Reason-Giving Versus Truth-Seeking: Reconceptualizing Indoctrination in Education
INTRODUCTION In the literature on indoctrination in education, indoctrination is often defined as having occurred when someone holds certain beliefs either non-evidentially or non-rationally. The emphasis in attempts to avoid indoctrination, then, is to teach students to provide reasons for their beliefs, rather than basing their views simply on unquestioned assumptions, or emotional commitments to certain beliefs. I find this notion problematic. To avoid indoctrination, we must not develop reason-givers; rather, I argue that we must develop what I shall call “truth-seekers.”
Teaching for Commitment: Liberal Education, Indoctrination, and Christian Nurture
Thiessen calls for reconstruction of the Enlightenment ideal of liberal education from which the charge of indoctrination typically arises. He argues that liberal education necessarily builds on nurture and therefore needs to be more sensitive to the traditions into which a child is initiated. The ideals of autonomy, rationality, and critical openness - all closely related to the ideal of liberal education - need to be modified if they are to be both realistic and philosophically defensible. Once this is done it can be seen that confessional religious education without indoctrination is possible. Teaching for Commitment is an interdisciplinary study covering the fields of religion, philosophy, epistemology, ethics, and education. The very practical nature of the problem being examined, and Thiessen's straightforward and non-technical presentation, will be of interest to parochial and public school boards, teachers, and parents, as well as religious institutions, educationalists, and philosophers of education.
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education
This work aims to clarify the nature of the philosophy of education, intending to indicate both the limits and the uses of philosophical criticism of educational aims and concepts. It is based upon the fact that education is a subject full of unexamined presumptions.