Education Vs Indoctrination.
The human mind or brain is akin to a garden that requires delicate nurturing, abandoned, it gets overgrown with weeds, pests have a field day.
The essential feature of indoctrination which emerges then is that it deliberately violates the criteria of rational discussion to achieve a favorable outcome for the position being advanced. The mere exclusion of full rationality in itself is not sufficient, the exclusion must be deliberate and it must be done in a relevant context. It is logically necessary to the concept of indoctrination that the indoctrinated person arrives at the belief by non-rational methods.
The majority of what passes today for education is indoctrination, you identify it mostly by a rabid defense of a dogma, or position that cannot be questioned, this shunning any potential for rational discuss. A culture or a system that discourages curiosity, punishes questioning under either cultural or religious garb is stale, for it reduces man to a caricature by stripping or denying him agency to keep in touch with his inner essence, this, reducing him to an 'orc' to borrow from Tolkien's Lord of the rings.
Indoctrination is an insidious caricature of education, mimicking it, but lacking the internal essence. The victim fundamentally becomes an 'automaton' with no capacity for independent thought, no sight for he's dazed, no foresight for he is hinged nor insight because he is hollow. When your "education" limits your imagination it's called indoctrination. Those who cannot think for themselves are truly lost.
To hold a belief rationally, is to hold it in such a way that when the evidence changes, or supporting reasons are found to be error, the belief will alter. Non-rationally held beliefs on the other hand, are those that are unaffected by any change in the evidence or reasons.
Education illuminates the soul, giving rise to a wholesome individual, the primacy of education is such that the first Quranic revelation and injunction were to 'read', this, the pursuit of knowledge is man's primary quest, for without knowledge, how then does one fulfill the divine purpose of 'worship'?
Verily, to worship is to know.
The Quran also highlighted the chasm between the educated and the ignorant with the verses;
.. 'Say, O Prophet, “Are those who know equal to those who do not know?”... Q39 V 9
and also;
"As We have sent unto you a messenger among you, to recite unto you Our revelations and purify you, and to teach you the Book and the Wisdom, and to teach you what ye know not. " Q2 V 151.
These excerpts from the Quran serve to highlight the primacy of education.
A culture transcends the mere cultural phase when it becomes educated, metamorphosis to civilization, their legacies built upon, their flames never extinguished, all civilizations, are cultures, but not all cultures become civilizations, it is the same dynamic that plays out in the human in a miniature form.
Education is not limited to training the mind and filling it with information, it is multidimensional as it encompasses intellectual, religious, moral and physical. It is not enough to impart theoretical learning, it must be put into practice. True learning is that which affects behavior and shapes the learner to make practical use of his knowledge.
I will conclude by quoting this hadith.
The blessed Prophet Muhammad SAW said:
Verily, the angels lower their wings for the seeker of knowledge. The inhabitants of the heavens and earth, even the fish in the depths of the water, seek forgiveness for the scholar. The virtue of the scholar over the worshiper is like the superiority of the moon over the stars. The scholars are the inheritors of the Prophets. They do not leave behind gold or silver coins, but rather they leave behind knowledge. Whoever has taken hold of it has been given an abundant share.
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What a beautiful piece. Comprehensive and well detailed.
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