I heard the song American Pie a little earlier in the day and for some reason I got a flashback to when I was in the 5th grade. I hadn’t thought about it for a long time, but today I remembered.
I lived in an urban area just outside the NYC limits (about a mile) and the school was considered progressive. We had “folk masses” and nuns were starting to “kick the habits” and wear plain skirts and white shirts. There were “civilian” teachers, and they were young and the men had “long hair.” (Like Dick Cavett long.)
This story involves a civilian woman teacher whose lecture for the day was to analyze the lyrics to Don Mclean’s American Pie.
I know now that the song was about the death of Buddy Holly, and it laments the loss of innocence and that society was beginning to decay. McLean references God in the song, and a discarded final verse gives an insight as to how McLean felt redemption might be achieved.
And there I stood alone and afraid
I dropped to my knees and there I prayed
And I promised him everything I could give
If only he would make the music live
And he promised it would live once more
But this time one would equal four
And in five years four had come to mourn
and the music was reborn.
You’d think that a Catholic school would focus on the faith angle. But no.
None of that made its way into the indoctrinator’s interpretation. I remember her hammering away that the song was about the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK (I think she was confused by Dion’s Abraham, Martin and John) at the hands of people who did not want to see a unified America because they embraced hate. It was also an obvious rebuke of “Nixon’s America.”
I remember this because my parents were republicans and I remember it as being an attack on them. I was supposed to walk away fearing the republicans as haters and forever favoring the left.
So, the indoctrination was definitely beginning, in CATHOLIC SCHOOLS, in the early 70s. God only knows what was happening in the public schools.
Can anyone remember any similar indoctrination? Even if it was subtle.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I can still remember how
That music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they’d be happy for a while
With every paper I’d deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn’t take one more step
When I read about his widowed bride
Something touched me deep inside
The day the music died
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
And do you have faith in God above
If the Bible tells you so?
Do you believe in rock and roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?
‘Cause I saw you dancin’ in the gym
You both kicked off your shoes
Man, I dig those rhythm and blues
With a pink carnation and a pickup truck
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the music died
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
And moss grows fat on a rolling stone
But, that’s not how it used to be
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
And a voice that came from you and me
The jester stole his thorny crown
The courtroom was adjourned
No verdict was returned
The quartet practiced in the park
And we sang dirges in the dark
The day the music died
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
And singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
The birds flew off with a fallout shelter
Eight miles high and falling fast
The players tried for a forward pass
With the jester on the sidelines in a cast
While sergeants played a marching tune
We all got up to dance
Oh, but we never got the chance
The marching band refused to yield
Do you recall what was revealed
The day the music died?
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
And singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
A generation lost in space
With no time left to start again
Jack Flash sat on a candlestick
‘Cause fire is the devil’s only friend
My hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in Hell
Could break that Satan’s spell
To light the sacrificial rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the music died
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
Where I’d heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn’t play
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
All those f’in peace signs that people were marking on everything…
No I can’t say I do. I’m 59 yrs. old so don’t know if that has anything to do with it. Maybe my age made me lucky.
I remember Nixon going to China and everyone was saying “See, communism can’t be that bad. Everyone seems so happy…”
I was taught to be a god fearing American.
That song still bring tears to my eyes.
I was barely a year or two old around that time. Missed it. Good. lol
“Can anyone remember any similar indoctrination? Even if it was subtle.”
I think we are about the same age. I grew up in the Silicon Valley, Cupertino, Saratoga, Monta Vista. Back then extremely conservative. So no, we didn’t experience any attempts of indoctrination. Fast forward to my kids. The families moves to another extremely conservative little berg in NorCal. Not many problems, with the exception of their zero tolerance for being a boy bull shit. Fast forward to college. Holy shit. One went to Arizona State, the other U of A. The attempted brain washing was none stop. I could talk my daughter off the ledge. Not my youngest son. He wanted to fight them. I’m surprised he graduated. But make no mistake, that’s the weapon they hold over conservative kids. Conform or flunk. My middle kid said fuck it, and went into the trades. He’s doing well.
I had a similar flash back to the age of innocence a couple days ago. Spurred on by this song.
https://youtu.be/ZsXjCp_f1h4
Holy crap, off topic but I was just over at the Free Republic site and there is an article from WordPress with a picture of Chelsea Clinton and that Hubble dudes daughter. I’m to stupid to set a link but if you get the chance, check it out. It’s worth it.
I’m 61, and I honestly don’t remember being indoctrinated. Even when I was at liberal UT-Austin, I wasn’t. Of course, I was too busy learning medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, and such. Some of my professors and a few of us students even had Bible study during lunch in the pharmacy library. I seriously doubt that would fly now.
I had to take ‘Ecology’ in high school. One of the hippy Art Teachers taught us about how ‘the Man’ had this corporate thing going and soon the earth would die of smog (it was pretty bad in LA in the seventies).
But all the hot chicks took ecology, and you couple that with a ceramics class, and poli sci, and you had a day full of visual enrichment.
i hate that song…..not leat because it was my birthday – “the day the music died”…….
DON MCLEAN WAS A POTHEAD!! I WAS INDOCTRINATED – FISTFIGHTING!!!
In 1967 we still had a pledge of allegiance ceremony as we raised the flag outside, weather be damned. (public school)….The Archdiocese are the one’s that beat the kids for any perceived indiscretion…..
I didn’t have that experience. The nuns were still reeling over Vatican Council II changes. There was one secular teacher in third grade and one in seventh. Realize that we had one classroom for each grade, no gym or cafeteria, but milk was delivered for lunch.
Public HS was a bit different. Got into an argument with a civics teacher who turned out to be an ex-military malcontent and generally bitter about life and THE MAN. I was bored out of my mind. Later, Catholic HS was just weird by then.
As a kid I attended school in CT, CA, VA, Argentina, and back to VA and successfully escaped in 1966. I don’t remember any indoctrination but I do remember a lot of regimentation. In other words, they wanted me to act the way they dictated but didn’t demand that I like it, much less agree with it.
I’m a little older than you, Fur; I was a year out of High School when that song came out, but i also went through 12 years of Catholic school, and because my parents were staunch conservatives, i was very much aware when we were being indoctrinated, and we were. Although i can’t remember specific examples.
Well Uncle Al, you weren’t there to express yourself.
I have slid right into the ‘children should be seen and not heard’ with nary a ripple.
62 here, and there has not been a song I disliked more. I was always in the party group in school, but I never liked the hippies. I can still picture the hippie chicks and the guys that were trying to score with them, walking though the hallways at school singing that damn song. I swear that song was popular my whole high school career. What a stupid song. “Drove my Chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry” give me a frickin break!
I do remember when WHAM! was on video wearing those Choose Life T-shirts and a teacher at school was discussing it with the kids(Jr. High) because a kid had one of those shirts on in class. Instead of teaching that day, she HAD TO bring up the shirt and bitchily asked what the kid thought it meant. The kid said “probably no suicide and no baby killing”. She got upset, but she tried to hold it in. lol. She gave her thoughts, but it was certainly not pro-life/anti-abortion. She mentioned everything but that. I remember some of the girls in class wondering what the problem was with what he said. They said it was anti-suicide, anti-murder and anti-abortion and most importantly pro-God. And the rest of us nodded. Shut miss teacher up to the point where she ended up changing the subject. Not today, miss thing. Not today.
And then I had a class where the ‘teacher’ (I saw no credentials) would be all emotionally touchy feely and ohhh express your feelings, make a journal, let’s macrame an oven mitt and blah blah blah. A grown ass man, y’all. From someplace in philadelphia I think. Someplace where they only wear T shirts and blue jeans and have bitch tits. Couldn’t stand either teacher.
I’m 30, graduated in ‘06, went to a rural school in mid Michigan, one half black kid in my entire high school… I remember in history classes from 4th grade on, every topic had to go out of its way to give credit to blacks in some way. It took me till 9th grade to get fed up with it and make comments every time, such blatantly useless people were being compared to genuine American heroes. I’m still resentful about it, and I will make sure my kids are conciencious of it from the beginning, so they know went to laugh and roll their eyes. Then I went to Michigan State, I felt no political correctness there, it was amazing, beautiful girls walking around that weren’t smart enough to get into Michigan and they loved having a good time.
And when I say resentful, it’s because I feel bad for any classmates that didn’t figure it out in time and are now indoctrinated.
@ Different Tim: Here you go
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3651012/posts
I went to school in SC and
we were #49 in the nation.
MS was last… We got real
history in ’69-’73.Alot of
real South Carolina history
which is very rich indeed.I
get alot of nasty looks from people
here in TX when I tell them there is more
American history in Charleston than in all
of the state of Texas.
Noooooo! We were taught to be good citizens. Things got weird in high school LSD and so on. But I will admit I didn’t know that there were gay or homosexual people until my second year at college. Imagine, being innocent for all those years.
Now days children are not allowed to be innocent, Sofa King wrong.
I was used for desegregation right before starting high school, late 70’s. A random border was drawn and just about all of the kids I grew up with went to the original high school I should have attended. A handful of us were bussed to a black area to even out the racial divide. Run down school, sketchy neighborhood and far from my house. Thanks to bussing I had no school spirit and made few friends since we were the outcasts. The only saving grace was that school had great art teachers. My favorite one worked into the late 80’s-until he was attacked and beaten by his students several times. He became a parking lot attendant. Sad all ‘round.
In 4th grade we sang “The House of the Rising Sun”, and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” for music class. I don’t know if that was so much Indoctrination or just really poor judgment on our teacher’s part. Catholic school- yup.
What I remember from going to Catholic school was in Science class we were told the Earth experienced Winter because the entire Earth was farther away from the Sun than it is in Summer. I always wondered why they taught that.
a horrific crash
little ritchie valens was not yet 18 when he ate the cornfield
My high school had, maybe, 20 minorities attending (we moved across town from my grade school area.)
There was no physical violence at all. I don’t recall the police ever coming to the school in 4 years.
I went back to visit my art teacher, the most influential teacher until college, and he was no longer teaching classes.
The area was forced to integrate and he was now on hall patrol, complete with walkie-talkie and mace and a nightstick.
To Sir, With Love.
MJA, “BITCH TITS”??? WTAF??
Zim just reminded me of something else.
For our recital, IN CHURCH, we sang Blowin’ in the Wind.
How’s that for progressive?
Most of my public education they spent all their time just trying to get me to pass… I broke the film strip speed reading/comprehension machine at 400+ wpm @ 90% comprehension in the third grade. After 5th grade it was pure boredom… You can’t get indoctrinated if you’re not paying attention, and burn your report cards… Went to a J.C. where the profs are too busy trying to find a seat, and then stayed technical in Uni.
Bad_Brad – Oddly enough I had you pegged as south bay. I can’t quite say why… I’m somewhat south of Berkeley.
Big picture is it’s certainly gotten a lot worse since we were in school. Just look what taking place with these kids posting pictures of themselves at a gun range with their fathers. Next thing you know we’ll be denying infants the right to live. I need to move into a cave some place.
While I’m on the topic… What it’s like today in Texas:
1. 4/20 protests – Kids that go protest get excused absences. Kids that don’t, have self-sorted themselves… Appearing in the classroom means you’re a target for conversion!
2. They scheduled a fire drill on 4/20! Result: Kids that didn’t protest have to leave the building where their gun grabbing friends and (so called) teachers can attempt to coerce them to stay and join “their side” in protest, away from the school administration, rules, cameras, etc… with a plausible excuse, etc…
Kali Refugee in Texas
Dang I miss the South Bay back then. What a great place to grow up. If you were familiar with it back then you wouldn’t recognize it now. Apple is taking over my old stomping grounds with a huge campus. Huge. covering my old haunts. I’m pissed.
I imagine it depended on the school and the staff. I know I was in third and fourth grade in the early 70’s (my second grade teacher Miss Simon tended to wear miniskirts and heels – I really liked Miss Simon. I guess that indoctrinated me to like women in miniskirts and heels; but I digress).
Oddly, sometime in 3rd or 4th grade, we were shown the film The Man Without a Country in the library. Not sure who arranged it. I admit, the movie is not the finest example of scripting or the cinematic arts, however, that movie caused a birth of patriotism in my heart that years of standing for the Pledge had not. If they were trying to turn me into a lefty, they failed. And this was in freaking Montgomery County MD.
Of course, you can’t even find that film on DVD today. Gee, I wonder why.
Bad_Brad,
I think I’m a few years younger than you. I remember outgrowing Frontier Village, just as it closed. 🙂
KR
I don’t know about teachers indoctrinating us but around 1971 they did away with our school dress code and girls could wear pants and everyone could wear jeans; boys could wear very long hair, and it was the first I’d ever heard about smoking grass. Students could still come and go off campus during a long lunch hour. So there was a lot more freedom. There was so much talk about the ‘smoking tree’ that I never went to, it was allegedly at the far edge of the school property. Formerly ‘cool’ kids started hanging out with ‘hoods’ IMO as they became smoking tree buddies. I wouldn’t do anything like that at school. But still we did not lock our lockers and there were no major theft problems, also we had no backpacks. We carried books home to do work and we returned them to the school. Most families had 2 parents, but it seems now like that is when society took a wrong turn.
My mom went to school with the “Big Bopper”, J.P. Richardson. She said he was kind to everyone and made everyone feel like they were his best friend. We laid her to rest two weeks ago in the same cemetery as the Bopper.
I remember seeing my first “Diversity is our Strength” poster hanging in the hallway in an Oregon middle school in 1976. I went home and asked my Dad (Archie Bunker clone) what it meant, and he really didn’t know…until much later. Our diverse school had one minority, a Hawaiin kid. Fast forward to my freshman year, we had a social studies teacher promoting gun confiscation. This was rural Eastern Oregon, rancher country. There was much hell raised at the next school board meeting and I remember the teacher having to come to us and explain that he was only playing the devil’s advocate to provoke thought in us, he didn’t really believe in that. Yeah, right.
Yes. They bussed masses of us to the theater to see “Fern Gully.” This is one of many examples I could provide of the rampant watermelon ecology (green on the outside, RED on the inside) being shoved down the throats of public school kids in Tallahassee during the late 80s and early 90s. Had to read Silent Spring. Meditation in class to go on “bubble journeys.” Drawing mandalas. Tons of class time devoted to watching black vindication during the O.J. trial. (That worked out great!)
OH SNAP, I just remembered something!
Our senior year, one of our teachers brought in a Muslim to tell us all about Islam. Most of us didn’t know much about Islam. He sure made Islam sound enlightened and classy. The next year after we were all graduated, we learned a lot more about Islam when the Twin Towers went down.
Idiot educators.
@joe6pak: Here’s a version of “American Pie” that you might like better:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Vq8wbXAR4ZQ
🙂
Indoctrination at every turn in one form or fashion. By the time I got to college, I could count the number of conservative or libertarian leaning professors that I had on a couple of fingers on one hand.
You will be subjected to Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni. You will write papers on criminology from the feminist perspective or you will fail. You will learn that all of the history you were taught in high school is a lie and that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.
This was 20 years ago. My niece just turned 14 and it has been a pronounced difference in one year of high school. Completely normal little girl turning into a #woke feminazi ecowarrior in less than a year. Brought her first boyfriend by to a family gathering at Easter and this annoying little mama’s boy beta looked like he brushes his hair with a cock. And his teeth with a cock.
So, yea. They’re indoctrinated. I was at least taught to think critically about everything. This generation is prohibited from questioning liberal homodoxy.
Vietvet, that is better, but damn, what a shitty song!
Kali Refugee in Texas
Frontier Village, Fess Parkers amusement park? I think it was open when we were kids. We just never went. Same with the Winchester Mystery House. Until we had some out of town relatives that had to see it. Dumbest fing thing I’ve ever been to. NOW, they’re making a movie out of it. WooHoo.
joe6pak
Don’t be hating on me Bro, but one of my favorite songs growing up.
Brad, you were a hippie? I think you’re jerking my chain, I haven’t seen anything from you that would cause me to link you to that song. Not that there is anything wrong with it. Hell, we like what we like.
Born in ’65, I grew up in NW Indiana (The Region). In elementary school, there was a movie they began showing every year called “Say Goodbye.” It was all about ecology and the loss of animals/species. There were several unforgettable scenes, like baby seals being clubbed to death and prairie dogs being blown away (in slow motion.) I felt horrible watching the graphic scenes of animals being killed but didn’t ever form a “Man is bad and is the enemy of nature” environmentalist view. As a politically aware adult years later I remembered the movie and it’s likely intent being to indoctrinate. Looking back, I don’t feel any teachers were overtly pushing for any particular view on this or any other subject. If they were, it was subtle and I was too dull to pick up on it.
joe6pak
Well, in all honesty, at the time I had this well endowed blonde girl friend that loved that song. If she laid on her back neked you could tee up golf balls on her, oh what the hell am I sayen? LOL. True story.
I knew it! That’s a good enough excuse.
Public school in the late 50s and the 60s, in Chicago, was flag, pledge of allegiance, national anthem, Abraham Lincoln (in a big way), Bears, Sox and Blackhawks. [Cubs? Why would anyone be a Cubs fan.] That was indoctrination, and I am glad I had it.
Late high school, and after? 180 decrees opposite indoctrination.
Crazy times.
Fifty years since the Chicago Democratic Convention and street riots.
Hard to believe.
I never experienced any because I was home schooled til I was 14 and then… life happened. I managed to get my GED at least. Still, the internet seems to have more than enough peer pressure and ideological brainwashing going on as it is. :b
I had an English class in college where the prof had us read a poem about a prostitute. During the discussion, he was extolling the holy nature of her profession and what a noble and gifted thing it was that she provided to humanity. Some of the guys realized they could get a good grade by agreeing with him and the discussion continued until I spoke up (the only woman in class that did).
I gave them hell. Told them that they were all pigs and that she had NO higher motive other than to make money. She no more cared about the men then any piece of machinery she would make in a factory. She wasn’t some saint and she probably hated what she did.
I’m not a prude, but he was being such a sanctimonious ass. Still got an A in that class, but I don’t think he was happy about it.
Don’t know if that qualifies as indoctrination. But I just wasn’t having any of it anyway. It was the ’70s when all the touchy-feely psychobabble was going on.
I went to a progressive school district in a suburb of Denver Colorado. I remember the very first Earth Day. I was in seventh grade at the time. All regular classes were suspended for the day and we spent the entire time in activities damning corporate America and worshiping our fragile Earth spaceship home. Total propaganda!
My parents moved to the mountain community of Evergreen Colorado when I was in 8th grade. From there it was total propaganda in all classes. The junior high I went to did away with the ‘restriction’ of classrooms so it was all open with movable partitions defining the space actually used for teaching. It was bedlam because of the noise levels to say the least. Grades were based on attendance! There were a few teachers who where hold-overs from an earlier era that assigned homework and graded with tests, but most were into all the new age theories of education.
When I was in high school I was in a history course called The American Frontier and I was hammered to believe in the misery White man inflicted on the native Americans. It was the year 1973 and the AIM – American Indian Movement- occupied the area of the Battle of Wounded knee. My teacher walked into class so excited and in complete solidarity with those poor, oppressed, natives.
I didn’t learn grammar in the earlier grades because that just stifled creativity! It was all about ‘what you say’ being more important that ‘how you say it.’! It was so bad that my high school French teacher would find it necessary to stop teaching us French from time to time so she could teach us English grammar so we could then learn the equivalent French grammar! Of course, she was an old, gray haired woman nearing retirement.
I was robbed of a real education. Total propaganda!
chuffed-beyond-words
Interesting, you seem super intelligent. Are you or did you try to go to college?
Seems like that song should have an award for the most words.
The song that never ends, back in the day they never stopped playing it on the radio.
Anyone else remember watching this in grade school on the old reel to reel projector?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_861us8D9M
Still have and listen to that album, on a Bang & Olefson “Beogram” I still use when I don’t want to use the Technics direct drive…!
Recently picked up EVERY album Johnny Cash ever made still sealed in its original plastic, in-opened for a buck apiece at a barn sale over here in Carroll County, Ohio!
Don’t know how old you are Fur, I’m 58, but, man, they don’t make music like that anymore! We HAD music then, folks, and I have no idea WTF people are listening to and calling “music” now, it sounds like shit with bass making tools rattle in the trunk!
@Toenex: I believe that the award for the song with the most words was the Wreck
of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Oh, wait – it just seemed like the most words. It actually
won the award for the All Time Most Repetitive Boring Tune in the World.
Never mind.
@Bad_Brad
Still can’t afford to yet, also my mom is disabled so I need to stay with her, but I do hope to find a good community collage with a art program. Eventually.
1975: 7th grade chorus class we sang “Hey Jude” by the Beatles.
Not indoctrinatey or anthing. Just creepy.
Watching a 60+ year old chorus teacher in a flower print dress and gray bun banging on the piano and riffing, “Judy-judy-judy-yeow-wow!” will haunt me forever.
All 4 years I was in high school Ike was President. When he cut the budget with “Operation Wetback” many teachers said he was a “white supremacist”. I spent many hours in detention for arguing with teachers.
I was a candy ass even as a teenager.
Anti America brainwashing has been going on for at least 60 years; probably longer.
They may very well have tried but it didn’t take. I’ve been set in my belief’s pretty much since I became aware of everything around me.
This country was a beautiful place to live in when I was growing up and its very discouraging to see how things have decayed.
If it wasn’t for the goods souls I know are still out there everywhere I would be depressed but what I am is pissed off.
I didn’t experience overt indoctrination until high school. One of our “social studies” teachers was a former hippie who wore his hair like Jerry Garcia and had those teeny-tiny lens frames like Lennon. We all thought he was super cool. During my senior year, the morning after John Lennon was assassinated, Mr. Goldstein played Lennon songs all through class. We didn’t do anything but sit in the dark and watch him cry while Lennon crooned about imagining there was no heaven. Which, come to think of it, was pretty ironic given the circumstances.
@Tangggor
I probably went to school with you.
Standing against a door jam of my 1 pm art class [van nuys high]Ca. feeling the pain from the talk I had caught over the lunch break. I heard the music had died and I was heavy in heart. I for one was B.Hollyfied. That fender of his was pure magic and the voice was mine when I sang those songs. Holly was the great imagination. A music different and bold. So I for one knew “the day the music died”. Richie Valens cruised the school each day, van nuys high, in his newly purchased thunderbird and his music also sang of the spirit..”the chevy’s on the levy” were real. Their use on the levy as a drag strip and these were the days of george barris ‘the custom king’. Rest assured there are some of us that have seen it and heard it and felt the pain of the decades that followed. McLean said it but he never really felt it. He wanted hip and circumstances and that’s about all. Today the world is just mental and ill. Say what you will it died Feb. 3rd 1959. by the way SALUTE TO LEO FENDER
1968 was the year that things started turning towards toward the left, especially the New Left and the SDS etc. I was a freshman in HS, prior to that and the Summer of love in San Franfreako there was little if any attempt at indoctrination except maybe for everyone to conform to middle class ethics. The only subtle indoctrination I remember was in PE class where they wanted to make all of us young men physically strong so we could fight in Vietnam. We bristled at that because we were still too young to fully understand what that war was all about. After 68, all bets were off except it took a few more years for the full effects of the indoctrination to begin to kick in. Actually 62 and 63 began the downfall of American with Engels vs Vitale where the atheist Madelyn Murray O’Hare got prayer kicked out of public schools and the assassination of JFK in Nov. 63 and LBJ becoming President. Fortunately I was old enough to be schooled under the old system, the kids who came later bore the full brunt of the left’s indoctrination and it’s bitter fruit. And don’t get me started on the 70’s when I was young man, that’s when the shit really started hitting the fan.
By chance of birth, I grew up in a small town (<10,000) on the Conn. shoreline. My elementary school was founded by a whaler. The middle school is what eventually became Yale University, and still bore the name of Abraham Pierson. A railroad magnate founded the high school. History and maritime life permeate everything. One cannot walk 50 feet without stubbing a toe on something from the 17th or 18th century.
Long Island is 7 miles away, across the Sound, but aside from a vague silhouette on the horizon, one would never know it.
As such, my parents had a relatively easy time insulating me from lefty nonsense.
We were undera federal desegregation order when I was in elementary school so we had to get up an extra hour early to get bussed to the bad part of town to go to a school that was 80/20 black to white. While they got bussed to the school 2 miles down the road from my house.
Because Fairness.
Jethro:
Heh. You never know. Dennis Avenue Elementary School, Silver Spring MD. Doesn’t exist anymore. (And I don’t live in MD anymore, thank God).
This is not to say the indoctrination attempts didn’t occur later on – they most certainly did. But I’ve generally been sorta unreachable. I HATE being told what to do or think. Always did, even as a small kid. And libtards always want to tell you what to do.
I was never exposed to indoctrination until college (starting 1989). In 1990 I took an upper level sociology class something along the lines of the stratification of American or some such nonsense a naive 20 year old didn’t know would be a calling card for wacko leftist ideology. The professor spent much of the time talking about how unfair America is, how it is like India, you are born into a caste and can only get so many rungs up the ladder from the start, blah blah blah and she has us write a term paper worth most of our grade toward the end of the semester on if we believe you can be successful in America. Well silly me, I wrote it from my experience and believing anyone can do anything and become anything in America. Which I grew up and saw firsthand, my great grandparents were from Russia and my father was the first to get a college education and run a successful consulting practice. The class after turning the paper in I arrived to find the professor had set up two tables on each side of her podium and she announced to our class of about 25 that 3 of us had written a paper about America being a great place of opportunity. I was called up with 2 guys I didn’t know, one was Asian, one was white and we had to sit on one side of the podium together. And then for the rest of the class she rotated everyone else to the other side of the table to basically debate us, call us names, get in our faces etc. while she stood smuggly by encouraging this insanity. I sure wish I could go back to that moment with everything I know and believe today. We didn’t back down from our position but it was brutal and I really had no way of processing what happened that day, I’d never experienced or heard of anything like it. The 3 of us left looking at each other like WTF was that all about. My paper was backed up by example after example and I think I got a B- in the class (I’m sure today the 3 of us would have failed the class). I saw many other examples of liberal insanity in college including another professor that claimed Jack The Ripper was trying to suppress the rights of women by killing prostitutes. The English teachers were the worst. I love getting to respond to the callers from the university that still track me down and ask for donations. Not in this lifetime.
Class of 1976. 5th grade: “The Democrats are for the regular people; the Republicans are for BIG BUSINESS.” The teacher, surprisingly, had piss flippers. Fortunately, my Jr. year history teacher was my cousin (RIP); he advocated independent thought, and taught us accordingly (Nixon was in the barrel and impeachment was imminent)…
So even then; most of my elderly(!) teachers had taught my Dad…but the nubes were all Bolsheviks.