Indoctrination in Your State & District

Making of an activist

Colorado

Submitted: 2021-10-14

Story:

We have been dealing with our children’s school since our oldest son was in the 3rd grade. He came home one day depressed because he felt bad for being a white male of Northern European decent because they invaded America, caused slavery, etc. He was taught about Ghandi and how mean the British were to him. He was also taught about other activists during this time.
We reached out to his teacher and voiced our concern, which was met with “we never made him feel that way”. Later, during the 2020 election, his class held a mock vote and the class taught who was the better candidate. He came home hating one candidate because of what the teacher had lectured in class. We again reached out to the teacher and principal and after winter break removed our son from the class into one with a different teacher.
We thought we had gone passed the activism this year in the 4th grade, but he came home Monday with the attached book about the poet Pablo Neruda. We had never heard of the man, so we read the book with our son and began to see a change from a man who wrote poems to one who was an activist. We did our research on Pablo Neruda and discovered not only was he a communist senator in Chili, he wrote poems in ode to Joseph Stalin and Fidel Castro. We informed our son’s teacher he would not be completing the assignment on the book he brought home.
A few days later, our son told us they were learning about Cesar Chavez and his background in activism. The class was asked to define and write about what it means to be an activist.
My husband and I just stared in disbelief and started to see a pattern from the book he was given at the beginning of 3rd grade “The One and Only Ivan” which focus is on a gorilla but is befriended by an activist child, to Ghandi and other activist people in history to learning about a poet who supported tyrannical dictators and admired their policies.
My husband is scheduled to speak to the teacher and principal about our experiences and the books chosen to be featured in his classroom.

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