Teaching is about encouraging students to ask questions. It's hard because the questions sprout like mushrooms on the forest floor and you may not have the answers, the time, or the patience for all of them.

Indoctrination is the opposite: providing stock answers and refusing to elaborate. Using social pressure and authority to shame students and block their questions. Its purpose is to instil deference and obedience -- to enlist more soldiers for war -- not to enrich the spirit.

The topics that you or I consider to be "fundamental hard science" are significantly less controversial than the topics that would normally fall under the category of activism. I'm not saying that controversial ideas should be completely ignored, just that controversy may be an important factor, in the eyes of some, to draw the line between cold hard truths and up-and-coming divisive ideas.

There is a huge amount of understood science, math, history, philosophy, and critical thinking to teach. It is being replaced with a lot of propaganda instead.

When students are going to school and leaving with improved skills, life experiences, networks, and more critical thinking...it's teaching. When students leave with a chip on their shoulder to disrupt the United States and attack its institutions and reputation and even cause problems, without any actual skill acquisition or increase in critical thinking, it's indoctrination.

What about when it's both, because they learned many things about the United States that make a desire for disruption of the current status quo justified?

I think we're deluding ourselves if we think we can give people critical thinking and not have them question the consequences of colonialism, or slavery, or the industrial revolution, or manifest destiny, or homeland security, and which of those consequences should be kept and which should be torn down.

(There's a pretty good book on this subject, actually: among other things it touches on, The Myth of the Rational Voter [2007, Bryan Caplan] notes the stark difference in voting habits among those with and without a college education. Does that mean all college education includes indoctrination, or does it mean learning critical thinking causes people to think critically to similar conclusions, or perhaps both? And at another level of abstraction: if you're a policymaker and you want people to vote in the way they tend to do when not college educated, aren't there incentives to cast education itself into doubt?)

If you start talking about Palestine in your Differential Equations class, that is indoctrination. If you start talking about Jews in your CompSci 102 class, that is indoctrination.

There is no reason to talk about anything besides the class, in the class.

Can we mention economics in that differential equations class? What about hyperinflation? Specific instances of hyperinflation?

Can we mention Einstein in physics 101? His faith and politics is too far, surely, but are they really entirely unrelated to his science? What about Heisenberg? Bohr? Oppenheimer?

Hot take, but I don't those 20th century modern physicists should be the focus of an intro to Newtonian mechanics survey course.

Ha! I'll be honest, it's been over a decade since I took intro physics, and I work in the optics industry, so my perspective is certainly skewed! Fascinating what we take for granted...

I don't think it's a trick question at all... I think these are standard, everyday, run-of-the-mill questions. Progress is driven entirely by people, and people are often influenced by their messy personal histories. Conflicts, disagreements, and interpersonal relations are deeply entwined with even the hard sciences! Can you imagine the situation in, say, linguistics?

Einstein as a misogynist might not be appropriate, but how about as a Jew in Nazi Germany? Is the phrase "God does not play dice with the universe" indoctrination? Can we discuss the Solvay conferences? The first Solvay conference is likely the most important gathering of scientists in modern history. The third? Indoctrination.

What about Galileo and the church?

I guess my point is that history is messy, and not scientific. Does this mean we should remove dates from science classes?

It is interesting that you referenced "God does not play dice with the universe". If you were to discuss it, I would suggest discussing what he actually said:

"Die Quantenmechanik ist sehr achtung-gebietend. Aber eine innere Stimme sagt mir, daß das doch nicht der wahre Jakob ist. Die Theorie liefert viel, aber dem Geheimnis des Alten bringt sie uns kaum näher. Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt, daß der nicht würfelt."

There are a number of different translations, but one is:

Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the "old one." I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.

It is relatively easy to understand both the context and meaning of what Einstein said, especially if you read his numerous other works. The objection to some of the key underpinnings of Quantum Mechanics was something he mentioned a number of times.

They key here is that you can explore and understand what Einstein was talking about without digging deep into the meaning of a god, or his view of religion. The concepts of Quantum Mechanics are complicated enough to keep any undergrad or grad student busy for a lifetime.

That's more or less how it was discussed in either my QM or E&M class (sans German). I found it fascinating, and it's kindled a lifelong love of QM within me!

But, in the context of this thread... Is it physics? I'd say no! It's metaphysics at best and really more along the lines of history and philosophy. That would make it indoctrination by many of the arguments in this thread! (I intend this to be a somewhat uncharitable interpretation.) My argument is simply that classification is hard.

And again, this should be one of the easier field to classify! To bring it back to my linguistics example, can you imagine trying to discuss African American Vernacular English without leaving the confines of linguistic theory?

100% this. This should not be rocket science. Time to kick out faculty and problematic students that want to make math and comp sci and biology about these types of things. Leave those for politics and philosophy classes where real and meaningful debate can take place.

There was a time we thought of physics as just a discipline physicists do, detached from the use of the science.

Then two cities got wiped off the map in intentional runaway nuclear reactions.

A whole generation of physicists learned the hard way that if you don't make hard sciences at least a little like those types of things, you may lack the framework to realize when you're being co-opted into a machine that kills... That "pure" science takes huge moral risks if it believes itself to be detachable from the world it is trying to explore.

Credit where credit is due, they responded to the new challenge (https://pugwash.org/).

Those two cities getting wiped off the map is not an output of people thinking of physics as a discipline. There is no causal relationship between:

p1 - treat physics as a discipline p2 - two cities get wiped off the map

There are many more variables that are relevant here, and in times of justified war like WW2 things are different. Consider a war scenario where your physicists spent all their undergraduate study time learning about identity politics and writing political preambles on their papers in order to get their papers even looked at.

Go read about Orlov, Sakharov and Khalatnikov, (or Abdus Salam as a bonus track) and see if you can exhibit even an ounce of shame that any one of them felt, and hang your head.

I stopped using a Mir textbook in my differential equations class the day Russia invaded Ukraine. Was that too political for you?

Can you point to a curriculum or lecture where that has occurred?

Reminds me of Oakland, CA schools doing a walkout protest march when their kids already don't get enough teaching, being one of the worst school districts in the country. What message are you even trying to send? The most history-illiterate has a message you should listen to?