The Conquest of Childhood

Every society educates. It cannot be otherwise.

Parents teach. Teachers teach. Religious institutions teach. Governments teach.

The question is never whether a society educates. The real question is what it seeks to plant in the minds of its children.

Every generation inherits an invisible legacy: a language, a history, a gallery of heroes, a catalogue of grievances, a sense of right and wrong.

No child chooses that inheritance. It is received long before the child acquires the ability to question it.

That is precisely why childhood has always been the most coveted territory for every political, religious, or ideological project.

Adults can argue. They can compare. They can doubt.

They instinctively accept as true what they learn from the people they love. That trust is the foundation of human learning. It is also the reason childhood is uniquely vulnerable to indoctrination.

The difference between education and indoctrination is not that one transmits values while the other does not. Every education transmits values.

The difference appears when the right to ask questions disappears.

Education equips people to think. Indoctrination supplies the answers before the questions can even be asked.

Education strengthens judgment. Indoctrination replaces judgment with obedience.

Education prepares citizens. Indoctrination produces believers in a single unquestionable truth.

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© The Times of Israel (Blogs)