A math teacher at an expensive private school in Manhattan slammed the “indoctrination” of “antiracism” training occurring within its classrooms.
“As a teacher, my first obligation is to my students. But right now, my school is asking me to embrace ‘antiracism’ training and pedagogy that I believe is deeply harmful to them and to any person who seeks to nurture the virtues of curiosity, empathy and understanding,” Paul Rossi of the Grace Church School wrote in an essay, title, “I Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated.”
“I know that by attaching my name to this I’m risking not only my current job but my career as an educator, since most schools, both public and private, are now captive to this backward ideology,” Rossi wrote. “But witnessing the harmful impact it has on children, I can’t stay silent.”
Grace Church School educates children from kindergarten to high school in the East Village at $57,000 a year. On its website, the school says, “we aren’t an antiracist school right now, but we are striving to become one.”
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“Our students of color experience the burden of racism every day, and we strive to oppose the forces of bigotry and hate that seek to diminish them,” it adds.
Rossi said his school, “like so many others, induces students via shame and sophistry to identify primarily with their race before their individual identities are fully formed.
“Students are pressured to conform their opinions to those broadly associated with their race and gender and to minimize or dismiss individual experiences that don’t match those assumptions,” he wrote.
“All of this is done in the name of ‘equity,’ but it is the opposite of fair,” he continued. “In reality, all of this reinforces the worst impulses we have as human beings: our tendency toward tribalism and sectarianism that a truly liberal education is meant to transcend.”
He shared that in a recent “mandatory, whites-only student and faculty Zoom meeting,” he questioned the ideology, including “whether one must define oneself in terms of a racial identity at all.”
“However, when my questions were shared outside this forum, violating the school norm of confidentiality, 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,’” he added.
“A few days later, the head of school ordered all high school advisors to read a public reprimand of my conduct out loud to every student in the school. It was a surreal experience, walking the halls alone and hearing the words emitting from each classroom: ‘Events from last week compel us to underscore some aspects of our mission and share some thoughts about our community, the statement began,” he wrote.
George Davison, the head of school at Grace Church School, sent a message to parents following the essay, saying he is “disappointed” that Rossi wrote the piece.
“As you may be aware, a member of the faculty wrote and posted an article that is critical of Grace and of our efforts to build a school where everyone feels they belong,” the message Davison said in the statement. “The process of building a community is often challenging, and I am disappointed that this individual felt it necessary to air his differences in this way.”
“We have always held the goal of fostering an environment that is safe and welcoming for all members of the community across a myriad of differences,” Davison added. “This is a work in progress, and while we are not always as successful as we would hope, we know that it requires the constructive engagement of everyone in the community.”
The trend of “antiracist” training has spread to other schools across the country, with Journalist Megyn Kelly saying she pulled her children out of a New York City school after it promoted the “reform” of white children’s racial biases.
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“We pulled our boys from their school, and our daughter is going to be leaving hers soon, too,” Kelly said in November. “The schools have always been far Left, which doesn’t align with my own ideology, but I didn’t really care. Most of my friends are liberals. It’s fine. I come from Democrats as a family.”
“I’m not offended at all by the ideology, and I lean center-left on some things. But they’ve gone around the bend. I mean, they have gone off the deep end,” Kelly continued. “This summer, in the wake of George Floyd, they circulated amongst the diversity group — which includes white parents like us, there are people who want to be allies and stay attuned to what we can do — an article, and afterward, they recirculated it and wanted every member of the faculty to read it.”
