Some of the most exclusive, expensive private schools in the country are embracing “antiracism” education.
Although numerous public schools have been exposed as hotbeds for Critical Race Theory (CRT) and “antiracism” efforts, private schools are also teaching students and teachers that they are either victims or perpetrators of systemic racism. (RELATED: The New Left’s Institutionalized Racialism Is ‘Everywhere.’ In Medicine, Education, Even In Government Labs. Here’s How It Happened)
CRT holds that America is fundamentally racist, yet teaches individuals to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. Its adherents pursue “antiracism” through the end of merit, objective truth and the adoption of race-based policies.
One parent whose daughter was enrolled at an elite, $54,000-per-year all-girls school in Manhattan had enough of the school’s “antiracism” instruction, which he compared to the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
A father at Brearley pulled his daughter out of the school and sent this absolute barn-burner of a letter to every family in the school. Is the dam starting to break? https://t.co/sJj2h3SrXj
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) April 16, 2021
Andrew Gutmann pulled his daughter out of The Brearley School over the “anti-intellectual, illiberal mob” that, according to him, has taken over the school. Writing in Bari Weiss’s blog, Gutmann lambasts the school for teaching young girls to judge people by the color of their skin, and teaches students that “Blacks should forever be regarded as helpless victims, and are incapable of success regardless of their skills, talents, or hard work,” he wrote.
“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,” Gutmann wrote. “Facile and unsupported beliefs such as these are the polar opposite to the intellectual and scientific truth for which Brearley claims to stand.”
Gutmann suggests the school has held “mandatory anti-racism” training for parents, and touts Black Lives Matter, “diversity” and “equity” while implementing admissions preferences for “legacies, siblings, and those families with especially deep pockets.”
“l object to Brearley’s advocacy for groups and movements such as Black Lives Matter, a Marxist, anti family, heterophobic, anti-Asian and anti-Semitic organization that neither speaks for the majority of the Black community in this country, nor in any way, shape or form, represents their best interests,” he continued.
In response to Gutmann’s letter, the head of Brearley, Jane Fried called Gutmann’s opinions “deeply offensive and harmful,” Newsweek reported.
Gutmann’s polemic was published days after a teacher at another private New York City school claimed the school implemented an “antiracism” curriculum that pressures students to identify primarily with their race and shames those who don’t accept the teachings into silence.
Paul Rossi, a teacher at Grace Church High School in Manhattan, wrote that the school held mandatory whites-only student and faculty meetings, and aligned characteristics like “objectivity, individualism,” and “fear of open conflict” with white supremacy. (RELATED: ‘I Refuse To Stand By’: Teacher Speaks Out Against ‘Antiracist’ School As Peddling ‘The Opposite Of Truth’)
This is among the most affecting and powerful essays I’ve published in my career. Many teachers have reached out with similar stories. Paul Rossi knows that in going public he is risking his job: https://t.co/jzOX8znrTB
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) April 13, 2021
Rossi claimed that students at the school said they were concerned about challenging the premises of CRT and “antiracism.” Instead, students were pressured to stick to “a narrow script of acceptable responses” that teachers praised.
“Every student at the school must also sign a ‘Student Life Agreement,’ which requires them to aver that ‘the world as we understand it can be hard and extremely biased,’ that they commit to ‘recognize and acknowledge their biases when we come to school, and interrupt those biases,’ and accept that they will be ‘held accountable should they fall short of the agreement,’” Rossi wrote.
The Dalton School, also in New York City, similarly concerned parents with its “obsessive focus on race and identity,” a letter from parents and alumni said, according to the New York Post. The letter’s authors said the school used every class to fixate on race, with “racist cop” reenactments in science courses and “de-centering whiteness” lessons in art class. The school has an annual tuition of $54,180.
“Wildly inappropriate, many of these classes feel more akin to a Zoom corporate sensitivity-training than to Dalton’s intellectually engaging curriculum,” the letter said, according to the New York Post.
“Antiracism” isn’t only included in curriculums at elite east-coast schools — it has also reached private schools in the Heartland.
A coalition of parents at Columbus Academy in Ohio, where tuition costs $30,000 per year, have been trying to fight back against “intimidation, bullying, and intolerance” stemming from “antiracist” initiatives since 2020.
Amy Gonzalez and Andrea Gross, the founders of the Pro-CA Coalition, previously told the Daily Caller that the school held a “civil disobedience walkout” in January, when they claim the school’s director of diversity and the head of the upper school, which consists of grades 9-12, told students to participate in an exercise where they walked to the school’s field house to show civil disobedience and screamed “silence is violence.”
The two women told the Caller that students who weren’t participating in the walkout, which was held on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, would be called racists.
With faculty present at the exercise, students in the field house reportedly shouted “Malcolm X,” “Black Empowerment, and “You are racist,” the two women said.
“This is the Midwest, the heartland, and cancel culture has arrived,” Gross told the Caller. “We’ve just seen a big change in the way the curriculum is going, and we feel that we are fighting a battle for the hearts and minds of our children.”
Like Rossi, the parents said students and teachers at the school with opinions that didn’t align with progressive ideas were afraid to speak.
“There are kids so afraid to say anything, they feel they will be canceled by their friends or their teachers because they can’t speak freely,” Gonzalez said about a signed affidavit written on behalf of a student. The parents collected what they say was roughly 100 signed affidavits with complaints by students, parents, and teachers about the school’s culture.
“It’s not a good learning environment that cultivates critical thinking,” Gonzalez said.