The McWane Science Center here in Birmingham, Alabama is a fantastic resource for kids and adults alike. Fascinating exhibits, a newly-enlarged aquarium, and lots of fun stuff make it great place to hang out. My wife and I take our 3-year-old daughter there quite often, and she loves it.
A few months ago, I started following the McWane Center on Twitter. I don't know which staff member there writes their "tweets," but they are normally innocuous announcements about new exhibits, special events, new movies showing in the IMAX theatre, etc.
Today, @McWane posted the following tweet:
Is your classroom or child participating in Obama's 'Indoctrination' Plan for Students on Sept 8th? Why or why not?
This was accompanied by a link to the documentation provided by the Department of Education to help classroom teachers prepare their students for the President's speech on September 8.
Not being a teacher myself, this was the first I've heard of this. I think it's a fascinating idea, the President of the United States speaking directly to schoolchildren across the country. Indeed, the DoE claims that "[t]his is the first time an American president has spoken directly to the nation's school children about persisting and succeeding in school."
And yet, I kept coming back to the word "indoctrination."
Why had the McWane staffer chosen to use that word? Was the White House really calling this event an "Indoctrination Plan for Students"? That seemed ominous and I couldn't really imagine, even tongue-in-cheek, the WH using such terminology.
Indeed, a search at the White House and Department of Education websites found that they were using no such terminology to describe the September 8 event.
Still wanting to give McWane the benefit of the doubt, I reasoned that well, maybe I don't know the true meaning of "indoctrinate." Maybe I'm overreacting and assigning the word a negative connotation when it doesn't really have one.
So, I went and looked up the word at Wiktionary, and found this definition:
to indoctrinate (third-person singular simple present indoctrinates, present participle indoctrinating, simple past and past participle indoctrinated)
1. to teach with a biased or one-sided ideology.
Yeah. That's what I thought it meant. And it became clear that whoever wrote that tweet on behalf of the McWane Science Center either didn't understand the word, or was trying to make some sort of snide commentary on the President and his administration.
And that bothers me. A lot. We are members of the McWane Science Center, so our fees help pay that person's salary. And I don't really think a science center should be pushing any sort of political views on the public. That's not really why they are there.
So. I replied to McWane's tweet, asking:
ericrz @Mcwane Why are you rudely referring to it as an "indoctrination"? Don't you think kids should learn about the President?
The staffer responded in moments, both with a reply visible to the public on Twitter as well as a direct message to me only.
Mcwane @ericrz didn't mean to express an opinion either way. just copied the title from an article.
Direct Message: Mcwane i deeply apologize. i am actually for it, i didn't mean to post the quotations! should have double checked my posting.
WITHOUT quotations?? That makes it even worse!!! And what kind of "article" was it copied from? Doing some additional poking around on the web today, I find that the only people using the term "indoctrination" for this historic speech are right-wing nutcases who threaten to keep their kids home on September 8 so they aren't "brainwashed into socialism."
This is our SCIENCE center, folks.
After another back and forth, and after I provided the Wiktionary link to perhaps better define the word in question, the McWane staffer removed the previous tweets and I deleted my original tweet making reference to it. The staffer plans to repost the tweet tomorrow, with a link to the Dept of Education site and a simpler headline like "Obama to speak to schoolchildren on September 8."
Seems to be a case of ignorance rather than a political statement. But the lesson for today, folks is that words are powerful. And as I told the staffer, don't retweet headlines from anywhere but verifiable news sources such as CNN, MSNBC, or the Associated Press.