Are Americans in some ways brained washed/conditioned?

my government teacher told our class that nobody has original views, we are raised on our parents religion and politics and told what is right and wrong the second we can understand it. i guess what he is trying to say is that we always get our beliefs from what is around us, television, commercials, politics, war, other media and what not. you could say that todays media tells us what to believe, obey, and fear. i hope that helped ha im not really good at writing papers