Do you think the Spies is an effective tool for achieving the Party's ends? In what ways do we indoctrinate our children today? What is the line between indoctrination and teaching values?

The Party’s children are indoctrinated with songs, fairy talks and membership in the Spies. Do you think this is an effective tool for achieving the Party's ends? In what ways do we indoctrinate our children today, teaching them to accept a set of beliefs uncritically? What is the line between indoctrination and teaching values?

It certainly was effective when Hitler recruited the Nazi Youth and Mao the Red Guards. See how the regime in North Korea requires participation in parades that celebrate Kim.

There are various methods to indoctrinate children today from pre-school, religious communities, television shows, early access to Internet, public schools that focus on woke ideology, universities that do not propagate freedom of thought, friends, families, government interference in public education, teachers unions, the inability of parent to influence school curriculums, lack of school choice,

If you are instructing children that anyone who looks or talks or thinks differently or has different customs than than you do is wrong, inferior, less than human, not to be tolerated—-that’s indoctrination. The problem is not with the doctrine itself, but presenting it as the exclusive truth, beyond question, and making it the sole criterion for whether you treat others well or badly.

Values, principles, require thinking because they are often multi-faceted, different values may come into conflict in a given situation, and values require learning by experience, modeling by example. No amount of repetition of songs and chants and stories will instill a value. You can’t memorize it. A child may learn to recite a moral proverb but unless he/she/they have seen or experienced that value in action, in a variety of situations, the child’s behavior will not be influenced.

Obviously indoctrination works, at least to suppress dissent in most people—Orwell had witnessed that with the Nazis. But it destroys relationships, and even when it creates outward conformity, it can’t suppress all independent thinking. People are not robots.

Children are impressionable. The world is not perfect and neither are parents or family members or other relatives or neighbors or friends or schools or media or religions or governments. The best hope is to provide a balance where beliefs are tempered by kindness and an acceptance of others is shared and taught.

However, as previous posts indicate many current (North Korea, China, etc) and past governments (the Nazis) start by indoctrinating the young. This is certainly the case in "1984" and "Julia" and parents had no chance to counter it because of the constant surveillance. Ideally, we could all adopt treating everyone the way we would want to be treated.

You absolutely teach the children what and how to think. WE all always do. Seeing it given a label such as "Nazi Youth" or "Red Guard" may make us feel like WE don't do that, but we do. Again, to see how easy it is to teach children to "see" your way, Read James Clavell's The Children's story. It will take you 25 minutes. He shows you how easy it is to indoctrinate even those we call intelligent children. It took the "new" teacher 25 minutes.

Yes, the Spies are an effective tool as it works towards group thinking and separates a child from their parents being the authority figure in their lives.

School is a form of indoctrination and especially when teaching is scripted and this rewarded and free thinking is punished.