Remaining Neutral is a Sea of Indoctrination

When I am having conversations with folks about my parenting choices, such as not wanting them to watch TV or being picky about what books I read them, I am often met with this question: What is the point?
The entire question is usually something like, "What is the point of even trying to shield them from the things you object to? Mainstream culture will seep in, no matter what. Your kid will eventually play princess and drink soda. We grew up doing those things, and we turned out just fine..."

I get it. I get that I am going to make compromises. I get that I cannot shelter my kids from everything I don't like about the world. I get that my ultimate goal as a parent is to help my kids figure out how to navigate the realities they will encounter and make decisions that are healthy for them and their community. But I also think that holding off on, say, seeping them in binary gender stereotypes for the first few years of their lives might just help them have a more open mind to the concept of gender as a spectrum. That, yes, most of people I love who are radical thinkers and doers were raised in very "mainstream" ways and managed to dissect and dismantle so much of what they were taught to find ways of existing in the world that feel more fulfilling to them. But that shit hurts. A lot. Wading through the muck and mire of sexism and racism and homphobia and transphobia and classism is grueling work. What if we gave our kids a fighting chance by laying out some other ways of thinking about things. They are going to spend a lifetime navigating the dominant culture's values and biases, and giving them skills with which to do so critically, but also a real groundwork in more just ways of exisiting seems like a good idea, to me.

The thing is this: I don't think there is any such thing as neutral, in this case. If we are not learning one thing, than we are learning another. If we are not questioning then we are accepting. There is always a set of values being instilled; From books, from TV, from school, from family, from every interaction and all the language we use, we are just too used to the status quo to notice much of it. We are creating and re-creating our culture, and we get to decide what that will look like. It is not born in our cells. We have to learn it to create it. There is no neutral.

On this note, I would like to review a couple of books given to us by family members, with the best of intentions. In both cases, I can completely see why the book was chosen. Both books contain incredible artwork, and a message of inspiration and a commitment to empowerment and doing good things for the world. I want to dig deeper, though, into the cultural values that are being passed along by the ways we think of as "doing good."


Listen to the Wind; The Story of Dr. Greg & Three Cups of Tea  by Greg Mortenson and Susan L. Roth Collages by Susan L. Roth

 This is the kid's version of a very Oprah book-club book about a white, North American man who got lost hiking in the mountains of Pakistan. As a way of thanking the village of people that nursed him back to health, and returns to civilize them. Basically.

To me it is an age-old story of the missionary. That we are taught that the values and ideals we have as white, western, christian, capitalist people is the ideal that the rest of the world wants, or should want.

Dr. Greg helps to build them a school because they weren't equipped to do any "real" learning without desks and chalkboards, of course. Where now they study English and have the attention of the entire world who can get to them by the brand -new bridge that Dr. Greg altruistically helped to build. Lucky them. A couple of books written about you and a bridge, literally and figuratively, to Western culture. One more nail in the coffin of the beauty of authentic diversity and intact cultures.

The ideal of the the selfless missionary is one we are fed again and again in our culture, and the underlying value seems to be of "taming the heathens," a deeply ingrained christian, colonialist goal.

This particular story also invokes images of the blue eyed, white knight, singlehandedly coming to the rescue of those that are being unjustly imprisoned, in this case by their indigenous lifestyle and un-civilized intelligence.

I get the point of the story, but the story does not stand alone. It is part of the larger story we are telling about our values and the value of the rest of the world. In this context, I do not feel the need to pass along one more version of this lesson to my children.

Of Thee I Sing; A Letter to My Daughters by Barack Obama Illustrated by Loren Long

There is actually a lot about this book that I like. When my mother first gave it to us, it was with the the warning "I know that you are gonna dismiss this, but it is really beautiful, and you should give it a chance."

She was right on both counts. I did roll my eyes when she gave me a book written by Barack Obama, and after reading it, I agree that it is beautiful. The artwork is incredible, and the message he his trying to send to his daughters about how strong and capable they are is moving.

The deeper messages of this book overshadow those two points, though, and after dismissing it, reeling my initial judgment back in, and giving it a chance, I am now going to give it an informed dismiss.

Each page of this book highlights an individual who has a character trait he wishes for his daughters: Creative, smart, brave, healer, kind, strong, etc. The individuals are all famous historical figures, diverse in race and split between 5 women and 8 men. Though both Martin Luther King, Jr and Cesar Chavez were part of movements, they are primarily known as the heads, or starters of those movements. The rest of the people featured are all known for their individual accomplishments, and not all of them are people's whose accomplishments I think are worth idealizing in the first place.

Neil Armstrong, for example. NASA's darling and the epitome of American values. Personally I do not feel like spending countless billions of dollars to send people and machinery into outer space when we are already consuming and devestating the planet we inhabit is a terrifying example of manifest destiny on steroids. The fact that this man, who was backed by these billions of dollars, is thought of as a hero is sort of baffling to me. I can understand how crazy and scary it would be to do what he did, but in what ways do his actions do anything actually beneficial for humankind, let alone, this planet we exist as a part of?!

Or George Washington, or Abraham Lincoln? The first, a figurehead, like all presidents, of a system that was oppressive from it's very conception. The second, one who received the disproportionate credit for ending slavery, which was brought into reality by a movement of people, while his actions were actually benefiting his chance of staying in a position of power and assisting supporting interests ability to continue to function profitably.

As a whole, the book is just peddling patriotism and the very American ideal of the individual being the most powerful entity, instead of people working collectively to create change.

This is not to say that I don't think Einstein was an incredible thinker, or O'Keefe an amazing painter. But the overarching ideal, again, of the individual being the most powerful force, even within a movement (Martin Luther King encapsulating the civil rights movement, or Cesar Chavez being the face of the migrant farmworker movement) supports the idea that it takes something special to do these amazing things, and that an "average" person does not possess this strength.