I have been wondering the following fora while, please help:

Should we encourage children's brainwashing or make it illegal?

(sorry if this is not a question of ethics)

What do you mean 'brainwashing'? How do we 'brainwash' children?

The term is defined like this in 'http://www.thefreedictionary.com/brainwashing':

1. Intensive, forcible indoctrination, usually political or religious, aimed at destroying a person's basic convictions and attitudes and replacing them with an alternative set of fixed beliefs.
2. The application of a concentrated means of persuasion, such as an advertising campaign or repeated suggestion, in order to develop a specific belief or motivation.

By we I assume you mean the whole mankind,
I watched last night a document involving a schoolboy. He was very much believing that if he wold be assigned to a suicide mission he would gladly join in, and the reward would be a better afterlife.
I just cannot see this as anything else that a result of somekind brainwashing.

but you got me answering, I just asked a simple guestion, weather we should encourage children's brainwashing or make it illegal?

br

Jouni
Heres my thoughts on your comments.
Children small ones any way do not have basic convictions and attitudes other than ones garnered from their parents or society. I think its allowable for teachers and parents to guide them into attitudes and convictions that will make their lives and the lives of others tolerable, like self respect and respect for other people. Although with all the PC stuff out there this is not done as much as it used to be in western cultures because some people probably think this early training is "brainwashing."
Earlier in the year I met an Indian high school teacher who had been brought over to Australia to help fill the shortage of teachers. She said Indians already here had warned her against working in our high schools. They told her the kids were rude and violent and teachers had no powers. So based on their advice she decided to work in child care for about half the salary.
However I, and most others would think there's everything wrong with true brainwashing, as in teaching kids to be suicide bombers.
1 Its wrong to teach them to kill themselves.
2 Its wrong to teach them to kill others.
3 Its wrong to teach hatred of other religions/races.
4 Its wrong to teach others to do what you are not willing to do yourself!

I think every here would agree the 'brainwashing' of that child so that he is ready to kill himself is most certainly wrong. To make brainwashing illegal, however would require a very clear and precise definition. After all, 'brainwashing' is very difficult to define. How do you separate brainwashing from indoctrinating from influencing from 'educating'?

For instance, if I told a child to stop hitting another child or a consequence would follow, am I brainwashing, indoctrinating or influencing or educating that child? If over a year, I kept repeating this message to said child it would indeed be a 'prolonged process to transform their attitudes and beliefs totally". This child believes it's ok to hit people, but gradually, I have 'brainwashed' them into believing that it is 'wrong' to hit people, as a result their attitudes and beliefs have changed.

So... is it wrong to brainwash children?

Christine

I agree, we need education an information right from the start until the last breathtake. Without this we would not be like we are now. Human species is gaining huge amounts of proven and tested facts from the previous generations. We learn basic knowledge to be able to discover new knowledge. Social skills are among the most important nowledge we have. If we get them wrong from the start, from the childhood, then maybe we might not be able to interprete the expressions of other people correctly. New studies show that most young criminals have difficulties to understand facial expressions correctly.
Perhaps we should have more learnig, proven and tested, to those social skills.

But is it necessary to force the local convictions as true in the childs mind for the child to survive in local circumstances? I do not think so. I would regard this as child abuse.

arry

Let's try some ways to define brainwashig in other terms, what do you say about plain "teaching something as it would be proven and is not" Minor details could even be discarded in the definition if we could agree on the major ones?

Failure to understand facial expressions is the result of poor human interaction from an early age. Babies and small kids need to watch human faces to learn to communicate with people that they trust. Peekaboo games etc are actually teaching them lessons. Parking them in front of a TV or computer game all day just does not do the job. It seems like this might be what happened to the young criminals you mention.

I agree.