Indoctrination Station
Why Ron DeSantis is wrong, and Benjamin Rush is right, about education
Even Ron DeSantis, America’s most based governor, makes mistakes. Even he, in his glorious Floridian fiefdom, sometimes lapses into tired right-liberal rhetoric. From one point of view, maybe he’s doing what he can with the cards he’s been dealt within the rules of the game as they stand. But here at Specula Principum, we must gently, dutifully correct the magistrate.
(By the way, side note: listen to Stephen Wolfe’s recent interview with King’s Hall podcast wherein he quite rightly notes that within a federalist structure, state governors receive their authority directly from God as much as federal magistrates—and certainly federal bureaucrats do. Good insight!)
Here’s the comment in question. DeSantis declares public school a site of “education,” not “indoctrination.” A distinction between the two is presumed.
Again, DeSantis has many virtues, and it’s a win if this rhetoric instigates the de-wokification of the Swamp’s schools. But it is not classical, or even realist, thought. In that sense, it is sub-based.
Michael Zuckerman has this great bit in his study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England towns, Peaceable Kingdoms, where he notes that the colonial inhabitants of Massachusetts Bay et al. understood that education of the young was directly connected to the longevity of the community. The undergirding, life-sustaining premises upon which the society stood had to be inculcated. Education was not about free inquiry. They would not have described their activity as learning how to think instead of what to think—that favorite mantra of all right liberals today. Rather it was about training up the next generation of citizens that would perpetuate the society in the image of the first planters. All well-ordered societies do this. (I am too lazy to locate the exact Zuckerman quote but it’s better than my paraphrase.) In other words, education was absolutely indoctrination! (As with law, the only question is which orthodoxy, which history, and which morality is informing it, but the indoctrination itself is inescapable.)
Even if a free marketeer insists that the antidote to wokeness in the schools is a neutral education, like just math and science and stuff, they must recognize the inevitability and necessity of an underlying metaphysic that makes those supposedly neutral disciplines, that free inquiry, possible. What’s the point of the pursuit of a bare, mechanical knowledge anyway? Were it attainable, such would not be conducive to a life of meaning beyond efficiency and profit.
If the premise above is granted, for it cannot be denied by the soberminded, then my contention is, why not make the underlying metaphysic (and morality) explicit? Education is always, at some level, however subtle, indoctrination. As it should be. I understand the rhetorical game DeSantis is playing but too many who should know better take the neutral education ideal seriously. Twas not always so.
Query too whether neutrality—indoctrination of nothing—could ever be a proper antidote to the indoctrination of critical theory? As Augustine taught us, an improper love can only be combatted and supplanted by a proper love. What’s more, the bread-and-butter post-war Marxist thought is the critique of the liberalism of capitalist societies and that critique is increasingly absurd in form but increasing effective in impact. In other words, reassertions of neutrality against a critical posture that detests neutrality—it sees it as a mask for power—can’t possibly work. An equally substantive moral vision is required. For what it’s worth too, the crits aren’t so wrong about liberal neutrality’s real function and purpose. As I’ve already said, indoctrination is always taking place.
Why wouldn’t it be? Does not the light of nature teach self-preservation not only through defense but through reproduction and familial-social cultivation? That is birthing and raising up children in the way they should go? It’s a deeply human impulse to indoctrinate (with real substance, not just the mood of boundless inquiry) the young. Good teaching is determined by its content (is it true?) and its societal benefit, viz., the development of good stewards, of new citizens who will offer renewal and longevity to the nation.
Not convinced? Let’s go to the texts: Benjamin Rush (1746-1813), one of the largely forgotten “founders,” and his Plan for the establishment of public schools and the diffusion of knowledge in Pennsylvania (1786) presents exactly what the title promises, a theory of public education—its purposes and rationale.
Rush begins by outlining the occasion for renewed concern for public education, viz., that the structure of the new nation as a republic had “created a new class of duties to every American.” That is, republican duties of political participation and virtuous living unto the common good. Contrary to popular belief, it is easier to be an individualist under a monarchy, in part, because the life of the citizen runs merely parallel to the exercise of political power; there is no viable avenue and, therefore, no concomitant ambition, to acquire political power. Further, the character of the nation is dictated more or less by the character of the one. In a republic, the character of the people themselves has more moral effect.
“It is the Form of Government, which gives the decisive Colour to the Manners of the People, more than any other Thing. Under a well regulated Commonwealth, the People must be wise virtuous and cannot be otherwise. Under a Monarchy they may be as vicious and foolish as they please, nay they cannot but be vicious and foolish.”
In a republic on the other hand, foists great expectations and duties upon the citizen, as Barry Shain discusses in his marvelous book, The Myth of American Individualism. Not only did eighteenth century Americans exercise a localist familialism, but they also insisted that the family and individual alike were inferior to the public good. Republic virtue required self-denial. See Adams, again:
“Public Virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics. There must be a possitive Passion for the public good, the public Interest, Honour, Power, and Glory, established in the Minds of the People, or there can be no Republican Government, nor any real Liberty. And this public Passion must be Superiour to all private Passions. Men must be ready, they must pride themselves, and be happy to sacrifice their private Pleasures, Passions, and Interests, nay their private Friendships and dearest Connections, when they Stand in Competition with the Rights of society.”
Indeed, a republic is only admirable “when its Principles are pure… but its Principles are easily destroyed… [Hence] Such a Government is only to be supported by pure Religion, or Austere Morals.” Otherwise, a monarchy is much more preferable.
How else can such republican prerequisites—virtue, religion, and “Passion for the public good”—be instilled in the young but by rigorous, patriotic education (paideia)? Even if not the only means, the purpose of public education is decidedly this: to turn pupils into “republican machines,” as Rush provocatively puts it. Chiefly, this meant teaching America’s youth that they do not belong to themselves and their own private gain, but that their love must be for family and their lives for the welfare of the country.
Rush accordingly insists that, for this reason, education at foreign schools should be shunned. “The principle of patriotism stands in need of the reinforcement of prejudice,” and these prejudices, preference for one’s own, are forged at a young age. This is especially the case in Pennsylvania, says Rush, because of its ethnic diversity.
“Our Schools of learning, by producing one general, and uniform system of education, will render the mass of the people more homogeneous, and thereby fit them more easily for uniform and peaceable government.”
It seems like all I reference these days are Shain and Michael Zuckerman’s Peaceable Kingdoms, but it’s because they get so much right. The latter’s insistence that the highest priority in the American colonies was peace and that this could only come through fostering homogeneity and shunning difference—which led to disagreement—is both historically and normatively essential. Diversity is not itself a good; and conventional wisdom instructs that more often than not it is a source of weakness and instability.
Now, like Rush, we must play the cards we’re dealt. Some half-baked mission to reduce any American state back to its late eighteenth century levels of English Protestant population is neither feasible nor desirable. And Rush is showing that 1) diversity (on multiple levels) has always been a political problem, and 2) that the source of homogeneity for republican politics needn’t be ethnic—albeit John Jay minimized the ethnic diversity of American in Federalist No. 2, he found thicker sources of homogeneity in the language and religion of the people.
For Rush, public education is the means by which ethnic diversity can be channeled into political homogeneity.
But what about religion? Like his founding brethren, Rush maintained that “the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in RELIGION. Without this, there can be no virtue.” The basics of religion, for political purposes, are the attributes of “the Deity,” and a “future state of rewards and punishments.” This establishes a basis for justice and political accountability. Materialists that deny cosmic justice are not to be trusted. This is why the early state religious tests for office almost always required an acknowledgement of God and end times judgment for earthly conduct.
At this point, Rush sounds like an instrumentalist vis a vis religion. He does, in fact, say that any religion is better than none, and this includes “the opinions of Confucius or Mahomed,” and thus far he’s only mentioned a non-particular “Deity.” Yet, he is clear that “the religion I mean to recommend in this place, is the religion of JESUS CHRIST.” Not quite the deist qualification expected. He insists, inter alia, that only Christians are fit for the form of government inaugurated in America.
Now we come to the money quote wherein Rush addresses his opponents present then and now:
“I am aware that I dissent from one of those paradoxical opinions with which modern times abound; that it is improper to fill the minds of youth with religious prejudices of any kind, and that they should be left to choose their own principles, after they have arrived at an age in which they are capable of judging for themselves. Could we preserve the mind in childhood and youth a perfect blank, this plan of education would have more to recommend it; but this we know to be impossible. The human mind runs as naturally into principles as it does after facts. It submits with difficulty to those restraints or partial discoveries which are imposed upon it in the infancy of reason. Hence the impatience of children to be informed upon all subjects that relate to the invisible world. But I beg leave to ask, Why should we pursue a different plan of education with respect to religion from that which we pursue in teaching the arts and sciences? Do we leave our youth to acquire systems of geography, philosophy, or politics, till they have arrived at an age in which they are capable of judgeing for themselves? We do not. I claim no more then for religion, than for the other sciences, and I add further, that if our youth are disposed after they are of age to think for themselves, a knowledge of one system will be the best means of conducting them in a free enquiry into other systems of religion, just as an acquaintance with one system of philosophy is the best introduction to the study of all the other systems in the world.”
Rush does not stop there. He further argues that the imposition of mere Christianity upon the youth will not do. Rather, “it is necessary to impose upon them the doctrines and discipline of a particular church.” Why? Because
“Man is naturally an ungovernable animal, and observations on particular socieities and countries will teach us, that when we add the restraints of eclesiastical, to those of domestic and civil government, we produce, in him, the highest degrees of order and virtue.”
We might say, that if man is permitted to be merely religious and avoid the discipline of a particular denomination, then he will act also as merely a citizen without any particularized allegiance and, therefore, without any practical virtue: a citizen of the world, if you like. Man cannot live well in society is he cannot live well within the church. Both are particularized, liturgical communities that predate and postdate all members. Their rules and forms act as a restraint. They govern men. They are formative. Rush thinks a non-denominational church upbringing with no historic or discernable restrictive particularity makes for bad, rebellious, unvirtuous citizens. Query whether American evangelicalism has born this out.
Needless to say, Rush is no lover of mere Christianity which is not to say that he dislikes the range of Christian traditions across the nation. These two ideas are not mutually exclusive.
“That fashionable liberality which refuses to associate with any one sect of Christians is seldom useful to itself, or to society, and may fitly be compared to the unprofitable bravery of a soldier, who wastes his valour in solitary enterprizes, without the aid or effect of military associations. Far be it from me to recommend the doctrines or modes of worship of any one denomination of Christians. I only recommend to the persons entrusted with the education of youth, to inculcate upon them a strict conformity to that mode of worship which is most agreeable to their consciences, or the inclinations of their parents.”
Structured, denominational, confessional, liturgical Christianity disciplines man and holds him accountable. This is the key lesson Rush wants us to imbibe. Rush himself was rather eclectic in his own Christianity, oscillating between nearly all sects on offer at the time. But his point stands with regard to the young despite his own ecclesiastical indecision—even then he was, perhaps, the greatest advocate of his day for the public presence of the Bible, both in schools and government. There was no neutral, secular public space for Rush. At bare minimum, he surmised, the Bible taught more about good government and good citizenship than any other source in the world. Only a masochist society would ban it from public view and use.
Returning to our earlier and central point, contra DeSantis, Rush knew that public schools are, and ought to be, places of civil and religious indoctrination. A neutral education cannot produce a happy, morally homogenous, cohesive republic. Not only are underlying metaphysical truths inescapable in the instruction of any discipline, but moral, religious cultivation is indispensable to Rush’s model. The moral posture and communal discipline of a student is more socio-politically important than the knowledge gained. Rush would never have identified the purpose of education with teaching people how to think rather than what to think. It is only when people are taught what to think that they learn how to think, and more importantly, act, at all. Nature, including the law of nature, abhors a vacuum.
In the end, there is no actual or practical distinction between education and indoctrination. As with so many things, the real question today is not the form, but the content of political activity. Justifiable rhetorical maneuvering aside, DeSantis should not have made a distinction between education and indoctrination but rather assured the people of Florida that their students will be indoctrinated appropriately unto the common good and according to the strictures of discernable, historic, Christian traditions.