“The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes,” wrote G.K. Chesterton in 1924. “The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.” This could come to mind when pondering a new report about how even in states that are conservative, schooling is anything but. In fact, authors Dr. Scott Yenor and Anna Miller found when evaluating Republican-controlled Idaho that Critical Race Theory, sexual depravity, and anti-American propaganda infect its schools.
In an article at the American Mind entitled “Even in Idaho,” Miller presents an introduction to their report. She writes:
School administrators in Coeur d’Alene manipulated an 11-year-old girl into believing she was a boy and should undergo gender transition surgery. The elementary school counselor had coached the young girl into believing she was transsexual and instructed her how to tell her parents about her new identity. According to a recorded phone call between the counselor and parent, the principal and other school officials had known about this and began calling the girl by a boy’s name while purposefully choosing not to inform the child’s parents.
Many Idaho parents seek solace in the sense that our Red state must be immune from nationwide trends of Critical Gender Theory and Queer theory in educational programs. But Coeur d’Alene is one of many examples of how these ideas have creeped into Idaho public schools.
For example, children across Idaho are given live condom demonstrations in sex education classes. Teachers in Blaine County school district are trained in radical gender ideology. The Department of Health and Welfare sex education program directs kids to use Planned Parenthood clinics. School administrators in Blaine County address students by preferred pronouns corresponding to their gender identity regardless of parental wishes or knowledge.
The recommended statewide sex education curriculum teaches school age kids that there are five types of sex: “Vaginal penetration, Anal pen[e]tration, Oral (Mouth) contact [with] a partner’s genitals, Manual/Digital (hands/fingers) contact with a [partner’s] genitals, Skin-to-skin contact with a [partner’s] genitals.” And statewide sex education program standards require sixth through eighth grade students to “differentiate between biological sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression.”
(This is “next wave sex education,” but, as I wrote yesterday, sex education shouldn’t be in schools in any form.)
It’s relatively easy keeping parents in the dark, too. After all, most people assume that while some things have changed since their school days, how different could education really be? Yet as Yenor and Miller point out in their report crafted for the Idaho Freedom Foundation and Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life, “Things that were unthinkable five or 10 years ago now are everyday practices in public schools across America.”
Moreover, the sexual depravity is just part of what Yenor and Miller identify as “Critical Social Justice (CSJ).” In the report, entitled “Critical Social Justice in Idaho K-12 Education” (CSJIKE), they warn that this social engineering
is written into the DNA of Idaho’s public education system. At the most fundamental level, Idaho’s education system is designed to replace the influence of parents on the opinions and sentiments of children with the influence of public institutions. Our public education system emphasizes the principles of CSJ, a false and harmful anti-American, anti-Christian ideology that sows racial hatred, gender confusion, and resentment. There is no making peace with this imperial ideology. It must either be rooted out of our system (a tall task) or parents must be assisted in walking away from the system.
Race, Race, and More Race
The three R’s long ago became relativism, revisionism, and racism, and this phenomenon continues to intensify. As The Federalist writes, reviewing CSJIKE, “Idaho’s education system also heavily subsidizes the racial grievance industry with public funds, starting with teacher training and certification…. To be certified as a ‘culturally responsive educator’ under these requirements, ‘Two key practices include the rejection of colorblindness and replacing instruction about facts with narrative stories,’ the report notes.”
As to this, “facts” matter because they build a proper understanding of reality. In contrast, not only can a “narrative story” be inaccurate or even fictionalized, but it’s by definition anecdotal. And anecdotes — precisely because they can be true yet deceptive, as they may be unrepresentative of general phenomena — are used by propagandists to shape public opinion.
An example is how media cultivate the misconception that America is “racist” by seizing upon stories (true or not) involving white-on-black attacks while ignoring far more common black-on-white attacks. So when educators say they’re going to focus on “narrative stories,” it’s a red flag.
The Federalist then elaborated, continuing:
In Idaho, this [race obsession] has resulted in the same anti-American and racially biased lessons parents have exposed across the nation. For one example, “iCivics curriculum used in Boise School District’s Third Grade Citizenship unit teaches children that NFL players kneeling in protest at the playing of the national anthem is a sign of civic engagement, rather than disrespect to the country.”
This also results in Idaho churning out teachers who are trained to ignore and undermine any legal restraints on such highly politicized and socially destructive teaching.
“Teachers arrive in schools steeped in teaching techniques designed to dismantle traditional culture, reject colorblindness, adopt social constructivist views of truth and culture, and promote anti-racism. Teacher training reinforces and expands these early efforts. Education nonprofits offer curriculum and programming packages to school districts and principals to bring these elements and techniques into the daily experience of the classroom,” the report says.
There’s much more in the CSJIKE report, too. But it concludes stating the obvious, that these ideologies “are false and destructive, but they are powerful.” What can be done? Yenor and Miller write that aside from giving parents the aforementioned option of exiting the schools, reforming the system may yet be possible.
In reality, both are noble goals, but seeking reform is a must. Clever leftists effected the Gramscian “march through the institutions” because they understood something: Capture a civilization’s institutions, and it is yours.
Homeschooling is fine and has recently grown by leaps and bounds, but the truth is that the majority of parents aren’t going to embrace it; even if they were to, however, upon gaining enough power the Left would simply outlaw homeschooling as it has in other nations. So the lesson is simple. First, if you don’t control the culture, the culture will end up controlling you.
Second, if you don’t win the hearts and minds of the young today, you’ll lose the culture tomorrow.
