A simple rule to distinguish education from indoctrination ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, November 24, 2025

A simple rule to distinguish education from indoctrination

Last month, over a thousand educators gathered together for the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice conference, which was sponsored by the Portland Association of Teachers, the Seattle Education Association, and Rethinking Schools (an educational magazine and a frequent partner with the NEA to promote activist classroom materials).

What do teachers learn at such a conference?

The available sessions betray the most extreme obsessions of activists:

A movement to oust the Anti-Defamation League from schools for being too Jewish
Four other presentations in support of Palestine
Sessions on how to queer history and math
An exploration of the “Power Rainbow”
Discussions of how to deal with parents who contest objectionable materials
A workshop to advance climate justice and decolonize science education
Example lessons for how to teach second graders about the evils of capitalism
Variations of “Palestine” and “Palestinian” appear 22 times across the agenda. Phonics appears not once.

This is, of course, distressing. But there is a danger that any criticism of ideological indoctrination will be viewed as just a demand to indoctrinate children in a different political agenda.

There is merit to that.

We need to take politics out of the classroom while still teaching children how to be good citizens of their country and of the planet.

There is one simple rule that can be applied to any subject at school that cuts through all ideologies:

Students must be taught how to think, not what to think.

Any topic that might be considered controversial or that parents might object to is fine as long as it is based on facts, everyone discussed is respected and students can disagree without penalty.

Already, this simple rule has been trampled at the university level, and the same people who succeeded at that are trying to do the same at K-12 schools. Instead of teaching, schools are being turned into propaganda factories for the next generation.

Students can and should be taught to appreciate their nation - they have obligations as citizens and the nation in turn has obligations towards them. Beyond that everything can be discussed and debated. But instead of concentrating on what is wrong with the nation, the emphasis should be on how it can be improved.

Because on both the Left and the Right, a subtext is being taught to tear it all down. And that is not acceptable.

Private schools can teach ideology as long as the parents all agree. But public schools have a special obligation to keep partisan politics out of the classroom and to respectfully discuss the issues.

The top priority must be teaching respect for all people, that humans have inherent dignity, that we are responsible to make the world a better place. All opinions, even immoral ones, are based on a value system and those values and their priorities must be debated. ("Why did the South believe that slavery was not immoral?")

Every topic can fit within those rules, and anyone who disagrees has no business creating curricula.

Don't make education into a partisan issue, because then everyone loses.