Good education and conversion

After all, it would be a shame to study feminism, and never encounter a feminist.

Of course, what I am trying to show is that there is a rather unobjectionable meaning of the word 'proselytize' which describes an aspect of education with which most people are unconcerned. That is: we hope that education persuades children, and especially teenagers, to change their opinions, and so develop as reasoning adults who are capable of mature citizenship.

The more common, and certainly pejorative use of the word describes a kind of manipulative and deceptive kind of persuasion. It names our dark fears about religious cults, or brainwashing political camps. We think of proselytizers as those slightly unhinged and unwashed characters who stand on street corners handing out tracts, or as those who knock on our doors with name badges on, or as fanatics like Jim Jones.

It is this meaning of the word that is used whenever religion is discussed in connection with education, especially by those who would be rid of religion in schools. Yet, as I have shown here, simply being attractive and persuasive of a certain opinion is not necessarily anti-educational.

If the word in its pejorative sense is used to cover all forms of persuasion in education, then I think that we risk missing something vitally important about education itself: that opinions, ideological positions, frameworks, metanarratives, faith-positions, world-views – call them what you will – are essential to the human process of knowing about and dealing with and living together in the world.