Race and anti-racism, socialization, indoctrination, and education

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

 I recently talked with racialized high school students about how schools should respond to racism, an issue that affects them deeply, personally, and frequently. To a person, each student said educate students about racism and the corrosive and hurtful consequences of racism for those immediately involved and for the community. When I inquired about punishment, they acknowledged that punishment might come into play if the individual repeatedly perpetrated acts motivated by racial animus, but they saw education as the primary response.  

The students’ appreciation for the power of education prompted me to wonder if the educations system was sufficiently sophisticated to distinguish among three easily confused processes - socialization, indoctrination, and education. All three processes can affect how people acquire knowledge, beliefs, and values, but only socialization and education have a legitimate place in schools.  

It is through the process of socialization that we learn the norms, values, and customs of our society. We acquire an understanding of society’s expectations by observing the behaviour of those around us and making inferences about how we should behave to function within that society. Socialization begins in childhood and continues throughout an individual's life. Children learn how to behave and follow social norms by observing and imitating the behavior of their parents, peers, and other members of their community. Socialization is generally a gradual process that occurs naturally.  

Indoctrination is the process of inculcating beliefs or ideologies without questioning or critically examining them, often with the intention of shaping the person’s attitudes, values, and behaviors according to a particular political or social agenda. Indoctrination occurs among adherents of religious organizations, political parties, and during military training.  Indoctrination is often intentional and may involve coercion or manipulation by someone in a position of authority who seeks to promote specific beliefs or values.  

Education is an intentional process of equipping people with the knowledge they need to function in specific contexts. It differs from indoctrination because when done appropriately, education encourages a critical examination of the knowledge one is being asked to acquire.  

The issues of race and racism provide an excellent example of how socialization, indoctrination, and education can impact individuals' beliefs and attitudes.  

Socialization, the process by which one learns the norms, values, and customs of their culture or society, can include learning about racial and ethnic identities, and the beliefs and attitudes associated with those identities. Children often learn about race through their interactions with their parents, peers, and other members of their community. Through this informal process, they may learn to assign individuals to groups based on skin colour and to attribute certain characteristics and values to those groups.  

Indoctrination is the conscious promotion of a specific set of beliefs or values. When racist ideologies are actively promoted and people are encouraged to accept these beliefs without questioning or critically examining them, they are being indoctrinated. A conscious effort to inculcate an unquestioning and uncritical anti-racist perspective is indoctrination even though the intention may be to promote a society in which bias, prejudice, and hatred have no place.  

Education encourages critical thinking and provides individuals with the tools to evaluate and analyze what they are being asked to acquire from multiple perspectives. That includes thinking critically about the norms to which they have been socialized.  

Effective education on race and racism provides individuals with an understanding of the history and cultural context of race relations, as well as the scientific evidence that supports the idea of human genetic diversity. Education should encourage individuals to critically evaluate what they are being asked to learn in order to develop an understanding of the complexities of the issue.  

Socialization, indoctrination, and education all affect an individuals' beliefs and attitudes related to race and racism. While socialization involves the natural process of learning about racial and ethnic identities, indoctrination involves promoting a specific set of beliefs without encouraging critical thinking. Education, on the other hand, provides individuals with the knowledge they need to understand race and racism and encourages them to think critically and analytically about race and racism.  

The racialized students with whom I discussed responses to racism placed great trust in schools to educate students about the perniciousness and impact of racism. They placed little or no value on coercion or punishment as a response to racism, recognizing that coercion and punishment might have a fleeting impact on behaviour, but would not equip students to understand the reasons why racism is corrosive and harmful.