Anteia McCollum: Indoctrination task force doesn’t care about Idaho’s education
Idaho’s Lt. Governor launched a task force to seek out teachers and schools “indoctrinating” students. McCollum is a journalism major who wrote an op-ed for the University of Idaho newspaper, the Argonaut, arguing against the witch hunt.
Idaho’s future is under attack by our very own state representatives. The people who are meant to lead and serve the public to a better future, who were voted into power by the people of this state, are destroying the very foundation of it: education.
For the first time since the creation of the education indoctrination task force, which is accusing Idaho public schools of brainwashing students of all ages with supposed extreme leftist propaganda, public commentary was accepted.
Comments varied between criticism and support for the task force, with one woman citing her personal experiences as a colored woman in Idaho, claiming Black people aren’t victims.
I don’t know about all of the experiences other people have had in Idaho, but from my view in a rural, mostly white high school in Northern Idaho, people of color are definitely targets of racism.
Whether that racism is children making off-handed comments about another’s skin color or teenagers holding each other to stereotypes through peer pressure or bullying, all of it was present during my childhood.
Children’s brains are often compared to sponges. They soak up all the knowledge around them, whether they know the implications behind it or not, just like a sponge soaks up water. Parents are the first people a child learns from, then when they begin school they pass on the knowledge they gained from their parents to other children.
That is how racism spreads throughout generations and stays in Idaho. It is taught and it is learned. Black people in Idaho may not feel victimized, but the inherent racism spread throughout Idaho communities is undeniable.
Others who spoke at the final task force meeting harshly criticized the task force, comparing them to the white supremacist politicians of the 1900s who pushed their agenda through laws and hindered education and also to the communist reign of the Soviet Union.
The phonies on the task force posed as the good guys by claiming a defense of the Idaho Constitution and the protection of the minds of Idaho’s young, but it is clear by the lack of cooperation and empathy from the task force’s leaders they are using these noble phrases as a front to push a racist, controlling, extreme political agenda.