Education as indoctrination: beyond religion or wokeness

Education policy is a topic of hot debate in the current American political and ideological landscape, in no small part due to Florida Governor-turned-presidential-hopeful, Ron DeSantis’ self-proclaimed war against educational indoctrination. Earlier this year, DeSantis put forth a number of bills — some of which have made their way into legislation — that limit the type of courses on offer at Florida universities. Under the guise of pivoting towards coursework that aligns with the state’s economic goals (i.e. away from liberal arts degrees), the DeSantis administration has banned general education courses that include theories on systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege, as well as the funding of any university program that promotes political or social activism. And because conservative Republicans are nothing if not comically on-the-nose due to their appalling incapacity for nuance, DeSantis’ headline-grabbing 2022 ‘Stop WOKE (the Wrongs to our Kids and Employees) Act,’ takes on “woke indoctrination” by prohibiting the teaching of anything related to race, gender, or social discrimination, including the banning of critical race theory in classrooms and the mention of gender identity in textbooks and across elementary school libraries. DeSantis’ attacks on “pernicious ideologies” is substantiated by his hatred of indoctrination, as if his authoritarian stance on what students can and can’t be taught didn’t fall so neatly into the camp of the very thing he’s so heroically battling (the sort of nuance lost on the DeSantis types). Indoctrination is the process of inculcating a person with ideas, attitudes, cognitive strategies or professional methodologies. The concept is most readily associated with religion — particularly religious extremism — but the more obvious truth is that, as social beings, we are indoctrinated since birth with a set of social and cultural ideals that are impossible to ignore and that we should be talking about more regularly in the context of school curriculums everywhere in the world. Schools play a crucial role in the indoctrination of peoples, whether DeSantis likes it or not, and education curriculums are so much more than the mastering of tangible skills like math or reading.

In the United States, the subject of school indoctrination is largely limited to conversations about church and state separation. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from conducting religious practices on public grounds, including libraries and public schools, and often draws heated debates about the appropriateness of school prayer. Last month, Oklahoma approved the first publicly-funded Catholic charter school and caused a flurry of controversy about what that means for religious freedom vis-a-vis American democracy. And, sparing you the details of each side of that argument, my point is that regardless of where you fall on it, teaching kids that they can or cannot pray in public schools is indoctrinating them, one way or another, to see the world through a distinctive lens. Because all education is indoctrination. What we teach (or don’t teach) children is a direct reflection of the kind of adults we want our societies to be built on; school curriculums aren’t just about the hard skills we impart on our young or which religious practices merit public funding, they are equally about the soft skills and cultural ideals we want to preserve in the ever-changing landscapes of social progress. Education as indoctrination, then, shouldn’t be a taboo subject. Indoctrination is the origin story of all education and coming to terms with that means we can have more honest conversations about the kind of education systems we want to build in the context of the kind of adults we want to produce. Because education systems are designed, at their core, to help societies shape their people. They’re not neutral and they are certainly not devoid of ideological value. Education shapes the mind, shapes our livelihoods, shapes our cultural priorities; that’s what it does best— it always has and always will.

The earliest form of schooling dates back to around 2000 BC when ancient kingdoms across North Africa, the Middle East, and China established education systems for their privileged classes. Aristocrats in Mesopotamia were schooled to become scribes, physicians, and temple administrators; the sons of ancient Chinese rulers were educated on religious rituals, literature, and archery. In the city-states of the Greek empire, private schools were established — each with a distinct focus in subjects like mathematics, politics, or logic — for parents to decide which skills they most valued and would pay for their sons to master (sorry, daughters). In the famed city-state of Sparta, schools focused exclusively on military might and the education system was designed to create perfect warriors in both behavior and physicality. Spartan boys were taken from their homes at the age of 7 to live in military barracks, where they were prepped in endurance and fighting through harsh discipline. These schools focused on little other than warfare and most of the Spartan population was illiterate. In more recent history, during the early middle ages, education in Europe broadened in both scope and access. Schooling slowly spread beyond the wealthy classes and in a structure that gave birth to our modern-day universities, Catholic monks and clergy educated boys in arts, law, medicine, and theology to create well-rounded men (sorry, women) who could contribute to kingdoms with useful scholarship. In pre-Columbus Mesoamerica during the 14th and 15th centuries, the Aztec empire flourished with formal and informal education as a central pillar of society. The Aztecs are among the first peoples to have mandatory education for all children. Starting from a very early age, children attended local schools where they learned about important rituals around religion, astronomy, and statesmanship. Most learning happened orally, through a collection of sayings that encapsulated the fundamental ideals of the culture and formed the basis of an the education system tasked with shaping the young into knowledgeable, creative, obedient, and stoic people.

Through the ages, education systems everywhere have played an irrefutable role in shaping the kind of citizens a society wants and values. Before we obsessed about math or english tests, we worried about teaching people the fundamental ideals of the civilizations we belonged to. But we rarely think of education in these terms anymore and, not only that, we freak out at the faintest discussion of education through the lens of cultural relativity or ideology.

Some months ago, while on a deep dive into the anti-democratic principles of English-language school curriculums in sub-Saharan Africa, I came across a journal article that stopped me in my tracks with its (excruciatingly blunt but accurate) reference to the “stupidification” of students across the continent through the use of foreign language instruction. The language question in African education is a hotly debated topic in international development and is on the whole seen as a substantial barrier to learning. And I was stunned reading a piece of academic writing (or any writing, for that matter) that openly addressed what education in sub-Saharan Africa is doing to the minds of young African students. I won’t get overly academic about this deeply infuriating topic but, generally — and beyond the stupidification characterization — English-language instruction in countries where English isn’t the mother-tongue is detrimental for at least three important and relevant reasons:

1. Learning can be broadly defined as the act of obtaining knowledge. But knowledge — in much the same way that education itself is not neutral — is not devoid of values, and the forms of knowledge attached to English-language instruction in Africa are built on European ideals (and power) instead of African ones. European values brought to the continent through colonialism do not serve African populations and should not be the basis of today’s learning.
2. From a social justice perspective, imparting knowledge in a language that students cannot understand is both unethical and anti-democratic. And to say that students learn better in a language they can understand shouldn’t even have to be an argument. In Tanzania, English proficiency among both primary and secondary school students remains abysmally low, with data from 2017 showing that only 15% of grade 3 students were able to read a grade 2 paragraph. The national examination scores for English in grade 7 are equally depressing, with only 41% of students passing with a D or above (yes, you read that right; the pass bar is so low that a D will get you there and, even then, less than half of students achieve that). Given these results, the governmental push for an English-language school curriculum in Tanzania and beyond is one of the most harmful anti-democratic impulses of modern African politics. And you can see why the “stupidification” comment rings so painfully true. The language question in African education is a class question, after all, where much like in olden days, only the wealthy benefit from an education system meant to serve a select few while keeping the masses largely uneducated and illiterate.
3. English-language instruction is particularly detrimental to girls, who struggle in school more than boys due to a number of socio-cultural barriers. Girls are called on by teachers less often than boys, making the practice of English a much harder task to accomplish. Girls are ridiculed in the classroom more often than boys (by both boys and teachers) and are therefore less likely to participate in English discussions or to ask questions when they don’t understand something. And girls have less time at home to spend on their studies because of chores and childcare responsibilities, affording them less opportunities to master subjects that are taught in a language not spoken at home and that they have little chance to practice in school as it is.

The conversation around how language of instructions shapes learning is largely limited to academia because, like the bounds of what is or isn’t indoctrination, it’s not not an easy one to have. Even the African education agenda ignores the language of instruction question and global education elites (like the UN or World Bank), economists, and aid donors alike all speak of ‘Education for All’ targets in developing countries without addressing the tougher value questions that come with schooling curriculums. The global education elites, economists, and aid donors are no different to Ron DeSantis: taking a self-serving stance on what education is or isn’t so as to avoid the harder but necessary discussion about the kind of students our education systems are producing. The Rons of the world — under the guise of value-void economic goals — are happy to educate (indoctrinate) students with English-language learning and Christian classroom prayer, but steer clear of even the faintest mention of indoctrination (education) that encourages native knowledge-building (in native languages), independent thought, critical thinking, or progressive social policies. Because if education shapes the mind (and the Rons of the world can decide the bounds of what that looks like), why not have it do so in a way that serves the few while stupidifying the rest of us? And beyond religion or wokeness, the question of indoctrination is not what it is or isn’t but, rather, who has the power to shape the education that’s shaping us.