Adam Smith Institute

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The OECD seems to be arguing for more indoctrination

Or at least people are using the OECD report on early years childcare to argue for more indoctrination.

“Give me a child for his first seven years and I will give you the man,” said the Jesuits, though recent developmental work suggests that they would have done better to have got their hooks into him before he was five. Our children are not only most adorable when they are tiny, they are also at their most malleable. They are most sensitive learning about emotional control at one, language and social skills at two, numbers at three. That’s why policymakers, like the Jesuits, long to get at people when they are tiny. That is when governments have their best chance of shaping the country’s future.

And the correct name for that is indeed indoctrination. Get at the little ones and mold them into what the State desires the citizenry be. All very much smacking of New Soviet Man to our ears, where given that state socialism doesn't work with human beings let's try to change the people into something which allows state socialism to work.

It's thus a basic approach which we reject. The aim of the State, whoever runs it and how, is to us to aid and allow us to be ourselves. It is not we who should change to fit the plans, the plans should be devised for us as we are.

That we provide plasticine for 3 year olds to play with while Mummy is at work is just fine. But indoctrination while they do so isn't.