self-actualize, and they provide a path of happiness. You want your child to continue in this path. Now, it would seem that the only way to do that is to provide a strong foundation, both intellectually and experientially in Judaism. Without either component then the student will lack what to connect with or to. Yet, on the other hand, the American in you knows the value of choice and of exposure, yet the danger, a danger we’ve seen come to fruition time and time again since the enlightenment is that this openness allows for assimilation and acculturation. (This isn’t a judgment of either of these phenomenon, but rather a description of its process.) What are our options? Either we take the right wing approach, which appears to border on indoctrination, or the left wing approach which will create tenuous bonds to any one form of living, or the middle approach, some sort of amalgam of both. What would that look like? That's a question for a different day. Here I would just like to point out the tension.

Part of the reason we seem to chafe at religious education is that religion to many of us has become so personalized that to give over any tradition robs a person of their right to choose their own path in life. If more people felt that religion was like science, as many used to think, ages ago, then we would not feel such distress at the question of indoctrination.

Where does this leave us? It appears that according to the American value against indoctrination we feel biased towards certain types of religious education, but perhaps we simply need to rethink our stance and feelings towards indoctrination. Perhaps.

Simon and the Question of Jewish Social Justice - A Generational Gap?

Lesson learned: Talk about David Simon as much as I can. That man truly elicits some deep emotions and visceral reactions to his artistic output and statements. Some, from the comments I received, view him as a visionary, a genius, even in his politics, and others, see him as a kook, a blind outsider who doesn't understand the Jewish community and its needs. This post will not attempt to tackle Simon's public persona, or even the specific issues he brings up. Rather, I find it fascinating that the issues he brings up in regards to the allocation of Jewish charity highlight a dividing line between the older generations and the current one.

A recent Jewish Week article reported that those Jews who do choose to volunteer, volunteer largely outside of the Jewish community. Interestingly, many of the comments from the older generation regarding Simon echo their comments regarding this phenomenon. Essentially, the complaint against Simon and against this universalizing trend is that we/him do not understand that if we do not help ourselves, no one will. We, the tiny nation that could, the nation of Maccabees that continuously beats the odds against our survival, both with God's help, but also with our ferocious tenacity, cannot afford (in both senses) to start solving the world's problems when endless problems plague our world (Assimilation, infighting, poverty, attacks against Israel etc.) Apparently, this difference, this sense of urgency in regards to internal issues, or lack thereof, touches upon a generational gap.

These sentiments came to the fore a while back when Jack Werthheimer, Professor of American Jewish History at JTS, criticized the trend to use philanthropy for non-Jewish causes. He lamented that many Jewish Foundations give mostly to non-Jewish causes, which is not an inherent problem per se, but it fails to realize the whole host of monetary issues plaguing the Jewish community. (Tuition alone for Jewish education will eventually costs an astronomical amount for just a family of three etc.) Again, I don't believe I can add much to the back and forth regarding this point, but I do think it highlights an interesting generational gap that needs more attention, because the less we focus on the fact that our generations struggle with different issues the more we will talk at each other instead of with each other.

         Each generation, religious our not, deals with unique issues, asks itself different questions, and seeks to accomplish different goals. In terms of religion, the previous generation felt the real fear of extinction and of rebirth ,whether first hand, or vicariously through the Holocaust generation of their parents. Their experience, besides partaking in the tension of modernity we all partake in, entailed a fight against anti-Semitism, a fight for Russian Jewry, a fight for their way of life, and a fight for equality in the workplace, basically a fight. Our generation, thankfully, and mostly in part because our parents and grandparents already fought for it, does not fight for our Judaism, at least not externally. We draw our battle lines on different grounds.
      Our generation, instead of monetary inheritance, or cultural heritages of songs, dances, and recipes, mostly have received heritages of sadness, hate, revenge, and national insecurities. We are a generation that buckles under an unwanted sense of chosenness. We see little dignity in difference and wish to forgive the atrocities of the past so we can live in the pleasures of today. We embrace apathy more out of resignation than rebellion. Like no generation before us, we feel squelched by the decisions of our elders without the proper tools of rebellion, or appropriation. We realize the opulence of our lifestyle, the ghosts of our collective memories haunt our hedonism, but we lack any real struggle to connect to our pained past. We have fought no wars for our state’s existence, no social battles for our physical safety, and no political campaigns for our right to exist. Acceptance, acculturation, and assimilation serve as our battle grounds and it is a fight we rarely understand the reasons for, and consequently care little about. We do not feel the exigency of the need to fight for Jewish continuation because on a whole we feel ambivalent about the parochialism in this idea. Many of us simply struggle to define what it means to be Jewish in this age of total freedom of choice, in which we can choose any lifestyle, easily.
(Anti-Semitism bleeps on our radar with the faintest of noises, an echo of the last generation. I realize that anti-Semitism rises with every passing year, but this anti-Semitism, for our generation, is forever out there, not impinging on our placid existence. Our religious struggle focuses on apathy, not on attaining validity in the face of hostility. Our battles lies against materialism, hedonism, and nihilism as opposed to any real physical danger.)

Consequently, it would seem, we care about different issues than our parents and grandparents. We might more easily side with Simon because as two generations removed from the Holocaust, living in a time in which the question of the existence of the Jewish state is less urgent than it used to be, we don’t feel the threat of non-existence as previous generations did. The previous two generations, in fighting for their Jewishness, both physically, emotionally, and politically, consequently, do not understand the choices of our generation. They see the veering of wayward generation as a suicidal act of rebellion, or at least a ignorant act of rebellion, as opposed to a search for a way to connect meaningfully to a tradition on our terms– and this is the irony of a post-Holocaust Judaism.

Many survivors thrived after the holocaust so as to continue the great chain of their lofty tradition. To do so they created a world of a stable Judaism, which has led to unprecedented comfort in Jewish life.  However, one of the central components of the deep threat to the viability of Judaism today arises from the comfort with which we live as Jews. Comfort breeds ease. Ease, begets apathy. It is this comfort, amongst many other factors, that has caused many of the issues the previous generation now focuses on. Besides apathy, many Jews now feel they can find no compelling reason to choose the path of Judaism over the other paths of lives we are exposed to on a daily basis. We live in this influx of information age in which we gain exposure to the range of lifestyles whether from our friends, our classmates, the media, the internet, and we become hard pressed to explain why Judaism. When you must fight for your identity, you dont have the luxury to ask why Judaism because Judaism is forced upon you from the outside. It is long been known that one of our greatest assets, ironically, for Jewish Unity and continuation has been a common enemy. Today though, our generation lacks a common enemy, for the most part. In fact, I imagine most of us would find the idea of a common enemy as simplistic and beneath us. The irony then is that the greatest revenge against Hitler: creating a free space in which Judaism can breathe, in a circuitous route, led unknowingly, to a sort of spiritual destruction (in the previous generation’s mind) of the Jewish religion.

In a sense, this explains why for so many young Jews today we look outwards, we look towards universalism to provide meaning for our lives. I believe, and this is highly anecdotal and simplistic, that this difference might also explain other generation gaps. Again, anecdotal, but our generation does not appear to react to assimilation, or intermarriage the same way the previous generation does and did (Other differences can be explained with this idea, but not for now). In these cursory remarks, I am not commenting on who is right or wrong, but rather hope to describe the current situation so as to open up a dialogue.