This chapter goes back to how the education system can benefit the industry. By brainwashing children into thinking that a white-aproned wife looking at her clean-shaven, suit-clad husband who’s tossing his blond-haired daughter in the air is the “American way”, where do the minorities fit in? Are they not worthy of also living the American Dream? The book also says that it was argued that propaganda in school is fairly harmless because of the freedom to debate these ideas. However, children are like sponges and they will believe anything an adult tells them. They don’t really learn to question everything that they are told until they are older so how is this fair or safe to them? Aren’t most of them, being exposed to the “American way” advertisements pretty much doomed with lives of disappointment?
I also think that by criticizing Rugg’s textbooks as “un-American” and trying to ban them from the classroom, Americans were being hypocritical. Why is it okay to basically lie to everyone and teach them that certain things should be done the American/right way and if you want, you’re free to debate it but these books aren’t righteous and are evil. Technically, if you expect a child to argue with the pro-American propaganda, can’t you also say that they can debate Rugg’s textbooks and entrust in them the responsibility to make their own judgments?
