Several of you posted links to and excerpts from the letter by Andrew Gutmann, the man pulling his daughter out of a private New York school, that’s gone viral. Today we’ll look at it again, but first let’s review some of the back story leading up to it.
The school in question is Brearley, the New York private school. With $54,000 a year tuition it enrolls children of the elite from all walks of life. The story was covered by Bari Weiss. In case you’ve forgotten, Weiss is the former New York Times Op-Ed editor/writer who resigned, noting on her way out that Twitter had become the paper’s ultimate editor:
As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.
This story explains why freedom of speech is an endangered concept in this country. It’s under a sustained,coordinated attack by academia, whose job is to explain it, the media, whose job is to use it and the government, whose job is to protect. None of them are doing their job.
The story actually begins with Paul Rossi, a math teacher at another New York elite school, who first spoke out against the school’s embrace of critical race theory ideology at a mandatory, whites-only student and faculty Zoom meeting. He subsequently wrote an essay titled I Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated in which he accused the school of “indoctrinating” kids with an obsessive emphasis on race and stanching dissenting viewpoints.
Paul Rossi, math teacher. Looks like an ordinary bloke. Offense: un-woke
While not technically dismissed, Mr. Rossi has been told to stay off campus and teach remotely “for his own safety.” He expressed support for Andrew Gutmann whose letter stirred the brew at the elitist girls’ school, saying “Parents have a moral duty to protect their children from psychological abuse, and I commend any who choose the harder road.”
I was informed by the head of the high school that my philosophical challenges had caused “harm” to students, given that these topics were “life and death matters, about people’s flesh and blood and bone.” I was reprimanded for “acting like an independent agent of a set of principles or ideas or beliefs.” And I was told that by doing so, I failed to serve the “greater good and the higher truth.”
I suggest you read the whole thing. Has someone flipped the light switch? Has the light begun to sneak in?
Apparently the Rossi situation spurred Andrew Gutmann to action. His letter, sent to all the other parents of Brearley students, unloads on the school’s overload of wokeness:
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…
If the administration was genuinely serious about ‘diversity,’ it would not insist on the indoctrination of its students, and their families, to a single mindset, most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Instead, the school would foster an environment of intellectual openness and freedom of thought…
I object to Brearley’s vacuous, inappropriate, and fanatical use of words such as “equity,” “diversity” and “inclusiveness.” If Brearley’s administration was truly concerned about so-called “equity,” it would be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies, siblings, and those families with especially deep pockets. If the administration was genuinely serious about “diversity,” it would not insist on the indoctrination of its students, and their families, to a single mindset, most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Instead, the school would foster an environment of intellectual openness and freedom of thought. And if Brearley really cared about “inclusiveness,” the school would return to the concepts encapsulated in the motto “One Brearley,” instead of teaching the extraordinarily divisive idea that there are only, and always, two groups in this country: victims and oppressors.
Seriously, read the whole thing. And don’t skip the comments, a lot of support along with a fair share of people who clearly stand with the woke.
Brearley's exhaustive anti-racism calendar for the school year of 2020 to 2021 which includes training sessions for parents. Makes you wonder when they have time for educating the children.
Perhaps the most telling aspect of this little morality play being acted out in real time is the fact that neither the New York Times (America’s Newpaper of Record) nor The Washington Post (Democracy Dies In Darkness) have covered either story. Nor have they covered any other stories concerning the ideological takeover of the schools…or media. When you’re part of the cabal you decide all the news that’s fit to print.
Uh oh! Who switched the light on?
Correction: original post had confused Grace School with Brearly. They are separate bastions of elitism.
auvin.
The preoccupation is not an accident, it’s the design
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