While the Idaho indoctrination in education task force concluded in August, it remains a topic of conversation throughout the state, with criticisms of the alleged indoctrination.
ASUI Vice President Katelyn Hettinga and Director of Legislative Affairs Lydia McRoberts both followed the task force throughout the summer, reading public comments and following records that were released after a lawsuit with Idaho Press Club.
“It’s a task force that’s looking to attack higher education and attack education in general,” Hettinga said. “But higher education has a special focus, especially in coordination of all of the things that were said during the last legislative session.”
The task force has accused college educators of indoctrinating students through avenues such as Critical Race Theory, Marxism and communism. Although, McRoberts said this doesn’t hold true to her experience at UI, along with representatives in ASUI.
“When it comes to more political topics, I would say that professors and teachers are more sensitive about the issues and make a point not to introduce their opinions into it. So, I don’t ever feel that I’ve been indoctrinated,” McRoberts said.
Hettinga agrees, citing her experience in her economic classes where discussion of the free market is the main framework.
“In the actual student experience, we’re not hearing that professors are trying to do anything other than give us balanced information from all viewpoints so that we can form our own opinions,” Hettinga said.
Education stakeholders were absent during the duration of the task force, including organizations such as the Idaho School Board of Education and representatives from Idaho’s four-year universities.
Jason Knopp, Idaho School Boards Association President-elect at the time, resigned from the committee after their first meeting.
“I think that, all in all, having very small representation of educators on the task force is a very big red flag as to why we should not trust the resource,” Hettinga said.
McRoberts expressed the issue of the task force acting as an opportunity for its members to score political points with constituents with an upcoming governor and lieutenant governor election approaching in 2022.
Throughout the task force’s run, the meetings consisted of brief reviews of Idaho education curriculum. Hettinga believes the task force would have had validity if it was called an audit of the education curriculum instead.
“From my understanding, the curriculum has to be approved by several levels of government, so making sure that those different levels of government are represented and seeing if we need to change processes will be much better than overall just attacking educators for what they’re doing,” Hettinga said.
Sierra Pesnell can be reached at [email protected]
Erin Fanning
Interesting interviews and perspectives on the taskforce.