Public Schooling, Indoctrination, and Totalitarianism

Darwinism and Indoctrination by Our Public Schools

an agency formally charged by society with the task of socializing the young in particular skills and values. We usually think of the school as being mainly concerned with teaching skills and knowledge.... But the schools in every society also engage in outright indoctrination in values. We may find this fact more readily apparent in societies other than our own ... the school socializes ... th...

Islamism and Totalitarianism

Ever since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and even more so since the spectacular attacks by Qa‘idat al-Jihad against the U.S. on 9/11, there has been an ever-growing flood of academic and journalistic publications devoted to radical Islam. Unfortunately, much of that literature has embodied problematic conceptual perspectives that can best be characterized as ‘Islam bashing’, ‘Islam apologism’, o...

Teaching without Indoctrination: Implications for Values Education Teaching without Indoctrination: Implications for Values Education

Indoctrination, Coercion, and Freedom of Will

Manipulation by another person often undermines freedom. To explain this, a distinction is drawn between two forms of manipulation: indoctrination is defined as causing another person to respond to reasons in a pattern that serves the manipulator’s ends; coercion as supplying another person with reasons that, given the pattern in which he responds to reasons, lead him to act in ways that serve ...

Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Social Sciences