Sorry, Amos, I can't think of a Latinate word meaning to force someone into darkness or slavery. Induction is, etymologically, the opposite of education.

Both my just-adult kids (21 and 25) are a lot happier living outside the US, because France (for my son) and Israel (for my daughter) have a cultural richness, and a sense of community, that they don't find here. They don't like American TV, American consumerism, American arrogance, American lack of values -- and they were both born and raised in the good old USA. They find it much easier to make connections where they are. My son, currently studying abroad in Brittany, is learning Gaelic and playing Irish music in pubs with local musicians several nights a week. Once of his best friends in Rennes is a musician named Seamus who's old enough to be his grandfather. He just doesn't easily make connections like that in Colorado, even though he'd show up for a local Open mike nights; after open mike night here everybody just kind of went off home. He found people a lot warmer there. He also doesn't need any license to play in the streets there, and nobody looks at him sideways.

This (above) isn't precisely about creeping cultural ignorance, which is actually at levels that shock me. When I was teaching Latin to college students, at the beginning of the first semester I usually had to clear up what terms like "Noun", "verb", "adjective" meant, before I could hope to discuss any finer points of grammar. When I'd try to give them english derivatives to help them remember vocab, they often had never heard of the words; "ameliorate" and "pejorative" come to mind. They thought I made words up. Yes, I think that a lot has been lost culturally. I am a Shakespeare fan, thanks to my Mom, and I dragged my kids to the local Shakespeare festival every summer from the time they were 8 or 10 -- and that's not too unusual in Boulder, but I think it's unusual in America generally.

Interesting thread. Thanks.