Learning is not indoctrination.
Starting now and forever, we need to spend time pushing back against people who do not believe in learning and do not believe in free access to ideas.
Those of us who believe in learning and free access to ideas need to start pushing back against the vocabulary those people use, which is simply wrong and corrupt.
Let’s make it clear. Learning about something is not being indoctrinated into it.
Reading something about a particular philosophy is not being indoctrinated into it.
Learning About Marxism
The big one people keep arguing about on the other side is Marxism. People use Marxism for anything left of center, even if someone knows about Marxism.
A student of any age who learns about Marx is not a Marxist.
A student of any age who reads something by Marx or about Marx is not a Marxist.
Even scholars who use Marxist texts are not themselves Marxists.
If you want to be anti-Marxist, read some of it to know what you’re fighting against. Learning about a thing is not indoctrination.
What Do They Want?
Being told to think a particular way IS indoctrination.
And that is what the Republican politicians and their conservative culture-christian billionaire backers want. They want you uneducated.
“I don’t want a nation of thinkers.
I want a nation of workers.”
John D. Rockefeller said. He has been widely considered the wealthiest American of all time and the richest person in modern history.
So when a concerned parent group who claims to be fighting for the rights of their students or a legislature who claims that they are protecting their university students from some indoctrination says students in this state or the school district cannot read a particular text or cannot study a particular philosophical point of view or cannot major in a particular thing, that is indoctrination.
Restricting access to ideas, history, books, texts, and others. That is indoctrination.