Education and Indoctrination

The NYT ran an interesting story out of Kearny, NJ highlighting the often tenuous line between education and indoctrination in America's classrooms.

In brief, the story follows the tale of a disaffected student from the Garden State (as if one needed more reason to be disaffected) who was taken aback by issues his history teacher raised with the theory of evolution.

As the article shows, the response for any embittered youth, quite naturally, is to get back at the teacher of his or her ire. The student in question Matt LaClair did exactly this. Taunting his teacher with religiously loaded questions (for the record, LaClair's teacher David Paszkiewicz is also a youth pastor), LaClair then recorded his teacher's reactions and sent them to the New York Times which obliged the submission with a feature story in its regional offerings.

The result has been a ubiquitous firestorm of controversy: the teacher was accordingly reprimanded by the district- although he was not fired because of his stellar teaching record; and LaClair's letters to the principal now grace the headlines of the Nation's largest daily paper.

LaClair wrote:

I care about the future generation and I do not want Mr. Paszkiewicz to continue preaching to and poisoning students.

[Link]

I suppose context is everything. It is important to keep in mind that the NYT failed to post copies of the recordings and did little more than cite ad nauseum its interview with LaClair. In turn, only one side of the issue was aptly presented. Nevertheless, for the sake of discussion let us assume that the account of the Times is accurate.

Even so, proselytizing in a public high school is not a far cry from similar indoctrinations which take place in public universities across the country. From Ward Churchill to Noam Chomsky, academics have been long been notorious for student indoctrination in every field from political science to religious studies. Churchill of the University of Colorado, you will recall dubbed the 9/11 victims as Little Eichmanns while MIT's Chomsky, whose actual field is in theoretical linguistics, has been praised for his criticisms of the US government by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and has also been implicated in supporting Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson. Public school teachers both.

The point in mentioning the above is simply that the lines between proselytization and education have long been blurred. My own experiences at Dartmouth in both the Departments of Government and Religion have only reinforced my firm belief that students can be intimidated and embarrassed by overeager professors whose aim is not so much to teach as it is to indoctrinate. Often it is the subtle forms of indoctrination which are most poisonous to use LaClair's term. But the issue cuts both ways. From politically biased cartoons on faculty doors, to abject dismissal of ethical concerns surrounding stem cell research, liberal academics are just as prone to indoctrinating students as the youth pastor featured in the NYT.

The problem with this issue in particular is that the media like much of the academy is only interested in policing when its example runs counter to its interest. Baiting a public school teacher with loaded questions on religion runs afoul only when the teacher answers the questions with a religious hue. But calling 9/11 survivors little Eichmanns draws critical acclaim for its courage.

As Vonnegut would say, 'So it goes.