Fox News is doing getting down into the dirty work in investigating a New Jersey school that has been accused of indoctrinating children to praise Barack Obama after a video emerged on Youtube. Last week, Fox News filed a request with the school district for access to notices that were supposedly sent home to parents notifying them of the Obama song and that the children would be videotaped. Fox News sure is taking this indoctrination business serious. But should we be seriously concerned that indoctrination is occurring in our schools? All signs say no, at least for the elementary school children that have been the focus in the news.
First off, indoctrination is not something that happens with a single song one day at school. The popular comparison to the indoctrination of youth in Nazi Germany fails for this very reason. In Germany, the indoctrination of children was a nationwide effort. Today, only a few schools have become the target of indoctrination charges. In Germany, indoctrination was one of the primary goals of the educational system. Teachers had to have the backing of Nazi officials in order to keep their jobs. Today, you’d have to imagine that if indoctrination was occurring some of the concerned parents quoted by Fox News in their stories would notice it without a video having to go viral on the Internet.
Second, far more important than schools to the development of political views in children are the parents. Political learning occurs much more frequently at home because kids have significantly more contact with their family than with teachers in school. Everything from what parents talk about to what they watch on television can shape a child’s nascent political beliefs. In Nazi Germany, not only were schools actively pressing Nazi beliefs on children, but many parents were also buying into it because of the prospects it offered for the future after the failure of WWI. The resulting consistency of message in favor of the Nazi regime went a long way toward successfully teaching kids that they should adopt the Nazi way.
Third, the kids in these videos probably aren’t thinking too much about politics. Barring the most hostile attitudes from home, most children tend to have very positive views of the president in office. This isn’t based on any political belief system, but rather on a perception of the president as someone who makes the country work properly. In fact, the general trends show that most people don’t solidify their party affiliations until their 20s. So, if there is to be concern about indoctrination anywhere, the focus should be on US colleges, not the elementary schools.
Fox News has effectively taken something that is almost certainly not happening, and made it into a paramount issue. For many of the parents shown in videos on Youtube and quoted in articles, the principle concern doesn’t even seem to be the indoctrination, rather they are worried about their kids being recorded and posted on the internet. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop Fox News from posting an article with all the kids’ faces. It certainly doesn’t help the argument that Fox is up in arms over this because of the parents.
