For the first time ever, Idaho Legislators called out the Idaho Association for the Education of Young Children (IDAEYC) for attempting to traffic radical and divisive theories into homes, communities, and schools. The House also killed a bill that would’ve given IDAEYC a $6 million federal grant.
In response, the IDAEYC has repeatedly denied the accusation that they are attempting to indoctrinate and propagandize children and removed questionable links from its website. The truth is that IDAEYC has been infiltrating critical theory and the ideology of social justice into Idaho for many years.
The distortion begins in the IDAEYC's Professional Development Institute page, where a link on anti-bias education was removed after the House vote.
The IDAEYC has claimed they do not adhere to the same radical agenda as the NAEYC. Yet the 2019 conference webpage recommended teachers read NAEYC’s article “Moving Beyond Anti-Bias Activities: Supporting the Development of Anti-Bias Practices.''
Anti-bias education is designed to target white students and indoctrinate them with the false idea that they are responsible for systemic racism in American society. For example, NAEYC’s flagship book on anti-bias education quotes Carol Brunson Day, “White children definitely need anti-bias education. So too, do children of color, although the specific work differs from that of white children.”
White children need “education to prevent internalized oppression by fostering strong personal and social identities,” continues Brunson Day, while black children need education “to counter prejudices about other groups of color.”
Discriminating against white children by providing them with a different type of education is “essential [to] anti-bias work.” This racial scapegoating is also emblematic of critical race theorists’ assumption that racism is a white problem and therefore always pervades the normal state of affairs of society.
IDAEYC also recommended educators use NAEYC’s anti-bias education in classroom planning and professional development on another webpage promoting its 2020 conference.
This same webpage directs conference attendees to keynote speaker Lisa Porter Kuh’s Somerville Early Education blog as a curriculum resource. The website takes one down a rabbit hole of anti-bias education resources. For example, one resource titled “They’re not too Young to Talk About Race,” claims that “children as young as two years use race to reason about people’s behavior,” and “by five, black and Latinx children in research settings show no preference toward their own groups compared to whites; white children at this age remain strongly biased in favor of whiteness.”
As I have previously explained, the claim that babies are racist comes from the repeatedly debunked pseudoscience of implicit bias, which claims to be capable of predicting behavior and attempts to prove all white people are bigots at heart.
Somerville Early Education even promotes a CNN & Sesame Street Town Hall Standing Up to Racism, an event where “Sesame Street’s Abby Cadabby shares a story about how her fellow Sesame Street friend Big Bird was a victim of prejudice, and how she stood up for him,” and “a college professor defines white privilege.”
IDAEYC promoted this vile propaganda and invited its facilitator Lisa Porter Kuh to speak to Idaho educators at its annual conference in 2020. Yet the group expects Legislators to ignore this politically corrupt agenda and reward them with $6 million.
The deception continues. A “list of helpful children’s books and resources” is another removed link from its 2019 conference webpage. The list included a series of critical race theory, queer theory, and social justice books.
For example, the list recommends adults, including parents and educators, read “White Fragility: Why it's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism,” by Robin DiAngelo and Michael Eric Dyson. In this intellectually fraudulent book, DiAngelo attempts to convince readers that white people are inescapably racist.
As DiAngelo writes, “All white people are invested in and collude with racism. … The white collective fundamentally hates blackness for what it reminds us of: that we are capable and guilty of perpetuating immeasurable harm and that our gains come through the subjugation of others.”
DiAngelo even goes on to argue that any white person who refuses to accept their inescapable racism is experiencing “white fragility.” This absurd generalization is the definition of racism-- attributing negative qualities to an entire race of people.
The list continues with more books on critical race theory whose authors spew hatred on white people including “Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race” by Debby Irving and “Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children” by Po Bronson, which “includes a chapter on why white parents don’t talk to their children about race.”
Books normalizing transgenderism and gender fluidity to children were also included on the list. For example, to teach children about “being misgendered,” educators are encouraged to read the book “10,000 Dresses” by Marcus Ewert. A little boy named Bailey wants to crossdress in “dresses made of crystals and rainbows.” The book portrays Bailey’s parents as transphobic for refusing to embrace their child participating in drag as healthy and authentic. Bailey usurps his parents’ authority with the help of an older girl who helps him make dresses to wear. The book advocates for children to “embrace the modern fairy tale” of “the person you feel you are inside.” Overall this story portrays the abandonment of parental rights in pursuit of a transgender agenda as a thing to be championed.
These forms of propaganda at IDAEYC’s 2019 and 2020 conferences are not isolated incidents. The group's 2017 conference held a workshop titled “Boy? Girl? Both? Neither? What does that mean in our classroom?” This session examined “the language around gender” and shared “children’s books on diversity” to help engage children in dialogue about transgenderism.
Confusing children about their gender, training teachers to normalize transgenderism and ignore parental rights, and discriminating against children based on race in classrooms is essential to NAEYC’s anti-bias education.
IDAEYC may not, yet, be as radical as other NAEYC branches, like California, Oregon or Arizona. Recognize, however, that IDAEYC is on the same path.
IDAEYC seeks to transform education in Idaho into a system that indoctrinates children to think only in cynical, divisive, and false ways. The goal is to make children woke. By exposing children to such pernicious ideas from birth to five, children will, unlike their parents, grow up to know that the point of understanding society is to change it in increasingly narrow and divisive ways.
Parents will know exactly who to blame when they wonder why preschool programs are teaching white kids they are inherently and unforgivably racist, or reinforcing their 4-year-old boy’s desire to cross dress in a princess gown, or inviting white parents to come listen to a lecture on white privilege.
Legislators have a chance to prevent this poisonous ideology from seeping into Idaho’s early education programs. And they must stop it, or else families and innocent children will pay the price.
By using the Wayback Machine we can compare IDAEYC’s web pages from January 21, 2021, to April 4, 2021.
