American schools are going down the tubes: Harvard grad and author of Woke, Inc says woke culture is 'infecting schools, turning education into indoctrination and poisoning' children's minds'
By Ariel Zilber
Daily Mail
April 19, 2021
American schools are ‘going down the tubes’ because they have been ‘infected’ with ‘woke culture’ that has ‘sacrificed the idea of excellence’ by ‘indoctrinating’ students, according to a leading critic.
Vivek Ramaswamy spoke out in response to two separate controversies that impacted elite New York City prep schools where parents complained their children were being brainwashed with anti-racism ideology.
Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and the author of Woke, Inc, compared the wave of ‘wokeness’ in schools to China’s Cultural Revolution of the 60s and 70s, when the people were indoctrinated with Maoism by the Communist Party.
Vivek Ramaswamy
‘But today what's happening, especially in our schools, is we have taken this notion in the name of diversity - we have sacrificed true diversity itself.’
Ramaswamy added: ‘We have also sacrificed the idea of excellence and when we have gotten rid of excellence, I think our schools are going down the tubes.’
His comments came just days after a father removed his daughter from an elite, all-girls Manhattan private school, Brearley, that counts Tina Fey and Drew Barrymore among its parents.
Andrew Gutmann, 45, had announced in an April 13 letter shared by Bari Weiss this week that he has chosen not to reenroll his daughter in the all-girls school where annual tuition is $54,000.
He pulled his daughter from the school over its woke antiracism 'obsession.' He accused the school of 'teaching what to think not how to think.'
The school responded by slamming him for being 'offensive.'
Last week, a math teacher who went public with his complaints that another elite New York City prep school, Grace Church School, was indoctrinating students with anti-racism ideology.
Grace Church School teacher Paul Rossi on Friday revealed that he will have to teach remotely rather than return to his classroom at the elite prep school in Manhattan's East Village Monday.
Rossi told DailyMail.com he received an email from school Principal George P. Davison this morning saying he should stay home until further notice for 'security concerns.' He is said to have been asked to stay home after another colleague threatened him in the wake of his complaints being published.
Rossi drew media attention earlier this week after publishing a blog post accusing the school of indoctrinating students with 'anti-racism' ideology that 'induces shame' in white students for being 'oppressors'.
He said he decided to come forward because he could no longer stay silent while 'witnessing the harmful impact' that anti-racism instruction has on children.
Principal Davison addressed the scathing post in a letter to parents and staff Tuesday saying he was 'disappointed' the teacher had chosen to air his 'differences' in a public forum.
Topher Nichols, chief communications officer for Grace Church School, however, told DailyMail.com Thursday that Rossi wouldn't be fired or face discipline over his post.
But Ramaswamy told Fox News that these incidents illustrate the extent to which American children are being brainwashed.
'I think it's going to be really damaging, poisoning the minds of our next generation,' he told Fox News.
'The thing about America as a country is that we are not like many other countries throughout history - defined on the basis of a single ethnicity, or a single language, or a single monarch.
'America is an idea, and part of being an idea as a country means this.
'The way we describe America affects that America actually works, that's why we call it the American dream. It's what we aspire to. E pluribus unum (out of many, one). That's what we should be aspiring to, ideas that bind us together.
He added: 'Instead we have been obsessing over diversity, our differences, for a decade now forgetting all of the ways in which we are actually the same, and now that's getting transmitted to the next generation.
'I think the way we describe this country to them will affect the way it works in the next generation, and that's something to be really frightened of.'
Gutmann, who runs his family's chemical business, told the New York Post on Saturday that he penned the 1,700-word letter he mailed to 650 different families because 'someone had to speak out.' He said he does not regret sending the letter.
'She hasn't been brainwashed yet by the school - but she's had me at home. I'm not so sure that's true of the other kids,' Gutmann told the outlet, referring to his daughter.
'Someone had to do it. Someone had to light the match. Everyone's so afraid of cancel culture. We're going to destroy the city, we're going to destroy the country.'
Gutmann said he refused to sign the school's anti-racism pledge in October.
The school had started the required pledge after Black alumnae accused the school of racism in posts made to the Instagram account account 'Black at Brearley,' according to the Washington Free Beacon.
The school's antiracism and diversity plans are extensively described on its website.
'I thought they were going to kick my daughter out then,' Gutmann said.
'They didn't, but next year they have the pledge built into the yearly school contract.'
The concerned dad claimed that the school's 'once-rigorous curriculum' completely changed after administrators 'managed to sneak' in an increased emphasis on race during the pandemic 'when everyone was distracted,' the New York Post reported.
'I don't know who's really driving this and nobody does,' he told the outlet.
Gutmann said the thing he resented the most about Brearley is that the school 'has begun to teach what to think, instead of how to think.'
Jane Fried, Brearley's head of school, sent a message to the school's families on Friday in which she slammed Gutmann's letter as '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.'
But Gutmann claims that Brearley students should not be 'frightened' by receiving a letter at their homes.
'The upper schoolers are afraid of getting a letter at their home?' Gutmann said Saturday.
'They're frightened and intimidated? The school has said it's number one priority is to teach the girls intellectual bravery and courageousness. Either they are lying or else they have done an atrocious job.'
It was not immediately clear how Gutmann managed to receive the home addresses of the 650 families to home he sent the letters.
Gutmann said he has received supportive emails from parents across the city.
'There's a whole underground-like movement out there,' he told the New York Post.
Brearley's alumnae include Caroline Kennedy, Tea Leoni, Elisabeth Murdoch, Dorothy Schiff and Alice Gore King.
In his letter, Gutmann mapped out what he called Brearley's 'critical race theory' which he said is 'advocating that Blacks should forever be regarded as helpless victims'.
Brearley School
One of the examples he gave was the school's 'sophomoric' and 'simplistic' anti-training sessions for parents, and the fact that materials that have been taught for years are now suddenly considered offensive in light of the BLM movement.
He didn't say which books had been pulled but said it applied to his daughter's fourth-grade class.
Gutmann fumed that the girls are being taught to hate their own country and that white students are being judged for the color of their skin.
He also denied that there is systemic racism in the US, saying there hadn't been since the 1960s.
'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,' he said.
He also called out the school for claiming to care about diversity with its race stances while also prioritizing legacy students whose relatives previously attended, siblings of other students or 'families with especially deep pockets'.
'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,' he said.
Gutmann, 45, went on to say that the school was 'indoctrinating' the girls into a single mindset that is 'most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.'
'Over the past several months, I have personally spoken to many Brearley parents as well as parents of children at peer institutions. It is abundantly clear that the majority of parents believe that Brearley’s antiracism policies are misguided, divisive, counterproductive and cancerous.
'Many believe, as I do, that these policies will ultimately destroy what was until recently, a wonderful educational institution.
'But as I am sure will come as no surprise to you, given the insidious cancel culture that has of late permeated our society, most parents are too fearful to speak up,' he said, urging other parents not to stay quiet and assuring them many feel the same way he does.
In response, Brearley doubled down on its position. He is now waiting to hear whether his daughter can complete the academic year before moving her to another school.
'Many of our students of color, especially those who identify as Black, felt the letter questioned their belonging in the Brearley community.
'Their belonging and their excellence are unquestionable,' Jane Fried, the head of the school, wrote.
The school's antiracism and diversity plans are extensively described on its website.
It is the latest example of a prestigious, private school, pontificating to parents about their behavior.
At Dalton, another elite Manhattan school, parents have complained about its 'obsessive' anti-race agenda, which includes reenactments of racist cops in science classes.
'Wildly inappropriate, many of these classes feel more akin to a Zoom corporate sensitivity-training than to Dalton’s intellectually engaging curriculum,' parents said in a letter to the school that was obtained by The New York Post.
Jim Best, the head of Dalton and the architect of the new anti-racism agenda, is leaving the school at the end of 2021.
1 comment:
Government schools have not been seriously interested in teaching for at least 20 years, maybe longer. They are indoctrination centers. There is no other way to put it and even pretend to be honest.
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