What Real Indoctrination of Children Looks Like

The reaction to President Obama’s speech to America’s schoolchildren has sparked a bizarre level of concern. Parental outrage over the address seems to be inversely proportional to the actual threat that his banal speech will produce socialist automatons. Perhaps conservative Americans have hit the faux-outrage button so many times now that we can’t tell the difference anymore between real threats and imaginary ones.

If so, then we might want to look to our neighbors to the north so see what real indoctrination of children looks like. According to Lydia McGrew :

In Quebec, all children from 1st grade up have to be put through a relativistic “religion” curriculum that teaches that homosexuality is normal and that treats all religions, including atheism, as equal.

I said “all children.” I meant “all children.” I mean children in Catholic private schools, children in all private schools, home schoolers, everyone. Parents have marched in protest to no effect. Over 1,700 applications for exemptions have been denied. A Catholic school has been refused the opportunity to substitute a world religions course more in line with its Catholic identity. No. No. No. We are all relativists now, or we will be by the time Big Brother is done with us. (Perhaps I should learn to say “Big Brother” in French, since this is Quebec.)

And thanks for nothin’ to Bishop Martin Veillette who wrote a letter to the Minister of Education undermining Catholics’ attempts to get an exemption.

That’s not just heated rhetoric either: According to the Christian Telegraph , “In making his decision, the judge, Justice Jean-Guy Dubois, relied heavily on two Catholic sources: (1) the testimony of a Catholic theologian who emphasized that the Catholic Church values instruction in other religions, and (2) the position of the Assembly of Quebec Catholic Bishops, who did not support “a priori” exemptions based on religion.”

Justice Dubois even states in his decision that the student’s freedom is not violated because the curriculum does not require the children to believe that which it teaches. What sort of soft despotism is this? And if believing is not required, why not just exempt them from having to be exposed to it?

The reason is that educators know that the young are particularly susceptible to social pressure. Expose them to a belief and then hint that they are evil/wicked/stupid for not believing it and they are likely to surrender their own conscience in order to earn the esteem of their teachers and peers. The indoctrinators know very well that the relentless exposure to the propaganda is the only way to subvert their young consciences.