[Avodah] The Role of Indoctrination in Chinukh

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

I think R' Eliezer Eisenberg's (CC-ed) post deserves a larger discussion.
Please see "Pavlovian Conditioning: The Role of Indoctrination in
Religious Education" at <http://j.mp/2eNWBDe>.

It reminds me of discussions as an NCSY advisor about the lines between
religion and cult, and which side of the line /we/ were on...

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

Beis Vaad L'Chachamim

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Pavlovian Conditioning: The Role of Indoctrination in Religious Education

My brother recently remarked that the putatively higher OTD rate,
rachmana litzlan, in the Litivishe/rationalist community as compared
to Chasiddishe/Kabbala oriented community is evidence of the latter's
greater authenticity. I responded that the OTD rate says nothing about
validity of the mesorah.

Which brings me to this question. What is the place of conditioned
response in religious education/inculcation/indoctrination? When I say
conditioned response, I mean Pavlovian training and its less offensive
but fundamentally the same other forms of indoctrination. Or call
it brainwashing. There's no gettin away from words with negative
connotation.

I remember hearing of a scene in a movie about communists going into
children's classrooms and telling a child to pray to God for candy,
and of course, nothing happened. Then the children were told to pray
to Stalin, and handfuls of candy were showered down upon them. The
children would then associate the sweet reward with putting their faith
in comrade Stalin. This is a fiction, of course, but I use it as an
example of how children can be conditioned. I found it, of course,
on Youtube. This is the scene from the movie, "Europa, Europa"
<https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ufa-d4gfIzk>

We find such such devious manipulation horrible, planting a conditioned
response in people as if they were animals, tricking them into "believing"
by throwing candy. But....
<https://www.youtube.com/embed/YkXuNxE8SXc>

Putting honey on the letters of the Aleph Beis for a child is not the
only example. The song is about "Ve'ha'arev na," and sometimes, you
need a little help to feel that areivus, that joy and pleasure. So is
it right or wrong? Should our schools be phlegmatic stoa of reason?
And the truth is that all reward and punishment is a form of
conditioning. Are all forms morally defensible? Do we draw the line at
some arbitrary point?

I sent this question to three people whose opinions I respect. Each of
them is a talmid chacham of very high standing far beyond rabbinic
certification, a scholar, a decent person, and a PHD.  One said
something absurd, which I'm not reproducing.  Here are the others.

				       I

I'm sure you are correct that the OTD rate says nothing about the
validity of the mesorah. In addition, I highly doubt that the
Chassidishe community has a lower rate. Not long ago I read an
article which approximated that 1,300 adults leave Orthodox Judaism
in Israel each year; the individual cases portrayed were all
Chassidic. ( Think of the multitudes of Russian and Polish Jews who
arrived in America during the first quarter of the last century who
came from Chassidic backgrounds and whose children cast off their
ancestral past with lightning speed).

I shall answer your second question first. No, our schools should
not be phlegmatic stoa of reason. One of the main problems within
the orthodox world is the lack of any sense of personal religious
experience and inner feeling. As adults, our emotional depths are
barely, if ever stirred  during much of our religious observance.
Most of us soldier on like automatons, going through the motions and
all the while feeling quite cold and detached from what we're doing.
Orthodoxy is thus redefined as "Orthopraxis" and its' adherents are
viewed as soulless bodies. It is to avoid such a situation, that Rav
Kook z"l sought to incorporate a full program of instruction in
poetry, music  and art in his yeshiva. He wanted his students to
give expression to their souls, to cultivate their inner depths
through those human arts which he thought  nourished refinement and
sensitivity.  ( Alas, these plans were never carried out.)

Which brings me to your first question concerning the role of
conditioned response in religious education. I am against it for the
reasons you mentioned; it is devious and manipulative. Even more
basically, it offers a false picture of reality which will be
realized as such when these children grow up and lead them to
abandon Judaism which they will now identify as a web of lies into
which they were entrapped. Conditioned response is different though
from other quite legitimate methods of encouragement and motivation
which form a natural part of the educational process, e.g. awarding
praise and prizes for academic excellence, ( candy for memorizing
bentshing, a sefer for learning ten blatt gemara ba'al peh , etc.
etc.).  In addition, it is absolutely appropriate to make the school
environment as pleasant and beautiful as possible so that the child
will associate learning with things delightful and pleasing to all
the senses. ( Just as we all remember and identify the shabbosim and
yomim tovim of our youth with the sweet smells and tastes of our
mother's cooking, of the flowers on the table and lovely appearance
of the table settings, etc. )

				       II

Dear R' Eliezer

Thank you for your interesting note/query. It's never an imposition
but I have no clue why anyone would think I'm qualified, not to mention
uniquely qualified, to address it. [please don't post this anywhere on
the internet under my name] There are several questions here, and I can't
quite follow the logic of the whole. Regarding OTD: I don't know where
the statistic came from. I don't know anyone who keeps statistics about
OTD for either of these religious communities. Certainly, dubious numbers
could not lead to any claims about a phenomenon that has been part of our
history since antiquity. It is structurally a case of a tiny minority
in a large and alluring culture; there is always attrition and always
has been. (remember the Hellenistic Jews of bayit sheni, the converts
to Christianity in medieval Europe--all were OTD in their own day)
The reasons that any individual has for choosing a different life path
from the one they were born into are too many to list and only a small
percentage are based on the perception of greater rationalism. Personal
conflict with the parental home, social or psychological issues,
lifestyle choices, partners from another community or disillusionment
with religion are just some of the reasons--no two people leave for
the same reason. I don't believe it has to do with "truth" of the
society they are leaving.All people are raised with a view of the
world that is inculcated in many ways. Knowledge imparted can leave a
greater impression when other senses are called in: we sing the ABC's,
enact historical events and wars-- historical traditions need ritual,
narrative, etc to be transmitted and remembered over generations.

This is a technique that every teacher and parent uses, and the teachers
and parents who inculcate Torah are using the best available. It is only
brainwashing when the adults doing it know it to be false or dangerous,
and they persist because they need their jobs (or afraid for their
lives). Tricking children for Stalin is to knowingly perpetuate a lie;
lovingly admitting children into the mystery of literacy is not on the
same plane in any sense that I can think of.That's my two cents worth.

In any case, I think the common denominator is that a just and moral
society has the right and even a moral obligation to propagate its
fundamental beliefs, and if conditioned response training does it, that
is fine. I guess that's true. There are things that children simply will
not pick up on their own, from manners to toilet training to any physical
or mental discipline, and you have to impose these thing upon them.
If Pavlovian conditioning does it, so be it.

I know this is not a new question for educators, but it's the first time
I'm thinking about it seriously. Here are some papers I found online on
this topic: I only glanced at them, but they did not immediately strike
me as absurd, so maybe they have something to offer.

...
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