Schools should not be teaching any idealogies. They should be teaching students to be literate, numerate, and well-read so that they can make up their own minds about side subjects in their own time. Schools should be preparing students for work. Politics, feminist movements and life in general are for after standard education is finished: if anyone is interested, that is. There should be no ratbag, activist teachers preaching their own lunatic ideas to kids.

No! They must be persuaded to keep an open mind on all things, until suchtimes as there is incontrovertible proof that leaves no question unanswered. And that is not very much!

This is the foundation stone of critical and independent thinking they will need to live a revealed life. Given an unexamined life or fixed belief system is just not worth living!

But particularly where the student is persuaded that they have a God given right to judge others or even take a life or the innocence of a child!?

An open mind is just a critical as the open parachute that prevents one from hitting the end of a comparatively short journey unharmed! It's not the fall that hurts, just the sudden stop at the end!

In any event it is not the destination that counts, but the journey! And if you learn lessons like, you are never beaten until you quit, or what doesn't kill you just makes you stronger, then you will focus on your dreams and make them your number one priority!

And if you come to your end without success like most of us; it will not be for lack of resolve or trying.

And given at that end your judge may well be the man or woman in the mirror, your will not be found wanting or stubbornly stupid, the result of early undesirable inculcation of this or that ideology/false belief?
Rhrosty.

Look at the fruit of the systems in place and you will get your answer. Suicide, drugs, perversion, rebellion, total lack of respect, feminist dogma, order from chaos fantasy, all regular feaures of a godless ideology. No wonder either unbelievers are flocking in masses to something better.

If the parents agree then proselytising is OK - but then they should also pay for it: what gives anyone a right to proselytise using mine and your (being tax-payers) hard-earned money?

It is indoctrination.

Parents should be demanding logic and philosophy, and a deeper English literature course.

All children should be expected to discuss open ended questions among themselves for about an hour each week with only supervision from the "teacher".
After about 50 hours of such discussion the intellectual capacity of an average student would improve by between 6 and 7%.
The students would also show more respect to one another and their teachers and they will make better decisions throughout their life.
This concept is the opposite of teaching of dogma.
Several studies have now confirmed the benefits of such an approach from early school age. Children from dis-functional households particularly benefit.

Onthebeach: If you do teach logic and philosophy (which I actually think would be a good thing) you are still most likely going to have teachers who teach it in a way to indoctrinate the students.

For example, in the case of logic,
a)you could just just state all the facts and workings of the different logical systems (eg: classical logic versus intuitionist logic versus paraconsistent logic) without stating that any one is better than another when it comes to their differences
b) or you could have a teacher who believes that one particular logic (of the many available) is the only one by which a philosophical argument should be resolved so they present it as the only valid option with the expectation that their students will learn to esteem it likewise.

Which of these two cases is acceptable/preferred is what this article is about.

By-the-way: I can relate to this personally about maths. Contrary to what most people assume, their are quite a few different ideological approaches to the foundations and philosophical aspects of maths. These different ideologies can have very different consequences, ie: some facts (theorems) are true/valid in same versions of maths but not in others. However, almost every person who is taught maths in primary/high school is not told that there are different truths/versions available and it is presented to them as an absolute truth and a unique system-- even at uni it can still be taught like this. eg: when I did science/engineering all the maths I was taught was based on classical logic (actually, first order predicate calculus) with ZFC set theory, it was only years later that I found out about other schools of thought of maths such as those of the intuitionism.

thinkabit,

Agree.

I would still opt for logic and philosophy, as would you.

Thank you for your comments.

Jensen writes a clever article, adroitly arguing that, since one kind of "proselytising" is OK, it's good for volunteers visiting from churches to do so in public schools. Trouble is, kids aren't offered a range of options from Allah to Zoroaster: if they go to "religious education" classes, they are force-fed one line. This is not education, it's indoctrination.

Thinkabit and Onthebeach
The first trial and report that I saw on having all students participate in discussion of open ended questions is available at On Line Opinion at;
http://onlineopinion.com.au/documents/articles/Clackmannan.doc
NSW ethics classes are based on this study. A similar result was achieved when University of Houston, Texas, repeated the trial and achieved a similar result. A UK education authority (I think Northumberland) introduced the system but reported that, after a period of time, the students were so much time ahead of where they were expected to be.
Teachers do not under this system teach philosophy. The students learn to discuss matters in a philosophical manner by actual practice.

ttbn, Rhosty, runner, Yuyutsu, onthebeach, Foyle, thinkabit & Asclepius, once upon a time in the land of OZ, education was 100% up to WHAT THE PARENTS WANTED. Schools were provided 100% by churches, Anglican children went to Anglican schools, Presbyterian children went to Presbyterian schools, Baptist children went to Baptist schools, etc, etc, etc. Ditto for colleges & universities.

Your child, you arrange for the child to be indoctrinated with your morals, ethics, principles & religion, NOT communism or some other negative, sick religion.

lol^ communism is not a religion ...

... just as feminism is not an ideology or proselytising.

Very few people "think of proselytizers as those slightly unhinged and unwashed characters who stand on street corners handing out tracts, or as those who knock on our doors with name badges on, or as fanatics like Jim Jones."

Most people realise that 'proselytize', to use Michael Jensen's own words, "describes an aspect of education [that] "persuades children, and especially teenagers, to change their" Religion! or sometimes, in the case of Christianity, to change their denomination.

No one commenting here is advocating any form of sick religion, just critical thinking and learning to think for yourself!

If all we ever learned was our parents often flawed beliefs, we'd still be living on a flat as a pancake world at the absolute centre of the universe, which by the way, would revolve around us, and all females would be goods and chattels or sex slaves.

No to indoctrination by parents or anyone else.

If children are to be taught just one thing, then the mighty irrefutable truth is a good place to start, and that may be limited to facts like energy can neither be created nor destroyed, just altered. Or that the universe and everything in it including us is just altered energy. Or that nothing only ever begets nothing! Certainly not an entire universe!

Believe what you will, just understand no one can own the facts, just belief, which may be just as flawed as a belief in a flat earth just six thousand years old?

If we are to inculcate young minds then it just can't be with Unproven Ideology. However ferently held!?

Simply put, the God of pure unconditional love, just doesn't visit evil on the world but evil incarnate just might? So which one would you serve?
Rhrosty.

This article is a thinly disguised attempt to show that a course about feminism and a scripture class are equivalent and therefore if one is acceptable, the other must be. But the differences are stark.

In a scripture class, the objective of the teacher (typically a Christian) is to make children believe things that are incapable of being shown to be true; for example, that had Christ not died on the cross, humans would have been unable to go to heaven when they die.

There is no equivalent objective in a feminist class. Rather, the objective is to raise children's awareness of empirically supportable opinions about lifestyles whose validity is either doubted or even denied by those authoritative figures the children are otherwise most likely to encounter.

This author's attempt to present proselytising Christian scripture teachers and awareness-raising teachers of lifestyles as equally deserving of respect is transparent and self defeating.

Feminism should never be taught in any publicly funded institution. Because, not only is it flawed, it commits the very thing it set out to supposedly eradicate: sexism.

Feminism begins with a flawed premise: all the problems with the world, or between the sexes/genders, is the fault of the male; the female is innocent and pure, and when acts immorally has only been corrupted by male influence.

Such a template has no empirical basis and additionally subverts causes and effects into fallacies.

Children need to be taught the concepts of "reasoned argument". Courses such as those proposed should present both sides of the argument. Religious education also should include arguments for and against atheism so that those who hold some beliefs as "truth" would be able to be challenged in a civilized manner.
David

"Feminism .. commits the very thing it set out to supposedly eradicate: sexism.

"Feminism begins with a flawed premise: all the problems with the world, or between the sexes/genders, is the fault of the male; the female is innocent and pure, and when acts immorally has only been corrupted by male influence.

"Such a template has no empirical basis and additionally subverts causes and effects into fallacies."

Posted by Aristocrat, Wednesday, 11 November 2015 10:17:52 PM

bwahahahahahahahaha!

There are several fallacies in that post by Aristocrat:

* the composition fallacy - attributing qualities or characteristics of parts of a whole to the whole itself, or attributing qualities or characteristics of some parts of a whole to all parts.

* strawman fallacies (sorry about the use of '-man' there, Aristocrat, but that is the terminology) ...

Feminism is essentially about equality of opportunity.

The most concerning thing at the moment seems to be that wealthy private christian schools set their fees in such a way so that poorer christians are forced into non-christian schools. Every Christian student who wants to have a Christian education should be able to have one. And then it wouldn't matter that much what ideologies are in fashion elsewhere.

The first subject that should not be taught is ... religion.

The author neglects the most dominant - and violent - religion of all: the State.

As Mises said, as soon as one has constructed the concept of a superior being, over and above society, and autonomously aiming at ends of its own choosing, one has essentially constructed the notion of a God.

Add to this the common beliefs that this Being can
- suspend the laws of nature in our favour (making scarce resources "free"),
- create wealth out of thin air (economic "stimulus" - (i.e. makes us richer) by printing squiggles on paper)
- control the weather and the winds that blow (by taxation of course, what else?),
- know what the distribution of all resources everywhere should be
- cure the sick
- decide what people's consensual sexual relations should be
- decide what is a crime for anyone else is actually a social necessity and a selfless virtue in the State
- and so on.

Add these common beliefs I say - just read OLO for lots of examples - and you have the most common religion of modern people - the State itself.

Notice how the author talked about the State, but never questioned the fixed idea of the State itself?

The very existence of government funding, government schooling, government-dictated curriculum, and government-mandated teacher qualifications, intrinsically teaches children that the government:
- has a the State has a right to condition children to salivate to the sound a bell - real Pavlovian stuff
- has a right to teach them whatever it wants
- has a right to hassle and bully and persecute and ostracise them for non-attendance or disobedience

- has a right to imprison or threaten to imprison people - i.e. everyone - to get the money - (the crime called 'demanding money with menaces' if anyone else does it)- for compulsory government indoctrination of children
- has a right to take custody of children without their or their parents consent for purposes of indoctrination - (crime of called kidnapping' if anyone else does it)
- has a right to indoctrinate children about the virtue and necessity of the participate in aggressive acts of mass killing
- has a right to provoke conflicts between groups in society and then intervene to favour itself - (this article is about a case in point)
- is entitled to maintain at coerced public expense its own dependent class of intellectual bodyguards and priests – the intellectual class – to preach and propagate belief in the State at every turn on every subject
- etc. etc . etc.

Seeing all this, who can doubt that the State is itself by far the most common, dominant, and established religion of all in modern society? It even has its own creation myths: the “social contract” (non-existent); "representative" government (not); the divine right of environmentalists, and so on.

Since the historical separation of church and state, indoctrination of children by government is far more noxious than indoctrination by religion, since the religions are less in a position to do such harm and on such a scale.

At the time of the separation of church and state, much of the argument had to do with the compulsory funding by the state of church activities which are now performed directly by the state, instead of by organised religion.

Any talk of good education and the good society, of corrupting authority, and of indoctrinating children with noxious ideologies, must start with the desirability of separating state and education, for exactly the same reasons that the separation of church and state is desirable.

Love this debate. It very different in Australia as we are 'multi cultural'. But this discussion in a country with a rich and old heritage is very different, Even Aboriginal culture. These cultures do not shy away from educating the next generation on their ideals, cultures, religions, social standings and more... Without sounding 'red-neck' (because I am half-Sri Lankan, Quarter French/Qtr Australian and Australian born), but why cant we embrace who we are and our english/colonial heritage? I know it's not a culture we can be super proud of, but name a culture/religion that has a squeaky clean past? And why cant we teach the next generation this culture? Thats why we travel and love visiting other cultures, because we are so nonchalant about who we are as 'Australian's'