The point of the matter is that the brainwashing part is the morally ‘bad’ in this picture, but the belief system is rather innocuous. It was merely the method the parents used to share them with the children.

Anything can be brainwashing in the right hands.

The problem with that claim is that it is vulnerable to an argument by definition.

In other words, defenders of secular humanism will simply claim that the kind of education you’re talking about isn’t secular humanist, because part of what constitutes secular humanism is a commitment to scientific rationality, which iself is defined in terms of the fact that every truth claim is subject to a restless scrutinisation.

I have some sympathy for your point, though. Certainly stuff that passes for scientific education can be precisely as you describe.

This certainly should be, but is not always, the case.

It is possible to teach the scientific worldview as dogmatically as it is possible to teach religion; the potential for those raised to entirely secular beliefs to become questioning, intellectually engaged persons will surely depend entirely on the quality of the teaching.

But are they abused? My first thought was that they couldn’t be, because you can’t abuse someone by telling them the truth. But this is false: if parents spent a long time telling their children, in graphic detail, about the horrors of the holocaust, or let them watch the BDSM orgies they participate in, this could well be a form of abuse.

What makes the difference? I think the only thing that can is the thought that there is something objectively good–worth teaching to our children, whether or not they immediately appreciate it–about looking at the world honestly and unsparingly, with a concern for the truth even when it hurts, in a way that implies (I think for many of us) at least agnosticism.

Maybe the only way to avoid the brainwashing charge is to cultivate a restless and questioning spirit in people through our educational practices. But here the case of Richard and Dan looms large again. They were both precisely taught to be restless and questioning, and it is their claim that they have been damaged as a consequence. For them, it is their inability to leave behind the legacy of their “enlightened” education that has left them isolated and estranged.

They say they are damaged: isolated, and estranged by their upbringing. But were they “brainwashed?” This is the question.

Succinctly: Can a person be forced to “think critically?”

It reminds me of Rorty’s discussion of Orwell in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity

…it does not matter whether “two plus two is four” is true, much less whether this truth is “subjective” or “corresponds to external reality.” All that matters is that if you do believe it, you can say it without getting hurt. In other words, what matters is your ability to talk to other people about what seems to you true, not what is in fact true. If we take care of freedom, truth can take care of itself.”

To know more about whether or not Richard and Dan were brainwashed I would want to know more about what happened to them while they were “closeted away” during their teen years. I am guessing for the purposes of your thought experiment they were treated very well, but they were also very vigorously held to high standards of logic, evidence, coherence of inference from premises, etc. etc. but not otherwise threatened or harmed. Though it must be noted “closeted away” does seem to indicate restrictions on their social contacts, their freedom of movement, and their ability to comingle with their friends who they presumably enjoyed prior to their incarceration in “critical thinking school.”

I think it is probably incoherent to apply the term “brainwashing” to someone who comes to critical thinking of their own accord. I sometimes wish I could “simply believe” (about all kinds of things). It would make many aspects of my life much much easier. But I came to my current thinking entirely of my own free will. If I wanted to, I think I might be able to get myself on a path back to dogmatism though it would require me to give up a very large part of who I am. A kind of death if you will.

But if I had been “closeted away” and subjected to a rigorous program that built habits in me that led to various ideas about how the world is it is difficult to separate out the set of values: critical thinking, choosing theories that best fit the evidence, coherence of beliefs and separate it out from the fact that these habits were instilled in me via a system that smacks of social control.
Thus I am generally agree with Rorty, or at least what I take to be his position, that brainwashing is dependent on HOW beliefs are shoved into people’s heads and that it doesn’t really matter what the content of the beliefs are. Brainwashing is not about teaching people the wrong thing. It’s about teaching them things in a way that prevents them from coming to any conclusion but the one you want them to come to.

But I didn`t suggest either of those people were brainwashing people.

And don`t you go suggesting I`m intelligent!

Tsk!