Samuel Abrams writes at Real Clear Policy about a growing concern about American schools.
In the past few weeks, it has become apparent that the extreme progressive impulses infecting higher education in the United States have moved from campus quads and dormitories into our nation’s middle and high schools and even into our kindergartens. In New York City alone, the uptown Dalton School has seen an uprising and departure of numerous high-level staff over questions of curriculum and social justice. Downtown, a Grace Church School teacher published an open letter explaining that the school’s new “anti-racist” ideology induces shame in white students for being oppressors; he has witnessed the harmful impact that these ideas have had on children including silencing inquiry such that “children are afraid to challenge the repressive ideology that rules our school.”
Most recently, a Brearley School parent penned an open letter to the entire community of parents explaining he was pulling his daughter from the school because of its “obsession with race” and the fact that the school abandoned its principle of teaching how to think for teaching what to think. In response, Brearley doubled-down on its position and argued that this letter was both offensive and harmful; it was nothing of the sort.
While these letters have undoubtedly impacted their writers, these public statements show that the wave of progressive, woke, critical-race theory influenced “anti-racist” dogma that has penetrated our K-12 schools is finally being called out for what is it: racist, reductionist, anti-intellectual, and dangerous. And, I wanted to add some more fuel to those leading this important pushback: despite the impression that an illiberal, totalitarian movement has seized the world of education, new data shows that majorities of citizens want viewpoint diversity in our K-12 world, they want our schools to give their students an education based on skills, facts, and history and they do not approve of these divisive and racist ideas which masquerade as progressive and inclusive values.
