Indoctrination

Let’s talk about indoctrination. When we hear about indoctrination, it’s usually from a right-wing lunatic ranting about how public schools are trying to corrupt “our children” by teaching them things like, you know, history. Or science. Or just facts.

That’s not what I’m talking about today, mostly because it’s not true. Though I will touch on how the educational system in the United States contributes to indoctrination of the populace. This is probably gonna be a long one, so grab a snack. I recommend peanut butter pretzel nuggets. Ever had those? They’re addictive.

What IS Indoctrination?

Let’s start by defining indoctrination. From Dictionary.com, indoctrination refers to “teaching someone a set of beliefs without questioning them”. There are many examples of this, some of which I’ll talk about in greater detail in a moment. A good one is cults. Cults, through repetition and sometimes more violent means, convince people that they have all the answers to their questions and only through following the tenets of the cult to the letter, without critical thinking, can they achieve whatever goal they seek.

But there are other methods of indoctrination that can be more subtle and less cult-like. Let’s start by looking at how popular media indoctrinates people to think in certain ways, and how it can be extremely damaging.

The Criminal “Justice” System

If you’re like me, you grew up watching police procedural television shows. My favorite has always been Law & Order, but there are several other examples too numerous to mention. Police procedurals are a staple of TV at this point. Everyone loves them. We go along for the ride at home as the almost always good-looking cops and lawyers (or CSI teams) run around solving heinous crimes and putting bad guys in prison. It’s good TV.

Or is it?

Consider this. How many times during these shows do the cops (or FBI agents, or whoever) have a suspect in their sights and they’re “so sure” that they’re guilty. They did it, period. They know it in their gut. But they can’t do anything, because of the damned lawyers and the “laws” that protect the citizenry from the police. It’s never phrased that way, of course. The law, a lot of the time in these shows, is portrayed as an obstacle.

“I know he did it!”, the cop will say, gritting their teeth in an expression of beautiful frustration, “I can prove it if we can just get into their house and search it!”

“We can’t!” says their partner, also suitably annoyed. “We don’t have cause for a search warrant!”

This is usually followed by them bouncing around for a bit until they get the cause and are able to search the place.

The point here, though, is that the process of obtaining evidence before violating some random citizen’s privacy is more often than not treated as an unnecessary formality at best, and a time-consuming obstacle (during which the suspect has opportunity to destroy evidence or kill someone else) at worst. It’s never shown as being in place for a very good reason. That is, to protect people from the police just being able to barge into their homes and rifle through their things for no reason. Or on a “hunch”.

This attitude continues when the suspect is brought to trial, as seen on Law & Order. Here, we are made to sympathize with the prosecuting attorney, who is usually portrayed as a righteous person trying to uphold the law, and who is often frustrated by the often sleazy defense attorney. The defense attorney uses all sorts of legal tricks to try to get their client off, guilt be damned.

We sit, and share in the frustration as the prosecutor often finds their hands tied by the law. Maybe we find ourselves agreeing that all of these “loopholes”, as they are often portrayed, are pointless and give too much advantage to the defendant. Rarely do we ask ourselves why these laws exist, or appreciate that they serve to attempt to ensure a fair trial for an accused person. Instead we agree with the authorities depicted. Screw the law, lock them up.

So Where’s The Indoctrination?

Our laws, convoluted though they often appear to the lay observer, exist in large part for a very good reason. Our justice system is predicated on the belief that no person should have their rights violated unnecessarily by authorities of the state. We are innocent until proven guilty, by a jury of our peers, in a fair trial, in a court of law.

The effect that these procedural shows have on the public consciousness is two-fold. First, they instill and reinforce the belief that the authority – in this case the police & prosecutors – are always correct. It doesn’t matter if they have to bend or even outright break the law; in the end, they are proven correct over and over again as suspect after suspect gets found guilty and sentenced to prison.

We are indoctrinated to believe that they are right, and the people they accuse are always guilty. Even in instances where they are initially wrong, and the person they believed guilty is innocent (as often happens on Law & Order), there is rarely an examination of the importance of the law to protect people. It’s usually brushed off with a “sorry man, just doing our job”. And that’s that. On to potentially ruin the next person’s life.

The second effect this indoctrination has is that it serves as propaganda for the criminal justice system as a whole. It is no secret to those paying attention that our system is fundamentally broken and, yes, even racist. There is no shortage of instances of the police negotiating with an armed, angry white suspect. Contrast this with how they treat black and brown suspects. How many have been gunned down? You don’t even need to be armed to be shot by the police if you’re a minority. Merely existing seems to be enough. Look no further than Philando Castile.

We’re indoctrinated to believe the police are right, and if you’re being targeted by them it must be for a good reason. There’s a very real problem in the black community of people not trusting police, because why should they? The police have demonstrated with their actions that they shoot first and ask questions later. This is why people hesitate to call 911, because far from making a dangerous situation better, they often escalate it into murder. And then the armchair detectives at home reading the news (usually white people) shake their heads and go, “well, they must have done something to provoke it”.

Police procedural shows have indoctrinated us to believe that our criminal justice system is biased too much in favor of defendants, when the exact opposite is true. You can read more about this in The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander. She does a better job of explaining this phenomenon than I ever could.

Indoctrination in Schools

“Hang on”, you say, confused. “I thought you said the right-wingers were crazy when they claimed that the left was indoctrinating children in school?” They are. But that doesn’t mean there’s no indoctrination happening at all. It just isn’t what they think.

From an early age, we learn that school is less about critical thinking skills and more about memorizing a whole bunch of information and then regurgitating it, as learned, onto a test. That’s how you succeed, for the most part. There are exceptions, such as colleges. But from elementary through high school, the path to success lies in memorization and regurgitation.

Indoctrination relies on a lack of critical thinking. The best teachers always challenge their students to think for themselves, and not just blindly accept information given to them. Coincidentally, these types of teachers tend to be few and far between in our schools. There is an over-reliance on standardized testing. Ever-present budget cuts prohibit funding for activities that may stimulate thought in favor of traditional lecture-style lessons. Combine this with an increasingly overworked (due to class sizes) and underpaid teachers and you have a recipe for a disinterest in actual teaching/learning.

Because schooling is the foundation for life, kids who are taught to accept information blindly and who may even be punished for questioning what is taught become adults who have been conditioned to just accept what authority tells them, without examination.

I mentioned that colleges tend to be better at teaching critical thinking skills. This is largely true. However there have recently been movements focused upon shutting down dissenting opinions on college campuses and suppressing free expression. And of course, you have the skyrocketing cost of higher education which acts as a barrier of entry for many. This results in more and more people not being exposed to different ideas and critical thinking skills, which grows the uninformed population. Then they have their own kids, and the cycle continues.

The News Media

This article wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the role that the mainstream, corporate news media plays in indoctrinating people. This really can’t be understated. The news, far from speaking truth to power and informing the people of what’s going on in the world, functions more as a fourth branch of the government. They shield power from truth and create their own narratives of events that serve the establishment.

This dynamic is explored in far more detail in Manufacturing Consent, by Noam Chomsky. Feel free to check out my breakdown of the book here, or go right to the source and read the book yourself.

For our purposes here, just be aware that the news media capitalizes on the ingrained ignorance of the masses – fueled from elementary school – to further indoctrinate them in insidious ways.

For example, consider the myth of American exceptionalism. This is the idea that America is, somehow, better than any other country on earth. This myth has been pushed on us by the news, which gives copious amounts of air time to politicians and pundits peddling the narrative. They decry the conditions of other countries – ignoring the underlying reasons they are in such states of unrest, which is usually a result of American meddling in their affairs – and prop up our own country as a comparison.

You can see this with the immigration crisis happening right now. Whenever it’s brought up on the news, even sympathetically, they always mention that the immigrants are escaping the conditions of their home countries. They’re coming to America, we are told, because its so much better here than elsewhere. Aren’t we lucky to live in such a great country.

Another example is whenever someone compares America to a European country. You inevitably get negative comparisons. America is so great because we have freedoms and choices that those European countries don’t have. Or, they bring up how European countries pay so much in taxes compared to here. Ignored are the actual statistics and the differences in what the tax revenue goes towards. And without a foundation of critical thinking, people who watch these reports are further indoctrinated to believe the myth of American exceptionalism. They’ve been conditioned to just accept their trusted source of information, whether that is Fox News or MSNBC or CNN, or any other outlet. No one is fact-checking what they’re told. They just accept it as correct, much as they did in school.

The news also indoctrinates us to blame “the other” for our problems, rather than critically think about the often complicated reasons behind them. The reason you’re unemployed is because an immigrant came and took your job, not because your company outsourced to another country so they could save on labor costs. It isn’t the latest in an escalating series of aggressions that has caused Iran to be hostile towards us, it’s just that they’re evil and possibly terrorists. Palestinians are attacking Israel because they’re terrorists, not because Israel is an aggressive rogue nation attempting a genocide that has stretched back decades. Anything that helps people is socialism. You get the idea.

There Is Hope

We’re indoctrinated almost from birth to believe certain things and think in certain ways. But we can fight it. As I mentioned, critical thinking skills are the bane of indoctrination. You can’t indoctrinate someone who has the ability to do independent research and find the truth. This is why the GOP in particular has been so adamant about defunding education whenever they have the chance. Not that the Democrats are much better.

In conclusion, I hope that this article has opened your eyes to some of the ways we’re indoctrinated, often without even being aware of it. There are many others that I didn’t touch on here. Leave some examples in the comments. Start a dialogue. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

And remember: next time you hear some statistic or factoid from an authority figure – be it a teacher, a news anchor, or your friends – stop and think about it. Does it sound right? Even if it does, do your own research. I’ve been wrong plenty of times about things that I just took for granted that I knew. Don’t even take my word for anything. Look things up. Learn about the history of different conflicts in the world to see if there’s a new perspective you didn’t consider before. Educate yourself.