If you were
to read the Watchtower literature and you believed it to be the exclusive
divinely inspired interpretation of the Bible, I suggest that you would not be
learning anything useful, instead you would simply be absorbing the
indoctrination of the JW org.
What is the difference between indoctrination and education?
Take any passage from the Watchtower, this sentence for example, which assumes significance in the end of six thousand years of human history in 1975: “How then does this fit in with God’s timetable?” It asks.
Let’s de-construct.
The question includes an assumption that God has a' time-table', is that normal for gods?... and for that to be possible there has to be the assumption that there is a God in the first place.
We need not go there for the moment but let us have a look at how ideas are embedded or nested in other broader cultural assumptions. The WT text speaks of six thousand years of human history recalling earlier assumptions that each Biblical day of creation was seven thousand years long, therefore with a millennium of kingdom rule still to go (according to WT doctrine) six thousand years from the creation of man would have significance. (Incidentally these notions like all of the early Watchtower teachings and most of the Bible; are borrowed beliefs).
To get at the truth we have to ask; who says that the world was created in six, seven thousand year “days”? Where is the evidence? Who says we are all descendants of Adam and Eve? Where is the evidence? What evidence is there for the divine origin of Bible texts? Why do the Bible texts conflict so much? Why were the Bible books selected from existing texts and put together by the Roman Catholic Church? Why should we trust the Bible as being true? etc.
Such assumed ideas as divine creation, divine retribution and salvation through sacrifice are repeated ad nauseum over time by preachers, it has been passed down from parents to their hapless offspring to create a respected mythical matrix in which all and any religious belief can flourish. Because of this JWs can rely on certain assumptions on which to build their particular doctrines, they can nest their own spin within an existing framework of unsubstantiated religious belief. Religion avoids scientific analysis, it relies instead on "holiness".
We might summarise indoctrination then as assumptions built upon assumptions repeatedly given to an audience already conditioned to receive it uncritically. This is very much at odds with education.
Education means not being told what to believe but ”to learn how to learn,” and that requires questioning the truthfulness of any statement or proposition offered. This requires using questions like how do we know this is true? Where is the evidence for this?
Assumptions are a total waste of time, a critical evaluation of all information is vital for truth to emerge.
The Watchtower since it start, has spewed out completely worthless twaddle, its vast catalogue of wrong conclusions have demonstrated its uselessness over time. One cannot logically use anything it has said as a foundation for further conclusions. Conversely educated reasoning can be built upon because critical analysis and fact is at its foundation.
Does your religion strongly discourage higher education? If the answer is yes, it must have something to hide. I think of the Watchtower like a nasty fungus which can only spread in the dark, it is the daylight of education which destroys it.