The Conservative Idea Of Education

It is bad enough that the culture generally accepts childhood religious indoctrination, but this is WAY beyond the pale:

CREEPY Republican Selling Trump Propaganda To Kids

Religious Indoctrination Is Child Abuse: The Research

"Gone are the days of the unyielding God-fearing mother as the archetype of good parenting, suggests a recent article from the Los Angeles Times. According to multiple reports, research has shown that a secular upbringing may be healthier for children. According to a 2010 Duke University study, kids raised this way display less susceptibility to racism and peer pressure, and are 'less vengeful, less nationalistic, less militaristic, less authoritarian, and more tolerant, on average, than religious adults.' But the list of benefits doesn’t stop there."

Click on the link below for more:

Is Raising Your Kids Without Religion Better?

Who Should Control Books In Libraries?

Click on the link below for an analysis regarding what organization(s) should be controlling what you can or cannot read in public sources:

Let's talk about the Illinois book ban ban....

The Value Of Reaching Out To The Other Side

In 2020, 31% of voters identified as Democrats, 25% identified as Republicans, and 41% identified as Independents. If you split the Independents down the middle, with 50% voting for either, the Democrats would always win. But that is not what happens. There are more conservatives than progressives in the Independents, thus, the voting is much closer than what would be reflected in a 50 - 50 split. Most rural voters live by progressive economic principles but tend to vote Republican. Why? Could Democrats aren't talking to the rural folks enough and making some wrong assumptions?

Click on this link for a 6-minute video to better understand that the Democrats need to do some serious leg work within the rural communities of the USA to convince that voting segment that the Democratic Party offers more to them. Seems to me that critical thinking skills need to permeate into opinions formed through indoctrination.

Religious Indoctrination Of Children: A Harm Society Denies

"I shall probably shock you when I say it is the purpose of my lecture today [is] . . . to argue, in short, in favor of censorship, against freedom of expression, and to do so moreover in an area of life that has traditionally been regarded as sacrosanct.

"I am talking about moral and religious education. And especially the education a child receives at home, where parents are allowed—even expected—to determine for their children what counts as truth and falsehood, right and wrong.

"Children, I’ll argue, have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people’s bad ideas—no matter who these other people are. Parents, correspondingly, have no god-given license to enculturate their children in whatever ways they personally choose: no right to limit the horizons of their children’s knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstition, or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith."

Click on the link below for support for the above:

A superb article against the religious indoctrination of children

Exploding Myths In Culture, Science, And Psychology

"We too readily accept whatever we are taught. Not Tomasz Witkowski! He sets an example that we all should follow: he questions everything! His questions lead him to discover that much of psychology, culture, and even science itself are not supported by credible evidence. This book will challenge you to reconsider some of your most cherished beliefs, and to realize that much of what you thought you knew is wrong. Prepare to be discombobulated by his revelations."

The most important trait of a science-based thinker is to realize that you can be wrong in your beliefs. After all, science is performed by imperfect humans with a limited knowledge base. Ironically, it is this trait that has advanced society through positive change based on objective evidence. Unfortunately, virtually all other worldviews are resistant to change.

Click on the link below for a book review concerning the above realities:

Fads, Fakes, And Frauds

Childhood Indoctrination: The Evil

I have posted many times on the harm of indoctrinating children into any religion (link). In essence, calling subjective experience/intuition evidence of a god to a young impressional mind blunts the reasoning ability of the child and makes the victim malleable to harmful ideology (link). 

Please take a half-hour of your time and click on the link below for a video exposing the thinking and actions of Christian apologists regarding how and why they poison young minds into unsupported and harmful dogma.

Brainwashing of children exposed

Children Are Not The Property Of Parents

To listen to conservative parents one would think that they have the right to indoctrinate their children into the same beliefs that they have (link). Such thinking is child abuse. Children are not the "property" of their parents (link)(link), in spite of the historical treatment of them as such (link).

Christianity: Education Or Indoctrination?

"As an apologist, J Warner Wallace uses his background as a former detective to give himself an air of credibility. This causes him to overreach and present on topics he doesn't have the first clue about. He most notably does this by pretending that cold case detectives are qualified to be ancient historians and textual critics - but he also delves into other topics from time to time. In this case, he gives a weird presentation on education (in what looks like a staged classroom to no discernable audience) more or less insinuating that Moses, Jesus, and Christianity are responsible for education as we know it in the world today. He shows an absolute lack of understanding of history and basic educational methodology, but unfortunately, much of what he says can ring true on an intuitive and be appealing to a lot of Christians. Even worse, his message reinforces a terrible fundamentalist misconception of what education should be in the first place." Click on this link for the video. 

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the following 1000 years were controlled by Christianity and were called The Dark Ages for a reason. Things did improve with The Enlightenment, but Christianity still had a cultural grip on education and politics, as can be seen within European Colonialization. The colonialization of the USA reveals the total Christian control of education until just before the Revolutionary War, when my Alma Mater, The University of Pennsylvania, was established as the first non-sectarian college and the first university. Unfortunately, Christian control of education continues to be a troubling fact at all levels of education in the USA.

This Is Not Education, It Is Ignorant Ideological Reaction To Such

"The new University of Austin seeks to be higher education’s premier institution of monetizing moral panics."

In recent years, there has been a movement by conservatives and some misguided liberals to discredit the US Higher Education system by cherry-picking some inappropriate constraint on free speech. One manifestation of this reactionary movement has been the formation of the so-called "Intellectual Dark Web." Click on the link below to see a new manifestation of this faulty ideology:

Do We Really Need an Anti-Woke University?

A Parent's Guide To Teaching About God

Virtually all theists with children indoctrinate them into their religious dogma as soon as they can. Why? Are they so weak in their faith that they want to shelter their children from thinking for themselves? Answer: OF COURSE!!! Click on the link below for a guide to raising children to be loving, responsible, and independent thinkers.

10 Reasons You Shouldn't Tell Your Children About God

A Catholic Apologist Exposed

This Catholic apologist talks about truth and evidence as if there were no science in our reality. Take a 1/2 hour to get into his mind and understand the level of indoctrination and subsequent ignorance that society HAS to marginalize if it ever is to thrive.

Journalism and Truth?

If A Statement Feels Good, Does That Make It True?

 "If you repeat something enough times, it comes to feel good and true."

The above statement is a key to understanding the success of both advertisements and indoctrination. Click on the link below for a brief video showing that the ways information is presented to us can significantly affect how we interpret such.

The Illusion of Truth

Indoctrination Vs Critical Thinking

"Water to wine, walking on water, flaming chariot rising to heaven, giant fish eating a man and spitting him out after he learns his lesson–these all require no small amount of faith to accept, and solid, swift indoctrination kick-starts the young’uns. (When I was young we colored pictures and sang songs and used those funky felt boards--remember them--to memorize stories we knew nothing about.) Teach faith if you must but leave it out of the school. Or could it be that those who want us to replace critical thinking with church dogma are concerned (insecure) that their faith won’t stand up to scutiny? What does that say about their faith? Then again, maybe that’s the whole point." (link) 

"Repetitive learning – where students simply chant responses – is a popular form of indoctrination. It can be a useful way to commit information to memory, such as the alphabet or our multiplication tables, but it also can be used to impose political or religious doctrine and overwhelm critical thinking. In this circumstance, it is a form of manipulation." (link)

"The opposite of closed-mindedness is not a postmodern void in which there’s no such thing as truth. No, the opposite of closed-mindedness is open-mindedness — in which we seek the truth yet recognize that we could be wrong.

"Emphasizing open-mindedness and intellectual humility can help ensure you won’t indoctrinate students, even on subjects you feel strongly about. Of course, you have political views, and students know that. You can tell your students, as I do mine, that you will work to ensure that your views do not influence your evaluation of their progress in the course." (link)