Can We Indoctrinate To Set Free?

June 2, 1968
Plainfield

Can We Indoctrinate To Set Free?

Every person should be free to grow in mind and personality towards greater development and fulfillment of the self. Every person should be growing toward more freedom, wiser understanding, and ever-deepening relationships with other persons. How can we teach children, particularly, but actually all persons, to be free? Can we indoctrinate to set free? Are there experiences which can be the stimulus to self-growth?

This is a hard question because we tend to want others to be like ourselves. We get anxious when our children's ways depart from our ways. We get annoyed or hostile when other persons hold to ideas or behavior which we believe to be either trivial or wrong. At the same time we know that living situations continuously change. Perhaps the attitudes we hold may no longer be vitally related to new situations. How can we indoctrinate not only to set children free, but to free ourselves as well?

In the fine book of some years ago, LET US PRAISE FAMOUS MEN, [authors James Agee and Walker Evans told the story of Southern sharecroppers:] "In every child who is born, under no matter what circumstances, and no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again; and in him, too, once more and each of us our terrific responsibility toward human life; towards the utmost idea of goodness of the horror of error, and of God."

Two words stand out when we think of indoctrinating to set free: "potentiality," "responsibility". There is a type of desert lizard, which, when food is abundant, stores surplus in his large, colorful tail. When food becomes scarce, the lizard draws upon the reservoir of this large, swollen tall to sustain him through the crises of his lizard life. Analogies are never fully accurate, but the lizard is suggestive of the capacity of human reserves – spiritual reserves if you will. From our growth potentialities and the wise interpretation of experience there can come reserve deposits of strength which can help in the inevitable and recurring crises of life.

One becomes religious by experience. One becomes religious by experience appropriate to the age-level and growth stage. A five-year-old has not developed a sense of historical time. A three-year-old is not always ready for cooperative behavior in the group. A ten-year-old may not yet be equipped for theological discourse.

The readiness of a child for religious guidance; the moment of religious growth for an adult for that matter, is frequently indicated by the questions asked. The questioning person, child or adult, may given a lift on the road developing potentiality and increasing responsibility when he is answered by adults who are neither fearful of the questions nor afraid that the answers might be wrong. The old cliche that children should be seen and not heard is one of the most erroneous proverbs ever coined. The experience of serious answers to serious questions is one of the prime ways religious stature develops. Consider one of the elementary and necessary instructions a worker receives beginning a new job, "Don't be afraid to ask questions ... We'd rather have too many questions than costly mistakes." This is even more true in the situations where one can grow in self-hood and social responsibility.

There is another way of indoctrinating to set free – encouraging one to do. What a child, or adult, does – working with paint, clay, paper-mache and working with others in play and worship is part of an attitude that can set free. John Dewey's famous educational phrase, "learning by doing," has sometimes been too harshly criticized. Whether one
feels the sun on his back on the trail, the wind in his face on the hilltop, the wonder of an unexpected bulb breaking the crust of the earth in Spring, the crunch of autumn leaves on an October walk, one is doing. If one seeks to interpret such experiences wisely, he will apprehend that there is a one-to-one relationship to the Universe; that one can embrace with awe and ardor some of the seemingly impersonal ways of the Universe that swirls about us and provides the setting for our living.

To put it slightly differently, one "becomes religious by developing inner resources. The kind of personal growth which best sets us free comes from such experience which leads us to trust ourselves.

many strokes and thoughts shimmer
the soft color of innocence
young creating patterns
splash in self-expression
finding the sunshine of their colors
in a place for discovering life

- Wendy Stafford

But of course the solitary person confronting the Universe is not nearly enough, even though Whitehead defined religion as what one is in his solitariness. Growth and character are not achieved in a vacuum. One must grow toward freedom in a complex and interdependent series of societies. A couple hundred years ago when Rousseau exuberantly sung praises of freedom, he was sure that man was born free in nature. Rousseau argued that it was society that put chains on natural freedom. Now we know that this was a naive and rosy misunderstanding of human growth. One is not born free; one learns to be free.

The story is told that in the 17th Century a slave-trading vessel had loaded 200 slaves between decks, raised anchor and took a westward course. Somehow the slaves broke free, overpowered the crew and tossed them overboard. But although they had liberated themselves from the slave-traders, not one of the freed slaves could either handle sail or rudder or read a compass. They had freed themselves "from", but not freed themselves "for".

This seems a parable for man in community. Man must develop his own inner strength, must find his own convictions about himself, his fellow-man and his God. At the same time he must assume the social responsibilities and develop the community skills without which freedom is as directionless as the slave-ship. John Dewey phrased this need fully for inner resources this way, "Men have never fully used the powers they possess to advance the good life, because they waited on something external to themselves to do the work they are responsible for doing."

While the debates and decisions of the Cleveland General Assembly will be presented in greater detail and better form by the Denominational Affairs Committee, one of the most exciting as well as controversial matters is in point here. The Black Affairs Council will be recognized by the Board of Trustees and will be funded. The delegates by a strong majority of 836 to 327 clearly indicated that they believed that time had come for Black self-determination within the framework of our continental U.U.A.; that there was sufficient confidence in their understanding of needs and ability to meet needs; no strings have been tied to the appropriations. This says to the Black Affairs Council "you need not wait on something external to yourselves to begin to make things right." Use your inner resources as these have been developed through centuries of struggle and suffering. Out of your own experience guide us in ways that may make some difference in this most sharp problem and struggle of our nation. Unconsciously, as well as deliberately, we Whites may have been paternalistic. At Cleveland, those who voted [in the 836] say, we have failed to extend to you the same encouragement to self-growth; the same right to interpret experience that we have proclaimed is our central approach to religious learning and coming to religious conviction.

This is freedom for self-growth, self-determination, not a regression to a separatism. There are those thoughtful and sincere people who disagree. I believe I can understand their point of view; but I believe that our times demand this opportunity for growth, not only for the children in our church school, but for adults in our movement who have not had their opportunity to interpret the pressing problems in the domestic social order and to offer ways to overcome the problems.

One of the prime feelings in learning is a sense of quickening relationships. A child may feel this quickening relationship to his class and the methods and materials in it. At Cleveland, most of the adults, all I know of anyway in that majority, felt a quickening relationship, not only to the Black culture which set our shoulders moving and our feet tapping, not only to the Black worship service which had Unitarians singing "Precious Lord take my hand," and other spirituals, but also a quickening relationship to the possibilities that our church, our movement may have crossed a time-line of newness and relevance.

There is no doubt in my mind that we must develop wider and more effective ideas and programs in the social order. Perhaps our new vision will help. In addition, quite apart from what may or may not happen in the social order, the pressure of social problems on us at Cleveland deepened the sense of personal religion (for many at least). There are those who felt disillusion, those who said,"this isn't my church, anymore." But the tides of feeling, commitment, call, did deepen our sense of personal fulfillment, or solitary religion, or whatever one might want to call it.

The problems are formidable, particularly the financial problem, with so many places where our dollars can be will spent. Varying priorities will be sifted to assign importance. Nevertheless, in a spirit of group decision, personal involvement and personal commitment, we were being freed from the burden of issues we now know to be of lesser importance.

Consider what Albert Schweitzer said, long before the development of the nuclear bombs (INDIAN THOUGHT AND DEVELOPMENT, Beacon Press, 1954): "I believe there must arise a philosophy profounder and more living than than our own, one possessed of greater spiritual and ethical power. In the terrible age through which mankind is passing, all of us, both in the East and the West, must watch for the coming of a more perfect and healthier form of thought which will conquer men's hearts and compel all people to acknowledge its sway. And it must be our aim to bring this philosophy into existence."

Room for the self to grow, response with real answers, a quickening of relationships both solitary and social, a linkage between conviction and commitment, these are ways to set us free.

In Walden, Thoreau wrote, "We must learn to re-awaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn...."

To re-awaken and keep ourselves awake by the methods of growth and freedom, this is the way we can be free and I covet for myself and for my Unitarian Universalist denomination, the courage and stamina to persist until the way is clearer and fulfillment nearer.