Children and Indoctrination

I recently saw a bumper sticker that read, "Smile! You could have been aborted!" Rather than smile, though, I was horrified. It just didn't seem funny to joke about, even to make a point. Some weeks before that, I was even more horrified to see some protesters on the street (not that it matters, but it was by the gas station out at 5 points on Lincoln) holding anti-abortion signs...no, that's not the horrifying part....that was when I saw several children of mixed ages, but all under the age of ten, holding very large, very graphic photos of what was presumably aborted fetuses.

Then today I watched Jesus Camp, which was an interesting experience to say the least. I was very disturbed by what appeared as very intense and emotional indoctrination to me. It's confusing, though, because I'm not sure exactly where the line is between teaching values and indoctrination. I know that what I saw had crossed it, but how far can or should you go? I don't want to raise totally confused kids either...or whatever happens when you don't even try to teach your own values.

I think what really disturbs me is seeing people using or even mis-using kids to promote their own political ideals, e.g. end abortion. This is perhaps a bad, or confusing, example for me because I'm in the somewhat awkward, but not that rare (I'm learning), position of being morally against abortion in the majority of cases (particularly as birth control) but politically pro-choice, mostly due to the deleterious effects on women that restrictions to abortion cause. However, I believe my objections are at least consistent with my beliefs. I am disturbed that people would subject their children to graphic, bloody pictures, especially when their aim is just to use their kids as props to bandy a political agenda. To compare this to something more "liberal" that I believe in...I'm against this war that's happening, and might even protest at some point, but I wouldn't even consider having my young children look at photos of soldiers' corpses, much less hold them up in a public protest. That to me is simply wrong. But, admittedly, I still don't know where the appropriate line is, even in my hypothetical situation...Would I allow my kids to come along to a protest if they asked to? Probably, depending on what I expected the situation to be like. Would I force or pressure my kids to come with me? No. Would I ask or encourage them to come? Now I don't know.

I think there are serious problems with teaching our kids to parrot our beliefs: political, religious, moral, social, whatever. It seems much better to me to let kids experience life and the world, and to guide them as they do that, help them build a moral framework to understand what is happening to them as they experience new situations, rather than inundating them with all our adult concerns and telling them what they should think about them before they are even mature enough to understand what the problem is.

This reminds me of a scene from the Anne Lamott book I'm currently reading, Bird by Bird. Her example is even from a liberal point of view, though at least she has the grace to write about it humorously, realizing that it was silly:

"What are your characters teaching their children by example and by indoctrination? For instance, I was teaching [my son] Sam peace chants for a long time, when he was only two. It was during the war in the Persian Gulf; I was a little angry.
'What do we want?' I'd call to Sam.
'Peace,' he'd shout dutifully.
'And when do we want it?' I'd ask.
'Now!' he'd say...
The words were utterly meaningless to him, of course. I might as well have taught him to reply 'Spoos!' instead of 'Peace' and 'August!' instead of 'Now.'...I think something like this would tell a reader more about a character than would three pages of description. It would tell us about...her people-pleasing, her longing for peace,...her way of diluting rage and frustration with humor, while also using her child as a prop....And did this woman stop using her kid, once she realized what she was doing? No, she didn't, and this tells us even more. She kept at it, long after the war was over, until one day she called to her three-and-a-half-year-old son, 'Hey--what do we want?' And he said plaintively, 'Lunch.'"