What caught my attention wasn’t the tired debate about literature, but the underlying worldview of the entire indoctrination debate that is shared by both sides. As we abandon intellectual skills of reasoning and critical thinking as a culture in favor of more practical educational outcomes of fact memorization and job skills, our culture has simplified, polarized and politicized every aspect of social life.

Marxist principles have been dripping steadily into the minds of American youth for more than a century. This isn’t altogether surprising. After all, most parents want their children to be far left in their early years — to share toys, to eschew the torture of siblings, to leave a clean environment behind them, to refrain from causing the extinction of the dog, to rise above coveting and hoarding, and to view the blandishments of corporate America through a lens of harsh skepticism. But fewer parents wish for their children to carry all these virtues into adulthood. It is one thing to convince your child that no individual owns the sandbox and that it is better for all children that it is so. It is another to hope that when he grows up he will donate the family home to a workers’ collective.

Simple virtues such as sharing, respect, taking care of your surroundings, etc. have somehow become Marxist principles that are the sole possession of the Left. Teaching your child to share the sandbox will lead to that child embracing Socialism or Communism and fighting for the universal ownership of all goods.

The best way to make sure our children are not indoctrinated is to teach them to reason things out and to think critically. For example, thinking through the virtues listed above would help us to realize that virtue is always about balance. Sharing is a good thing as it engenders generosity and thoughtfulness of others, drawing us out of ourselves and making us aware the needs of others. However, the extreme abolition of all private property does not have these benefits. In fact, removing private property removes the option of generosity by forcing what should be freely chosen. Sharing is a balance between selfishness and extreme ideology. In fact, all virtue is a balance between extremes. Reasoning can help us see that. Politicizing cannot.

I am increasingly concerned with the division of our culture between Left and Right. If you are a conservative, you cannot care about the environment or promote generosity in immigration policy. If you are a liberal, you better promote universal health care and you can never admit to the benefits of the free market system. We are becoming indoctrinated – not by children’s books, but by our inability to think things through in a critical and reasonable way and by our tendency to accept ideas as all or nothing propositions.

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