There is a difference between guilt and conscience, between shame and moral awareness, between indoctrination and age-appropriate truth-telling. We should be careful about using ‘indoctrination’ only for minority beliefs. A child raised to hunt, fish, eat animals, attend rodeos, visit zoos, or see some animals as pets and others as products is being taught values. A child raised vegan is also being taught values. Children are allowed to have moral feelings. They are allowed to feel sad when they learn that animals are hurt, to ask why humans do the things we do, to object to cages, to say no, and to develop ethical instincts that may make adults uncomfortable.
AMANDA R. WILLIAMS: Every household teaches values. Parents, schools, churches, television, birthday parties, holiday meals, zoo field trips—all of it communicates a worldview. Chicken nuggets, leather shoes, fishing trips, cartons of milk, and animal attractions do too. The only difference is that some worldviews are so normalized they become invisible.
A child can be taught that cows, pigs, chickens, and fishes are food, and that monkeys in cages are entertainment, and this will be treated as normal childhood. A child can be taken to a zoo and taught to call captivity education. A child can be served the body of an animal and taught to call it dinner. A child can be handed a glass of milk and never told anything about the mother or baby it came from. That is not neutrality. It is a belief system with cultural power behind it…
The social psychologist Melanie Joy calls this “carnism”: the largely invisible ideology that conditions people to see some animals as companions and others as consumable. Whether or not one uses that exact term, the basic point is hard to avoid. Dominant beliefs often do not feel like beliefs. They feel like common sense.
Veganism, by contrast, has to announce itself. It has to explain why it is opting out. It has to justify refusing what everyone else has agreed not to question. Because it disrupts the comfort of the ordinary, it is often accused of being rigid, judgmental, dramatic, or extreme. But there is nothing extreme about telling children that animals can suffer.
There is nothing extreme about saying that a mother cow has an interest in her baby, that a fish has an interest in continuing to live, or that a monkey in a cage is not an attraction. These are not fringe claims. They are ordinary moral observations once we stop treating species membership as a permission slip…
Compassion should not function as a test of worth or a weapon against other people. It should not become a script children are expected to perform perfectly. And it should never make children feel bad for what adults serve them in another household, at school, at a birthday party, or anywhere else where children are not the ones making the decisions…
There is a difference between guilt and conscience, between shame and moral awareness, between indoctrination and age-appropriate truth-telling. Children are allowed to have moral feelings. They are allowed to feel sad when they learn that animals are hurt, to ask why humans do the things we do, to object to cages, to say no, and to develop ethical instincts that may make adults uncomfortable…
Adults often say they want children to be compassionate, but only within approved boundaries: be kind to dogs and cats, be gentle with butterflies, don’t hurt the frog, say sorry when you step on an ant. But do not ask about the hamburger, the zoo, the aquarium, the milk, or why some animals are friends and others are ingredients.
When a child extends compassion beyond the lines adults have drawn, that compassion becomes inconvenient. It becomes “too much,” something to manage, minimize, or explain away. This is where accusations of “indoctrination” often enter. The word is powerful because nobody wants children manipulated or coerced, trapped inside an adult’s worldview without room to think, question, disagree, and become themselves.
But we should be careful about using “indoctrination” only for minority beliefs. A child raised around Christianity is being taught values. A child raised around patriotism is being taught values. A child raised to hunt, fish, eat animals, attend rodeos, visit zoos, or see some animals as pets and others as products is being taught values. A child raised vegan is also being taught values.
The question is not whether values are being taught. They always are. The better questions are: Are children allowed to ask questions? To disagree? To have relationships with people who live differently? Are they given information in ways they can handle? Are they loved unconditionally, protected from shame, and supported in forming their own conscience? Those questions matter far more than whether a household’s ethics are popular. SOURCE
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