The State of Idaho engages in indoctrination...  

or does it? I am reading Deborah Stone's, Policy Paradox-The Art of Political Decision Making, and her chapter on facts has really resonated with me. In this chapter, Stone critiques Charles Lindblom who believes that government indoctrination cannot occur unless the government is a totalitarian one. Stone argues that indoctrination can occur if the information being given is intentionally manipulative and robs people of their capacity to think independently. Lest you think I will argue that Idahoans don't have the ability to think independently, let me finish.

Stone states that we are strongly influenced by peers, co-workers, family, and other groups of which we are part. She states that the "drive to conformity is as strong as the drive to select the best means to an end." I am not stating that Idahoans are stupid, and can't think for themselves, I am simply stating that they/we are human. Stone goes on to say that "in our various social and political roles, we act largely according to prior attitudes and beliefs rather than new information."

Indoctrination, Stone argues, can occur outside the framework of a centralized and/or unilateral government. She states that this occurs in our schools which teach students about
"obedience to authority, about social stratification according to ascriptive ability characteristics, and about discipline, orderliness, and the subordination of self to central schedules." WOW! Stone then states that indoctrination can also occur through ordinary government-citizen contact. That 'street-level bureaucrats' "give out moral and political lessons, along with rewards and punishments." Stay with me here...

Stone states that "government social service organizations have some very potent weapons with which to prod client behavior in the right directions." This includes the power to reduce welfare payments/benefits, removing children from families, or placing children back into families, the power to institutionalize and release, judges have the power to jail, etc...
She then cites the example of a Texas judge that "berated a bilingual Hispanic mother for speaking only Spanish so her daughter would become bilingual: 'You're abusing that child and you're relegating her to the position of housemaid. Now get this straight. You start speaking English to this child because if she doesn't do good in school, then I can remove her because it's not in her best interest to be ignorant.'"

With this in mind, Stone states that when this type of intimidation is carried out by a "government official in a state with a large Mexican and Mexican-American population
and a law making English the only official language, it surely belongs near the indoctrination end..."

With no similar statements from an Idaho judge (that I know of), and a smaller population of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in this state, could it still be argued that Idaho, having recently passed a law to make English the official language of state business, practices indoctrination?