brainwashing students

Have you ever noticed that when you learn about government, that teachers always teach you about the american government first. Ever since preschool, teachers have drilled into my mind that our government is the best. only after 13 years of school do they even begin to teach you about foreign governments.

does anyone else here realise this?

[edit on 22-9-2005 by ketoes13]

That may be true, but I would venture to guess that the reason that U.S. Goverment is taught first is simply because they are students of the U.S.

I woud think even more importantly than the fact that they teach about our government is that they don't show students the darker sides to things we've done in the past.

Yes. Interesting, isn't it?

But...now do you wonder what else they might not be telling you?

If you live in Japan the first thing you learn about is.....is...come say it with me...no not the Ukraine......common sense my friend...common sense!

Brainwashing: A non-violent method that uses mind control techniques to convince a person to abandon some of their basic beliefs and adopt the beliefs of the indoctrinator. The anti-cult movement teaches that many small religious groups, which they call cults, engage in brainwashing. Sociologists and mental health researchers who are not involved in the anti-cult movement generally reject the concept.

If you are 5 years old and starting school....what basic beliefs could you possibly have about your government....at that age your just trying not to wet yourself in front of the new kid.

Its called E D U C A T I O N...not brainwashing. It makes sense that they teach you about YOUR country and government first.

America is one of the few countries in which students are not taught media awareness...

Most people can remember ever since they started school, hearing bull# about everything we americans did...destroyed the primitive indians to claim our God-given land, etc. To found our great society that we have today, where we send our children off to die in another country so we can steal oil to power tanks and escalades, while not spending enough money on social issues, letting the poor get poorer and making the rich richer. And of course all the poor people just keep slaving away at the bottom of the chain, making sure the head honchos are swimming in money while they can have a sip of it if they keep working hard. Oh, but remember what you've been hearing since kindergarten, if you "work hard and put your mind to it, all of your dreams can come true!" Another nice slogan that is only heard in America, where people can dream big and die slowly living in a free country where pot smokers are imprisoned longer than rapists.

It will only continue to get worse, with our current set of ideals in this country, a country that was built with violence, or so the story goes. We all know we are a society of violent greedy people, yet the thing is, it is encouraged in this country...it is our country's history, our present, and our future. Schools will keep "educating", and people will keep driving forward with gusto in the american way.

[edit on 22-9-2005 by Shoktek]

Originally posted by white4life420
I woud think even more importantly than the fact that they teach about our government is that they don't show students the darker sides to things we've done in the past.

I think this may be a generational thing or maybe location within the US because I never had a single teacher that didn't point out every single thing they felt was wrong with America, mainly what was wrong with white males.

This is how my average American History class went. Semester begins with a few weeks on how horribly the aggresive American settlers were forcing Indians off of their land. Then we roll into the Civil War and how horrible all southerners were. Next we move into World War II (skipping WWI because most history teachers don't know anything about it). The teacher spends one day on D-Day and Pearl Harbor combined, a week on Rosie the Riviter, a week on Japanese Internment Camps, and a week on Hiroshima and the horrible heartless Americans. And finally the entire second half of the semester consists of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War.

Ahh.. the public school system at work...liberal propoganda, and social brainwashing.

Luckily most people can see thru the fog of deception and make their own decisions.

Originally posted by JoshGator54
Ahh.. the public school system at work...liberal propoganda, and social brainwashing.

Luckily most people can see thru the fog of deception and make their own decisions.

That's the problem with teaching anything really, especially to younger kids, who are impressionable. Brainwashing will take place in almost any class, because the teachers almost always lean one way or the other, and are glad to get their ideas across. Which leads to the point about a class in media awareness...in our current society, I don't think most people do look through the fog, regardless of being right or left, the average person does not look into things very deeply. Kids should be instructed to question what is being instructed to them.

Shoktek,

Great point. I remember a teacher in elementry school spending over half a class day showing a video and teaching about dolphins and how so many are dying because "thoughtless people" were throwing away those plastic rings on six packs of soda. Basically the teacher was using PETA type scare tactics to brainwash kids.

Once I was old enough to connect my thoghts and think for myself, it was pretty easy to see that those rings go in a trash can taken to a landfill where it will be buried for 100's of years. Now if I were a 40 yr old drunk guy out fishing and started chunking those things over the side maybe then I would need a talking to!

US government taught to US students.

I learnt about the Australian government. We never touched on other countries' governments.

Shoktek and JoahGator, thank you for the wonderful help.

I think in your terms that anything not self taught could be considered brainwashing. People imprint from their teachers, but most importantly they imprint from their parents the most. Every child imprints and takes the opinions of their parents, not until college do they actually start forming their own opinion.

Whether you like it or not, children learning about the basic governing principals is an explanation of their freedoms. By learning these things at an early age from certified sources it creates the mindset of children willing to defend the constitution.

I won't say anything else for now...

Students are brainwashed into how great the US is, if you ask Americans what the best country in the world is, they will all say the US despite the fact that they havent been abroad and several countries are ranked higher on the quality of life.

The more intellient people learn for themselves that this is not the truth while the rest seem to become Republicans.

Originally posted by JoshGator54ahh.. the public school system at work...liberal propoganda, and social brainwashing.

Let's not get into a party slugfest. Conservatives have just as much propaganda as liberals -- if not more.

Point being, yea they teach about stealing land from Indians, they teach about slavery, civil rights movements and racism type eras, but those are all braindead idiot short-comings of this nation.

It's not liberal propaganda. Slavery happened. We did brutally steal this land from Native Americans, and we were racist for a long time.

However, there's a lot of things they don't teach, like how this government is basically a large business run by major corporations instead of politicians. They don't really talk about racism today, as if it just disappeared after the civil rights movement. They don't talk about how egocentric the general public is. This list could go on.

Most US history you learn is our coming to save the day in WWI and WWII (not much on Vietnam or Korea), a lot on the Civil and Revolutionary wars.


**That was my high school experience**

[edit on 24-9-2005 by white4life420]

My highschool teacher was decent enough. He would set out with an outline given to him from the state, give the facts, and then ask us what we thought about it. My history clase was half a period of notes, half a day of debate. He would just sit back and ask, "Why?" Also, he would pull sources from more than just the text book given to us; he would print things off the net, or bring in magazine articles, and would have us do the same.

thank you flyer. How I see things is that the gov. will only teach about the good things that they have done. yes, they touch on the bad things they have done but they hardly ever go into detail.

I thought I would contribute a teacher’s point of view to this thread, to give people a better idea about why teachers teach what they do and how they do. I was a high school teacher here in Australia for three years. I taught History and Social Studies and know, from speaking with many of my American colleagues, that the system by which teachers in Australia choose what subjects to cover and in what depth is fairly similar to that used by American teachers.

Before the start of each year, teachers get together and decide which units they are going to teach. Usually you have a selection of topics you can choose from, although some are required – it would be difficult to avoid teaching about World War 2 to some extent in History class, for example. Teachers choose their subjects in conjunction with each other, purely because doing so makes it easier to share resources and help each other out with planning and subject material.

When it comes to the actual content of the unit itself, there is a degree of flexibility as to what you teach, but this is often limited. For example, your unit workplan (the teacher’s Bible which details what subjects should be covered because of their importance and which is usually written by teachers in line with the syllabus for each subject) might suggest that students learn about the initial stages of WW2, then about Nazi atrocities, then about major battles and turning points in the war and finally about how the war was ended. Now, a teacher may choose to cover these topics in whatever degree of detail they wish, although some will naturally be afforded more time and depth than others due to their relative importance. In deciding which issues to give the most amount of coverage to, a teacher generally follows their own sense of what is important, rather than any mandated guide that says “Teach about Hiroshima for a week and D-Day for a day”. It must be remembered that teachers are very human. They have their own opinions and beliefs regarding issues and I personally feel that a good teacher should make their students aware of their beliefs and challenge the students to question them and form their own opinions. Teachers are not robots and asking them to teach in a vacuum of objectivity is not only impossible, but will likely stifle healthy debate and the subsequent development of independent, well reasoned and structured arguments.

I have taught many units on the Australian system of government and Australian history and have watched my colleagues do the same. One of the guidelines Government has given us on this matter is simply that the promotion of a positive national identity – that is, taking pride in our status as Australians – is an extremely important aspect of ensuring that Australia has a prosperous future. It should be noted, however, before people suggest that this is evidence of Government brainwashing techniques being openly promoted in schools, that the Government also highlights, in these same documents, the importance of focusing on and developing a sense of diverse cultural appreciation and respect for different religions and points of view amongst students.

I have increasingly found that the truly major obstacles in doing so for teachers are the media and the student’s own parents. For example, I was once teaching a class about the Holocaust in WW2. After I had explained what the Holocaust was, one of my students expressed his opinion that the Jews deserved to be exterminated. When I asked him why he thought this, he said it was because his father had told him so. A common saying amongst teachers when students mouth such beliefs is “You can hear their parent’s voice speaking through them”. Far from Government brainwashing pupils by using teachers as their proxies, most brainwashing is done well before students enter high school.

As for teachers promoting “liberalist” ideas, I think it is more a case of teachers expressing their personal points of view. I know I do this all the time, but it is hardly exclusive. I have taught about the gross injustices performed by the Australian Government during the stolen generation years and I have proudly taught about Australian victories over the Japanese Empire during WW2. No government individual has ever told me what I can or cannot teach – most of the noise comes rather from parents. I have alternately been accused of being a tree-hugging hippy and a racist who teaches white supremacy (during a unit on cultural identity I had students explore their own family histories and explained to a white student, who thought he was being racist in taking pride in his German heritage, that this did not make him a Nazi). The most valuable thing I feel I can teach my students is to think for themselves – everything else will be forgotten or can be looked up.

I hope this addresses at least some of the fears people have about the government brainwashing students. The truth is that, here in Australia at least, the government has very little input into what actually happens in the classroom. After all, once you get in there and shut the door, it’s just you and your students. If anybody would like to comment on what I have said or ask me any questions, by all means do so. I look forward to hearing what people think of this.

[edit on 25/9/05 by Jeremiah25]

I had a World Cultures class and an Ancient World History class in 9th grade.

Of course students are going to learn about their country's government first. I had a government class in 12th grade.

But I agree...our kids are still being brainwashed. I plan on homeschooling my son. Education shouldn't be about making your kids good Socialists...it should be about teaching them the skills they need.

The only thing I have to do with the public schools here is that my son receives speech therapy through the local preschool. One half-hour a week. I don't send him to preschool. My son's aunt-by-marriage has a nephew right around his age, and those two sometimes play together.

WHY oh WHY did the word "Brainwash" come up so many times???
"Brainwashing: A non-violent method that uses mind control techniques to convince a person to abandon some of their basic beliefs and adopt the beliefs of the indoctrinator. "

Uh, unless I am mistaken, kids usually come HOME after class, right? And that's when the good ole parent (remember them?) go up and say, "So, what did you learn in school today?" If the child starts mumbling about the "great American judicial system", well, then it is up to the PARENT to point out some of the more misguided antics of said system. In order to properly brainwash a subject, can they be exposed to the truth in any way shape or form before they are completely "converted"?

Sorry, peeps....but it's both teachers AND parents that make the kid. My children ask tons of questions all the time. They constantly want to know the other side, the other person's view, the other story...
Parent can more easily "brainwash" a child than a teacher can. Teachers follow what the district wants them to do. Of course, they add thier own beliefs and agendas. But if the kid starts doing a WWII history report that is OBVIOUSLY flawed, start asking your own questions.