IndoctriNation

This road documentary follows Scottish-American dad Colin Gunn (who co-directed the film with Joaquin Fernandez) as he drives around the U.S. with his family in a decommissioned school bus to illustrate how public education is filling children's heads with a radical secular ideology that banishes all mention of God from the schoolroom. A few of the scenes—including a conversation with a retired New York teacher who bemoans unimaginative curriculum choices—make valid points; but most of IndoctriNation is devoted to anecdotes concerning: principals frustrated by rules they must follow, teachers penalized for trying to turn their classrooms into pulpits, and students prevented from offering valedictory addresses that resemble Sunday school sermons. These observations are supplemented by a skewed “history” of the development of public schooling in America, replete with dark references to characters like Marx, Freud, and Dewey, and periodically interrupted by grave warnings from preachers that parents are entrusting their offspring to a system that will doom them to perdition. The whole thing ends with Gunn literally destroying the vehicle he's been traveling in—followed by a pious warning against violence. In the final analysis, Gunn and his co-religionists desire the institutionalized teaching of Christian fundamentalism, but being convinced that the existing taxpayer-supported enterprise is incapable of improvement, they—not surprisingly—recommend home schooling. DVD extras include deleted scenes and brief promos for the “Exodus Mandate” (to remove children from public schools) and the Christian Liberty School System. Not recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)