So schools don't indoctrinate do they?

My intemperate rant about Home Education continues to attract interest. If nothing else, it has been useful in publicising the issue.

One thread people may not have seen is by Chris Dillow, who rather misses the point of my post when he gently takes me to task for not providing evidence that HE is better than school. The post was of course about civil liberties and whether the state has a stronger claim on children than the family. It doesn't matter if HE is better or worse on average.

In the comments, Shuggy, himself a schoolteacher, makes light of my suggestion that schools might be indoctrinating children rather than educating them. In my experience it is pretty much naked indoctrination most of the time.

Which brings us to the Englishman's post this morning in which he shows us one of his kids' homework for last night. This isn't indoctrination?

Update on Feb 26, 2009 by Bishop Hill

More reactions to the HE post:

Renegade Parent.

What shall we do today?

Comments

[Tristan]

The whole purpose of a state education system is indoctrination and control over what people learn.

Sure, its been wrapped in stories of helping people, but at its root it is to produce a society of people who can serve the interests of the ruling classes (hence the pro-state and political class indoctrination today and the pro-Empire indoctrination of the past).

There's a reason the Tories abolished elected education boards- they wanted more control over the education system to prevent boards selecting more radical teaching.

[Concerned Citizen]

The Chinese have a saying...A good teacher protects his or her pupil from their own influence.

water margin was a great show was it not?

[Luke Warmer]

Your grace, I like Doris Lessing's comment from the 1971 preface to the Golden Notebook (which I've recently had the joy to read):

"You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself- educating your own judgement. Those that stay must remember, always and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society."

N.B. She wasn't discussing home schooling.

Perhaps a health warning for all education.