Francis Canavan, S. J.
Fordham University

In a real sense, I am professionally committed to indoctrination. Yet I
do not personally regard indoctrination in the classroom as a practical
problem, because I am so convinced that the effort to indoctrinate is
largely futile.

I can perhaps explain why I so regard it by quoting a line I read in a
book review years ago — so many years ago that I have forgotten in
what journal I read it and what book was under review. But the line that
stuck in my memory was this: "You can persuade a class of sophomores
that Ernest Hemingway is the greatest writer who ever lived; but the
sophomores will grow up, and they will despise you." Of course one can
play upon the immaturity and insecurity of students, but only at the
risk that they will eventually grow up and see through what has been
done to them. Any teacher worth his salt, however convinced he may
be of the truth of his own views, must want results more lasting than
that.

To the extent, then, that he aims at assent at all, a good teacher
must aim at reasoned assent. That is, he must strive, at most, for agree-
ment based on a genuine understanding of the fundamental questions
involved in the subject under study, of the possible answers to those
questions, and of the reasons for what he thinks are the right answers.
Then he must leave the matter up to the judgment of the students. And
he will do this, not primarily out of respect for the students' rights, but
out of recognition of the nature of their minds.

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