In Defense of Indoctrination: The Liberal Arts and the Myth of Thinking for Yourself

Considering charges that liberal arts institutions indoctrinate their students, this book investigates the conceptual connections between critical thinking and intellectual independence and between epistemic values and social-political values. Simon Feldman argues that neither charges of indoctrination from political conservatives nor professorial boasts of teaching critical thinking recognize the full range of values embedded in liberal arts education; most faculty want both to teach certain social values and to nurture students’ intellectual independence.Yet the indoctrination charges do raise deep questions about the ethics of teaching and learning, and they and take place amidst growing concerns about the social, political, and economic viability of liberal arts institutions themselves. In conversation with defenses of the liberal arts, In Defense of Indoctrination asks us to consider whether and how the transmission of the various values that undergird the liberal arts comports wi