Two ritzy private schools in New York City are in administrative and public relations HELL right now as a result of their activist and/or morally weak faculty’s embracing of critical race theory and the woke “social justice” mob.
Or, as the author of the letter mentioned in the headline describes it, the schools’ “gutting of the history, civics, and classical literature curriculums” in favor of “vacuous, inappropriate, and fanatical use of words such as ‘equity,’ ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusiveness.'”
As the New York Post reports, the headmaster at “the famed Dalton School” recently resigned over their “anti-racist manifesto” and obsessively race-based so-called curriculum, and that is already old news after another school, “the equally prestigious, $54,000-a-year Brearley School,” is now in their own controversy.
The Brearley news went explosively worldwide last night when Bari Weiss shared a letter from an irate parent that one commenter correctly described as “a masterpiece” objecting to the school’s insanity. A letter he sent to every parent at the school — that’s like 600 families.
Weiss introduced it on her substack, in a post titled “You Have to Read This Letter,” with this opening: “I was planning to publish a roundup today of the many thoughtful responses to Paul Rossi’s essay. I’m going to save that post for Sunday, because I was just sent this letter that has my jaw on the floor. It was written by a Brearley parent named Andrew Gutmann.”
It’s incredible. Here’s just a sample:
April 13, 2021
Dear Fellow Brearley Parents,
Our family recently made the decision not to reenroll our daughter at Brearley for the 2021-22 school year. She has been at Brearley for seven years, beginning in kindergarten. In short, we no longer believe that Brearley’s administration and Board of Trustees have any of our children’s best interests at heart. Moreover, we no longer have confidence that our daughter will receive the quality of education necessary to further her development into a critically thinking, responsible, enlightened, and civic minded adult. I write to you, as a fellow parent, to share our reasons for leaving the Brearley community but also to urge you to act before the damage to the school, to its community, and to your own child’s education is irreparable.
It cannot be stated strongly enough that Brearley’s obsession with race must stop. It should be abundantly clear to any thinking parent that Brearley has completely lost its way. The administration and the Board of Trustees have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob, and then allowing the school to be captured by that same mob. What follows are my own personal views on Brearley’s antiracism initiatives, but these are just a handful of the criticisms that I know other parents have expressed.
I object to the view that I should be judged by the color of my skin. I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs. By viewing every element of education, every aspect of history, and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race, we are desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and utterly violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believed, fought, and died.
I object to the charge of systemic racism in this country, and at our school. Systemic racism, properly understood, is segregated schools and separate lunch counters. It is the interning of Japanese and the exterminating of Jews. Systemic racism is unequivocally not a small number of isolated incidences over a period of decades. Ask any girl, of any race, if they have ever experienced insults from friends, have ever felt slighted by teachers or have ever suffered the occasional injustice from a school at which they have spent up to 13 years of their life, and you are bound to hear grievances, some petty, some not. We have not had systemic racism against Blacks in this country since the civil rights reforms of the 1960s, a period of more than 50 years. To state otherwise is a flat-out misrepresentation of our country’s history and adds no understanding to any of today’s societal issues. If anything, longstanding and widespread policies such as affirmative action, point in precisely the opposite direction.
I object to a definition of systemic racism, apparently supported by Brearley, that any educational, professional, or societal outcome where Blacks are underrepresented is prima facie evidence of the aforementioned systemic racism, or of white supremacy and oppression. Facile and unsupported beliefs such as these are the polar opposite to the intellectual and scientific truth for which Brearley claims to stand. Furthermore, I call bullshit on Brearley’s oft-stated assertion that the school welcomes and encourages the truly difficult and uncomfortable conversations regarding race and the roots of racial discrepancies.
I object to the idea that Blacks are unable to succeed in this country without aid from government or from whites. Brearley, by adopting critical race theory, is advocating the abhorrent viewpoint that Blacks should forever be regarded as helpless victims, and are incapable of success regardless of their skills, talents, or hard work. What Brearley is teaching our children is precisely the true and correct definition of racism.
I object to mandatory anti-racism training for parents, especially when presented by the rent-seeking charlatans of Pollyanna. These sessions, in both their content and delivery, are so sophomoric and simplistic, so unsophisticated and inane, that I would be embarrassed if they were taught to Brearley kindergarteners. They are an insult to parents and unbecoming of any educational institution, let alone one of Brearley’s caliber.
And then he REALLY gets going.
You really have got to read the whole thing. It’s stunning. And the New York Post adds the response from Brearley Head of School Jane Foley Fried:
Brearley head of school fired back Friday with her own missive to the school’s families, calling Guttman’s letter “deeply offensive and harmful.”
“This afternoon, I and others who work closely with Upper School students met with more than one hundred of them, many of whom told us that they felt frightened and intimidated by the letter and the fact that it was sent directly to our homes,” Fried wrote. “Our students noted that as this letter, which denies the presence of systemic racism, crossed their doorways, the evidence of ongoing racism – systemic or otherwise – is daily present in our headlines.”
Fried’s bio says her areas of “research and interest include the performance of underrepresented students of color and girls in math and science, the impact of independent school education on the lives of alumni, the redefinition of success for elementary and secondary school girls and the scholarship of teaching and learning.”
She was appointed by de Blasio to NYC’s Education Sector Advisory Council where she’s part of the group deciding when and how to open schools “amid the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The radical socialist liberal race-obsessed Marxist hoards are in every level of public life in this country. In every institution, at every company, in every branch of government. You want to talk about diversity? Quotas? Answer why this insane ideology that is not supported by most voting Americans is the predominant force in every elite institution that decides the fate for the rest of us.