Second Colloquium Event

Date & Time:

• April 14, 2023
• 12:30 PM - 1:45 PM

Location

• 73 Tremont Street, Room 5055, Boston, MA, 02108
• Get Directions

Contact Information:

• Mary Wilson
• +1 (617) 305-1917
• [email protected]

Indoctrination has, for good reason, often been equated with moral harm and is now synonymous with moral wrongdoing. However, I will argue, if all liberal democracies accept that a functioning democracy requires citizens to exhibit particular civic virtues and if indoctrination is the only means to properly educate future citizens to adopt these virtues, given the way that we become virtuous, then we must reevaluate the process of indoctrination and consider whether certain forms of indoctrination can effectively inculcate civic virtues within students while at the same avoiding many of the moral pitfalls that are often associated with such processes. I will ultimately argue that we can, in fact, construct a civic virtue education program that does contain some moderate forms of indoctrination but at the same time avoids many of the popular criticisms that have been leveled against it in the past. The purpose of this paper is three-fold. First, I will argue that civic virtue education is an essential component of any functioning democracy. Second, I will show why modest forms of indoctrination must necessarily be a component of any effective civic virtue education program. Finally, I will argue that some forms of indoctrination are not morally problematic and are, in fact, morally obligatory, given their necessary function in protecting and promoting democratic states and the important social goods that they are created to achieve.