From the Principles of Learning we learn that things learned first are powerfully embedded, and this data is extremely difficult to alter and/or erase. This is called Primacy. Of course the initial burden is with the instructor and he or she must ensure that what is taught is true and accurate for that reason.
Of course our parents are our first teachers.
Children are born children, just children-- beautiful blank slates; potential. Then the parents begin to build these new brains, to upload the tools and strategies necessary for their survival. These neutral children are trained to be fearful children, or selfish children, or compassionate and loving children, Roman Catholic children, Muslim children, generous and sharing children, xenophobic children, sociopathic children, anxious children, misogynist children, violent children, homophobic children, racist children, and children seeking to alter their consciousness to escape who they been trained to become.
Can you unlearn and/or alter this early programming? It's what psychology and psychiatry are all about.
Many of us have retrospectively mused that it would have been wonderful if we'd been given the tools to foster love and compassion, the thirst for knowledge, critical thinking, the yearning to embrace reality, and the hunger to flourish intellectually, morally, and spiritually. While it's possible to self-develop aspects of these mind-states, it works best if you get that training from birth.
The subject of Primacy opens many splendid cans of worms-- is it moral to teach your children religious stories as truth? Is it moral to pretend to know things you can't possibly know? Is it okay to lie to children?
Are parents to blame for their child's psychological mosaic? Where there is no intent, there can't really be blame; as parents we do the best we can with what we have. We can certainly ask if the ignorance (or innocence) of the parent has created the mind of this 6-year-old, and the answer is most certainly yes. And very soon other influences pour in to contribute to who (or what) the child becomes: culture; media; peers; the internet; authority figures; strange uncles.
It would be wonderful to have started childhood with informed, educated, and savvy parents-- but that's rare! Most of us, however, have to work hard as adults at repairing unhelpful, backward, and crippling mental strategies installed when we were very young.
And so it goes.
Take care.
