This is the kind of school indoctrination that Republicans support

[Alcon]

To all the people who are getting hung up on the Negro thing, even ignoring that, the speech is still not something the President should be saying to schoolchildren.

I will agree. Schools should be free from indoctrination.

Public schools are entirely indoctrination. My children will never attend.

How would a school not constitute indoctrination to you?

[Alcon]

While private schools aren't much better, at least they provide a better education and pay attention to the concerns of parents and students. I am done with the public school system.

I'm not saying that there aren't some very valid reasons to avoid public schools, but how do you square the idea of avoiding "indoctrination" with education?

[Alcon]

I've never had any teacher tell me that God doesn't exist and I'm going to wager.  That's a bummer but it seems like an atypical bummer.

I've had them give political/opinionated rants but schoolchildren above the Age of Reason shouldn't be sheltered from that.  (Separate discussion, though, and I'm low on time)

But my point is:  You're not going to instill any value in your kids?  How do you determine that instilling a value/opinion is OK and that it isn't?  My view of this is a little clouded, admittedly, because a lot of people who claim that public schools are forces for indoctrination are OK with indoctrination, just want it to be theirs.  I doubt that's you, but that's the inference I tend to make when hearing that claim.

But I'm trying to get at a solid definition here, since such a behavior seems unlike you.  Is it not indoctrination if agreement is pretty universal?  Within your community, culture, religious group, all of the world, what?  Hope that makes sense.

[Alcon]

I try to be as unbiased and fair to everyone as possible, whether it be politics, religion, etc.
I disapprove of most forms of indoctrination, of course, that is only possible to an extent. Some organizations have no place exploiting biases to use as indoctrination, however. The public school system is one, law enforcement is another.

But that's not the question I'm asking -- how do you determine what's opinion, what's values and what's indoctrination?

You're eventually going to have to teach your children that.  Yeah telling a 9-year-old that there is, definitively, "no God" is overboard.  But the solution to this problem is not sequestering children away from opinions or subjective interpretations of fact.  Too many confuse this with limiting their kid's exposure to information to info that's universally accepted in their culture, or that they personally accept, or whatever.  That's still a type of indoctrination.

For the record, I went to public school.  I had outspoken Democrats and Republicans for teachers, obviously more of the latter.  They sometimes went over the line, but there was no brainwashing.  I never had any teachers definitively speak against God and I'm from urban WA; I think your experience was almost certainly an anomaly.