Indoctrination is about looking inward to a fixed subset of information. It’s about producing dependent thinkers. Education is about looking outward to all of reality. Education has no bounds and no sacred cows. It’s about independent thinking. Indoctrination is all about boundaries and sacred cows.
Education is inclusive of all sides and points of view. Indoctrination is exclusive of everything outside it’s doctrine. Indoctrination is authority based, education is discovery based.
Indoctrination is about exclusion and guiding someone to a conclusion by controlling the scope of what they learn. Education is about supplying information and allowing one to come to their own conclusions.
Indoctrination is by definition ignorance by design. Its planned ignorance to the exclusion of all information that is counter to it’s doctrine.
Open societies who trust their participants encourage education. Closed societies who want to control their participants rely on indoctrination and fear open education. And for good reason. People are naturally curious and independent and to allow them free access to information outside of their indoctrination would almost certainly mean the collapse of that closed society.
Pure survival is why regimes like China and north Korea find it necessary to control the flow of information to their citizens. They need dependent thinkers to carry out their plans. Similarly with religions throughout history. But when survival becomes their primary mission it’s a clear sign their usefulness has come to an end.
They all fear exactly what is happening now. The free flow of information is leading society into a completely different direction, they are losing control, and people are starting to think on their own. They are losing their historic authority and their reason to exist. That is what they fear the most. A changing of the guard that will leave them to the pages of history.