Is it possible to prevent indoctrination of youth?

Essay for Feb 13

Most of us were subjected to political, religious, and social indoctrination before we became teenagers. While we have been learning of a few individuals who have de-converted from a particular religious belief, most people believe as their parents do or have been instructed by them to believe. That is easily understood when you think of the early interactions that you had with your immediate family or relatives.

If your family supported Republican candidates, then you generally only heard good things about Republicans. Any negative news about Republican behavior would be filtered by your parents to exclude it from you. The same is true of Democrats and today more than in the past, hypocrisy is revealed by replaying passed video clips as they twist themselves into pretzels trying to justify their current stance on an issue compared to their stance five years ago on the same issue. For example, both Senate Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker Ryan were predicting apocalyptic consequences as a result of expenditures that added to the deficit five years ago and this week when it was convenient for them, they added to the deficit saying that a growing economy would resolve it. The Democrats made the same counter argument five years ago.

If you are born in the United States, most of you had parents who belong to either the Catholic church or one of 200 major Protestant denominations, so you would have heard or read stories from the Old and New Testaments and nothing about other religions or their writings. You would have been taught  the “Founding Fathers,” supposed beliefs while ignoring what individuals like, Franklin and Jefferson said about religions. These untruths about them would be handed down from generation to generation. Today, if you attend a public university and you do a little research you discover that what you’ve been told is sadly not true or only half-true at best; however, if you show the proof to someone who has bought into the myth or misrepresentation, your proof, even if acknowledged, will generally be dismissed quickly.

If you were born in China, you might know very little about Judaism or Christianity, so how much of what you believe is determined by your place of birth? So many different cultures have belief and non-belief systems that are so different from those in the west. Some people in the U.S. were already disconnected from other cultures because they viewed them as inferior. Now as it is starting to dawn on a few of them that they are not inferior, there seems to be an effort to retrench and erect barriers to prevent reasonable cultural exchanges. We may soon find ourselves walled in to our detriment.

 Will there be a time in the far distant future when children are not indoctrinated, but instead taught to think critically about political, religious, and social issues? I have my doubts.