Indoctrination of Youth

There was a story on Digg the other day about a pair of young parents that got into a fight at the mother’s workplace that ended with the father’s arrest after he knocked over a computer and some video displays. The fight was about which gang the four-year-old would belong to. Yes, I mean “gang” literally. The mother wanted the boy to join the Crips, the father had his heart set on the West-Side Ballers.

Of course, this makes the news because it is insane and absurd that a four-year-old should be indoctrinated into a street gang by his parents. If they had both been members of the same gang, their kid would already be sporting a color-appropriate bandana and participating in gang activities.

Of course a story like this should be reported on the national news. So, why isn’t it all the other times it happens? Well, because, if every one of the 24 hour news networks were to spend 30 seconds talking about each such case, they would never talk about anything else, even if there were no overlap of instances amongst the networks. I know what you’re thinking, “Are street gangs really that prevalent?” Well, you clearly forgot what blog you’re on.

That’s right, I am talking about indoctrinating children into the “gang” of religion. A child is just not capable of deciding on a thing like what religion to be a part of, just like they can’t decide on a political party, street gang or country club. To force such a thing on a child is absurd and unfair. They become indoctrinated and, in far too many cases, blindly follow those childhood teachings into adulthood to the exclusion of all other viewpoints.

Of course, there’s nothing illegal about this, even in non-religious indoctrination. No one is arrested for forcing their child to be a liberal or conservative. Even being in a gang is not illegal, though many of the actions taken on the part of the gang certainly are. It just seems important to point out this terrible travesty. If parents weren’t allowed to force their views on their children, then more people would be able to make their own choices on things like religion. I feel that, without these early-childhood brainwashing practices, there would be a lot less fundamentals. After all, if they were raised in an environment where they were given equal access to all points of view, people would not be very likely to take religious views as being the most sensible option.

I suppose that’s why we’ll never see that world. If their children are allowed to think for themselves, their whole world falls apart. Poor souls.