Research Information System
Ankara Üniversitesi Eğitim Bilimleri Fakültesi Dergisi, vol.56, no.2, pp.813-877, 2023 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)
Given that public education is compulsory worldwide, there are many people who are subjected to indoctrination efforts. Therefore, the tension between indoctrination and mental freedom concerns all societies. Although indoctrination is an ethical, social, political and legal problem, the most important thing that indoctrination damages epistemologically is rationality. While mental emancipation is possible with knowledge and mental activity that will enable the establishment of correct causality, indoctrination damages the correct establishment of the causal link. In its place, it leaves a weak rationality that allows the default doctrine to be believed (with bad reasons). Individuals are thus incorporated into the political and social system envisaged by the indoctrinator. In this article, the tension between indoctrination and mental freedom is explored in an attempt to overcome it. Accordingly, an education that supports rationality is proposed as an antidote to the damage caused by indoctrination to rationality and mental freedom. The aim of this review article is to show how the potential for mental freedom can be protected against an indoctrination attempt and how the risk of indoctrination threatening mental freedom can be eliminated. To this end, data were collected from written documents using a goal-oriented sampling technique. The term " indoctrination" refers to pedagogical indoctrination, which is the conformist version of indoctrination that is inevitably observed in public educational institutions, and the sectarian version is excluded from the scope. As a result, it is concluded that an education that provides reflection and develops a rational-critical perspective theoretically enables mental freedom vis-à-vis determinism of indoctrination.