This thesis will examine the response of educators to the use of the American public school system for ideological management during the early Cold War period. Through an assessment of instructional films, this work will show that the objectives of educational propaganda fell into three main categories: to promote Americanism as the national ideology, to deter students from communism or communist sympathy, and to link the potential for nuclear warfare to ideological lassitude. It will be argued that although the majority of educators accepted these goals, as films became increasingly extreme in their presentations, a critical minority revealed discontent with the use of the school for the purposes of indoctrination. By the mid-1960s, a number of factors would result in the dismantling of the Cold War consensus and a reinvigoration of the critical perspective in education.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:vcu.edu/oai:scholarscompass.vcu.edu:etd-3415 |
| Date | 04 April 2011 |
| Creators | Hope, Claire |
| Publisher | VCU Scholars Compass |
| Source Sets | Virginia Commonwealth University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | © The Author |
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