Is coercive religious indoctrination child abuse?

Darat said:
I don't think there is anything wrong with anyone educating a child about their or other folk's religion. Religion after all, whether you personally like it or not, forms a part of most of our societies so not to educate a child about religion would be doing the child a disservice.

However indoctrination is not education, indoctrination's goal is to shut down thought, it is to prevent someone from forming their own opinions and being able to learn for themselves, that is wrong whether it is done to an adult or a child.
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You teach a child not to steal, that's “coercive indoctrination”. You don't give the child that much choice. If the child is caught stealing, the child is punished for it, and thus “coerced” hopefully into not stealing.

You don't just “educate” the child. You don't teach the child “I think stealing is wrong, but it's up to you to make your own choice and I won't interfere.” You do what it reasonably takes to force the child to understand that stealing is something that won't be tolerated.


Whether you like it or not, for most people, religion forms a major part of what is right and what is wrong, and what they are therefore obligated to try to pass on in a similar manner to their children.


Yes, it happens, once in a while, that some form of religious thought comes along that is destructive. It's tragic to have such beliefs “coercively indoctrinated” into children, but the alternative to allowing that would be even worse. The alternative would be to have some government agency that has the power to determine what beliefs parents are or are not allowed to try to instill in their children. Do you really want to go there?
 
Bob Blaylock said:
You teach a child not to steal, that's “coercive indoctrination”. You don't give the child that much choice. If the child is caught stealing, the child is punished for it, and thus “coerced” hopefully into not stealing.

You don't just “educate” the child. You don't teach the child “I think stealing is wrong, but it's up to you to make your own choice and I won't interfere.” You do what it reasonably takes to force the child to understand that stealing is something that won't be tolerated.


Whether you like it or not, for most people, religion forms a major part of what is right and what is wrong, and what they are therefore obligated to try to pass on in a similar manner to their children.


Yes, it happens, once in a while, that some form of religious thought comes along that is destructive. It's tragic to have such beliefs “coercively indoctrinated” into children, but the alternative to allowing that would be even worse. The alternative would be to have some government agency that has the power to determine what beliefs parents are or are not allowed to try to instill in their children. Do you really want to go there?
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This has nothing to do with anything I have posted about indoctrination in this thread.
 
Darat said:
however if you think I have taken your comment out of context and in doing so altered its meaning then I apologise since that was not my intent.
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Accepted.

That aside - what about the test I proposed "Does it reduce the ability to think critically?" or perhaps to expand it a bit to include your comments about success: "Is the intent to reduce the ability to think critically?"
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I don't know how to apply that test, and very few, if any, people would admit to that intent. I know my son's school insist that critical thinking is among the most important skills they teach. As it turns out, I think they do a great job of it, much better than the public (secular) schools. A lot of people here would insist that's impossible, because they are doing everything they can to ram Judaism down his throat. In my opinion, people who say that aren't very good critical thinkers, but somehow a lot of people on JREF don't think highly of my opinion on that subject.

at give us a means to distinguish between "education" and "indoctrination"?
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I don't think so, because any attempt at persuasion will necessarily mean that you want a desired outcome of belief, and if you are aiming at an outcome, rather than a process, that reduces critical thinking about that particular subject. All persuasion then becomes indoctrination.


And a further question, in my post a few above where I quoted from the mass suicides at Jonestown - were those people educated or indoctrinated in their religion?
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I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, nor do I think they exhaust the range of possibilities. Clearly, there was some indoctrination, assuming that the "doctrine" was mindless acceptance of the leader's orders. However, is "do what I say even if I tell you to kill yourself" really "indoctrination"? Is that really a doctrine?

And among the people at Jonestown, can we assume that those who fled were not indoctrinated? The training wasn't sufficient to get mindless obedience, so how do we distinguish what happened to them from what happened to the kool-aid drinkers?

On a more mundane, commonplace, level, can we go back to my kid's school for a minute? They really do want him to accept Judaism as real, and they really do want him to believe in God. That's indoctrination, right? Does the fact that he doesn't believe it alter that definition? And what about the abuse angle? Is he being abused?

For those who are curious, it's a typical, garden variety, parochial school. No beatings. (It's Jewish, not Catholic.;) ) However, their very explicit goal is to created good Jews out of those kids. If that's not indoctrination, the word has no meaning. So, abuse?
 
There's a child at the school where I work who is being raised a Jehovah's Witness. One day, she and some other girls were making "cakes" out of the wood chips that surround the playground equipment. She asked me "Guess how many candles I had on my last birthday cake?". I forgot that she was a JW and guessed 9. She said "None. I'm not allowed to have birthday parties." She has also been kept out of school whenever there is any kind of party and was not allowed to go on a field trip last year to Mission San Juan Capistrano, even after the teacher explained they were not going for any religious instruction, but merely to learn about California's history. This child is so sad about all the things she's not allowed to do and experience because of her parents' religious beliefs. So yeah, I'm voting "child abuse".
 
It's a little like spanking, I think -- a mostly inadvisable, counter-productive thing that on the whole isn't so much bad for the kid, the people around him, or his own future progeny unless taken too far.
 
I'm in a mixed marriage(I'm an atheist and my wife is a lapsed Lutheran), and this has become one of the sore spots in an already rocky relationship.

When the kids were babies, my wife wanted to take them to church. She didn't get them baptized or anything like that. We both agreed that if they were to be baptized, they would wait until they were old enough to make an informed decision. She used to take them to church every week, but she stopped going about 8 months ago.

We also agreed that I would be able to present my side of the argument anytime that the kids asked me a question about religion. This worked out well until last week when my 5 year old son told me that he didn't believe in god. When I asked him why, he said, "It just seems silly to me dad." When I told my wife later, she got very upset and blamed me. She said that because of my (admittedly) anti-theist stances, I was trying to force my beliefs on the kids.

I did tell my son that if he didn't believe in god, that was OK, but I wanted him to be able to present a better argument to me. I was hoping to encourage him to read a little more and answer his own questions. After a couple of days with his mom, he came in to inform me that he believes in god again, because he doesn't want to get punished by god. That really made my blood boil, and of course another fight between my wife and I followed.

We have been trying to tip toe around the subject since then.

The point of this rambling is to say that anytime you tell a child that if he or she doesn't believe in the sky daddy, they will be punished forever, that is child abuse in my mind.
 
Lisa Simpson said:
She has also been kept out of school whenever there is any kind of party and was not allowed to go on a field trip last year to Mission San Juan Capistrano . . .
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That is a beautiful place. So is the Mission San Luis Rey in Oceanside.

Sad when kids are denied these sites because of their parent's stupidity. Criminal actually. Yeah, its child abuse.
 
decojuicer said:
. . . he said, "It just seems silly to me dad."
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[SNIP]

I did tell my son that if he didn't believe in god, that was OK, but I wanted him to be able to present a better argument to me.
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I don't think there is a better argument than that! That kid's a frikin' genius! :D
 
qayak said:
I don't think there is a better argument than that! That kid's a frikin' genius! :D
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He is actually pretty smart and he has great 5 year old logic.

A few months back we were in the truck and he was trying to explain something to his 7 year old sister, and she just wasn't getting it. Finally, I stepped in and helped him out. After she got it, he says, "JESUS CHRIST!!! That's what I said!!!" Trying not to laugh to hard, I explained to him that saying Jesus Christ like that is offensive to people who believe in that religion.

At that point he drops this on me: "But dad, I know that heaven isn't real." So I ask him how he knows that, and he says, "Because heaven is supposed to be in space, and nothing can live in a vacuum."

I didn't know what else to say. That may have been the best usage of 5 year old logic that I had ever heard. I laughed for days after that.

I have no doubt that the boy will be a full blown atheist by the time that he is 10.

I don't push any belief or non-belief on my kids. My parents didn't. They encouraged my sister and I to look at all religions and make a decision. I read the whole bible by the time that I was 10, and my sister made it most of the way through by her mid teen's. Both of us are now atheists.

I plan on buying bibles for both of my kids, because I strongly believe that nothing makes more atheists than the bible. If anybody can read that book from beginning to end and still believe in the god of that book, then...well, I'm not really sure. LOL
 
decojuicer said:
He is actually pretty smart and he has great 5 year old logic.

A few months back we were in the truck and he was trying to explain something to his 7 year old sister, and she just wasn't getting it. Finally, I stepped in and helped him out. After she got it, he says, "JESUS CHRIST!!! That's what I said!!!" Trying not to laugh to hard, I explained to him that saying Jesus Christ like that is offensive to people who believe in that religion.

At that point he drops this on me: "But dad, I know that heaven isn't real." So I ask him how he knows that, and he says, "Because heaven is supposed to be in space, and nothing can live in a vacuum."

I didn't know what else to say. That may have been the best usage of 5 year old logic that I had ever heard. I laughed for days after that.

I have no doubt that the boy will be a full blown atheist by the time that he is 10.

I don't push any belief or non-belief on my kids. My parents didn't. They encouraged my sister and I to look at all religions and make a decision. I read the whole bible by the time that I was 10, and my sister made it most of the way through by her mid teen's. Both of us are now atheists.

I plan on buying bibles for both of my kids, because I strongly believe that nothing makes more atheists than the bible. If anybody can read that book from beginning to end and still believe in the god of that book, then...well, I'm not really sure. LOL
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Pretty much the same with my kids. I raised the three of them and they all had bibles. When they wanted to learn about religion, I sent them to church with friends so as not to taint their experience.

They are all atheists. My youngest had some life issues when she was in her late teens and joined a church youth organization. After a couple of years I asked her how it was going. She said, "You know dad, it's all bull****."

My oldest daughter once told me that she was glad she went to church because, even though she thought it was silly to believe the way most people do, I had boughten her a Strawberry Shortcake Bible and all the other girls were envious so that made it all worth while. :D

My son . . . well, church would have interupted his sleeping.
 
laca said:
What he meant was that no matter the subject, indoctrination is wrong. He didn't mean to imply anything about any subject.
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But what if someone is being indoctrinated into a Hall of Fame or something? :confused::)
 
"With all the horrible, horrible **** that your priest is pumping into your kid's head, his ____ should be the least of your worries, honestly. That's just a little mouthwash and a few years of therapy'll get rid of that. That Jesus **** will torture you for a lifetime"
--Doug Stanhope

;)
 
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