How do schools indoctrinate our young minds?

I know for a fact that governments use public education and MSM to shape public opinion. But how EXACTLY do schools and media bring about the "sheeple mob mentality"?

Brainwashing is the art of "pounding" certain "facts and figures" into a person's mind. When someone is told the same thing/things over and over, they begin to acept those things as reality.

reply to post by thetruth777

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I'll begin by stating that indoctrination was not the original purpose of the educational system and that most educators do not see it as such. Most teachers care about the subject they are teaching.

That said, I believe educational institutions have become something other than institutions who's primary goal is to teach. The primary goal has been shaped by the federal government through years of laws being passed that control how schools are set up, what they teach and how they do it. Schools are designed to make young people into good worker drones who are subject to authority and are not capable of independant thought.

How?

By not teaching student how to think. Pure logic is not taught as a subject.
By not suppourting dissent and new thinking on subjects.
By stifiling exceptional intelligence and teaching to the lowest common denominator.
By indoctrinationg kids to a veiw of US history that is one-sided.
By exposing kids to prisonlike, dictatorial conditions where they are not treated like citizens.
By teaching whatever the government approves of and nothing about what it doesn't.

Were you taught in school to think, or to believe what you were told?
That capitalism isn't the only valid way?
That there are many things science can't explain at all?
To think using logic on your own?
About government corruption?
About how to feed yourself without depending on a supermarket?
How to care for your own medical needs without depending on a doctor?
How to buy stocks and invest?
How to read law?
What the laws of the land are and how they apply to you?
How to represent yourself in court?

These are all important things that would create independant, free-thinking citizens, but they are NOT taught in the "education" system. Why not? Because the goal isn't to create subjects who are dependant on the syustem.

correction to last sentance - IS to create subjects...

I'd say if there was a governing factor on bullies people would be more self inspired to not be surpressed.


Therefore, creating belief regardless of what is taught in schools.

reply to post by thetruth777

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As to the Main Stream Media:

During WWII, the US government set up an offical news service, following the very effective system that was in place in Germany. You can find snippets from them still. They were clearly propoganda. After WWII, the US government gave jobs to some of Hitler's PR people and learned a great deal. Then they "discontinued" the project.

If you know anything about how covert intelligence projects operate, you can easily deduce what really happened. The project went black. Intelligence indirectly controls the media through contacts and "assets" in the industry.

The news you see on TV is a pathetic mockery of journalism. Stories that are of extreme importance to the citizens are often not mentioned, like new laws and government actions. The media is complicant, for the most part, with whatever the offical veiwpoint is. They seldom expose corruption and abuses of rights. They give only PART of the picture on subjects they report on (which part depends on which channel).

Sitcoms and other prime time shows always teach morals (like any story does) that are approved of and are part of the shaping of the mass mentality. They support whatever morality system is desired by the powers that be either a or b.

The media creates in the masses a mentality of a two sided veiw of reality. Either you belive this system or that. Either republican or democrat. "Christian" or nonchristian. Reality is much more complicated and subtle and requires more thought and understanding than that.

I hope that is what type of info you were looking for.

reply to post by TheTruthIsHere7

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I agree. Maybe not noticing if they supressed kids get together and pound the bully would be good. That type of thing used to happen when I was in school. Now they might get sued.

i guess everybody that has the opinion that public schools indoctrinate our children went to PRIVATE schools. free thinking, reason, and open-mindedness, is ONLY taught through home-schooling or at private schools.

c'mon people, you can do better then that.

I went to public schools. I taught myself to think. Private schools/homeschooling is great, but not everyone can afford it.

If you want to see past indoctrination and the "Matrix", this might be useful:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by bricmpt

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Well, schools teach the US constitution in 8th grade, does that count?


And as for pure logic, they DO teach that in high school math.

And, face it, if YOU didn't go to school, you couldn't count, read, write, type, OR POST ON ATS!!!!!


And as for pure memorization and facts, does it HURT to know when the Constitution was written and when Civil War broke out?

Also, I took Advanced Placement classes in High School, which teach higher level thinking skills.


I DO believe HS indoctrination is more subtle than first apparent. I was "awake" since 10th grade. My "base" education (which appeared to me at that time as useless), but my TRUE education went on with the computer, the library, and Alex Jones.

And, from personal experience, even though I was "awake", I would walk into my history class, and the lessons, textbooks were written IN SUCH A SUBTLE WAY that what I knew and know of alternative history seemed idiotic. If not for my constant exposure to Alex Jones, I would have bought into the propaganda.


Bottom line, the textbooks are written by the Elite in the way that the TRUTH BE DAMNED!

Student,s can guess what,s happening to them well i believe some or most do. They realize they are trapped in a system that tries to teach herd mentality do what we tell you or suffer the consequences. As i did i went from the top class to the bottom class in 3 years spent 2 years in detention got belted every day sometimes 2 or 3 times a day the most was 18 of the belt in one day. This was the 80,s. What did this do to me just made me rebel even more till i completely dropped out never went back went and got a job as a fisherman at 14 lied about my age. How would want to go to a place where you know you are treated like a prisoner and you know you are going to be punished.

I also think it needs to be brought up that schools teach kids to mind their own business and never question authority (a.k.a. be sheeple).

So, do what the teacher says. "But WHY?" "Because I said so." "Do I have to?" "See you in detention."


Another scenario:


Jack: Where is Fred right now?

Teacher: None of your business.

Jack: Is he in trouble?

Teacher: Don't worry about it.

(10 years later)

Jack: What goes on at Area 51?

Jack's Inner Voice: None of your business.

Jack: Wonder what the government keeps secret?

Jack's Inner Voice: Don't worry about it.





Get my drift?

I want to say that I don't agree that Pure Logic = math.

Math uses logic. Logic does not develop automatically or by accident. There is a way to study the process and it helps the brain develop the way it was designed...just like studying Latin and Greek are different than many non-classical languages due to declension and reasoning needed to learn them. Certainly math contributes to logical development but I don't think it should be considered a replacement for aggressive study of the subject by itself. Just my opinion.

Just an anecdotal comment that I realize is totally singular and personal: My son was eagerly learning Latin in the 2nd grade until my best friend (who is a public school teacher) laughed at the idea and scoffed it in front of him. From that day forward his interest waned until I finally gave up altogether at the end of 3rd grade. Think teachers influence our children?

If you're serious about learning more about this topic, here's a list of books:

The Terror of Neoliberalism by Henry A. Giroux

Educating the "Right" Way by Michael Apple

Shame of the Nation by Jonathan Kozol

Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks

Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich

The Knowledge Factory by Stanley Aronowitz

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen

The University in Chains by Henry A. Giroux

Ideology and Curriculum by Michael Apple

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

... and I could go on, but that's a good start.

The education system is an ideological state apparatus (a la the political theory of Louis Althusser), and is vested with the mission of inculcating students as willing subjects of hypercapitalism and its consumerist mode of thought. Ideological state apparatus, unlike their repressive cousins (the police, the government, and the military), operate through the interpellation of the student as an unknowing, yet acquiescent, partaker in the process of what Freire called "banking knowledge."

This is typified by a complete lack of critical engagement with the material that is taught in the classroom, discourages substantive questioning, dissent, and critical discussion, and relies on the passive status of the student as an "empty vessel."

This type of learning is intensified by the current mania regarding accountability and testing schemes. Students are even moreso regarded as automata that have no purpose other than to regurgitate legitimated state knowledge onto official tests. The imaginative, creative, critical, and inquiry-related skillsets of inquisitive students are traded for the filling-ins of standardized tests that measure nothing but the ability to repeat what they have been told.

Teachers, accordingly, are stripped of all their abilities to engender fun, creativity, and inspiration into their lesson-plans as they are stressed in their primary mission of increasing tests scores. This is coupled with the fact that the teaching profession is vilified, underpaid, and unable to draw on the most talented sectors of society. It, in some sense, betrays the mistaken priorities of a society in the throes of capitalist system that has truly lost its mind.

What you get is subservient students willing to prostrate themselves to the demands of the corporate mentality with its emphasis on compartmentalization, mindless submission to authority, and the regimented bureaucracy of the paternal hierarchy.

Additionally, students as graduates are unable to critically question their government and media structures as their has never been an opportunity to learn the willful questioning of authority.

That's my brief take on it.

I find this interesting because I've wondered for a while why they are trying to have more control on us. They give us IDs and they line us up while they scan them. Hmm, sounds very familair to what some have said.
I personally don't like the way they Teach. But I enjoy learning. I try learning on my own because most of what they teach is One Sided.
They get stricter and stricter, they say the IDs are there for our protection, in case someone that doesn't belong there tries to get in.
But I doubt thats the real reason. Control is something that I do not like happenning to me.
Great Thread!

"I have undertaken to get at the facts from the point of view of the business men--citizens of the community who, after all, pay the bills and, therefore, have a right to say what they shall have in their schools." ---Charles H.Thurber, from an address at the annual Meeting of the National Education Association, July 9th, 1897

The key part maybe "their schools." in that statement, notice how the assumption already in 1897 maybe that education belongs to wealthy elites mostly robber barons, why else would the system fail to teach law or individualism, those behaviors are completely unwanted by people such as Frederick W. Taylor.

A couple other books to consider would be Underground History of education by John taylor Gatto and Walking on Water by Derrick Jensen also Seperating School and State by Sheldon Richman

Well I cant comment of particulars of education in the US, but if the government wanted greater sheep like masses, they would get rid of public education. Public education is the result of the Enlightenment and the liberalization of society. Education was always frowned on because it weakens the totalitarian. This is the reason why right wingers often accuse post secondary institutions of being left wing, education tends to liberalize people.

Education Sets Humanity Free

reply to post by Tenebrous

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To say that government wants public education to be eliminated in the hopes it would make people more obedient, I think you ignore the basic founding of the America that exists and existed for many years without a public school system. The last thing they want are a bunch of revolutionaries running around ignoring everything they say, which was the case in the beginning of our country. They don't have any need for free thinkers at all, that maybe precisely why they have education, not only to root that out but to create a society that suveillances itself, obedient in the same manner that Foucault would describe. Triaining for the need for experts to manage our lives, one has to be taught to agree to imprisonment, one has to be taught to agree to not putting forth any effort in learning unless it can produce some material tangible benefit to society, damn the individual use or need. I find no obligation nor function in schooling other than to trample creativity or to exemplify conformity and to serve as a apparatus for quelling dissent, anxiety and depression amongst the people over the encroachment and destruction of their liberties.

I agree to a point with you, I'm more posing my opinion. Free and unfetered education is the best way to fight to ignorance, like I was meaning to say. Educate the masses, and it will set them free. If there was stronger unbiased education, Iraq wouldv'e never happened.