Narrowing The Mind

by Patrick Appel

Atheist Norm Geras puts Richard Dawkins claim that "imposing parental beliefs on children is a form of child abuse" in context:

[E]ducating children involves, willy-nilly, the imparting of moral beliefs. This cannot be done without the presentation of some things as good and others as less good or downright bad. Even done in a non-doctrinaire way, it must involve a degree of active direction. It's misleading, therefore, to pretend that only dogmatists and fanatics narrow the minds of their children to the available sum of human beliefs. Everybody does it to some extent. Socialization of any kind would be impossible without it. It begins with the teaching of language.