On February 12, 2022, the Wall Street Journal published Inside the Woke Indoctrination Machine, an op-ed I wrote with Andrew Gutmann exposing the DEI playbook for indoctrination of children, revealed in virtual teacher training sessions at the National Association of Independent Schools’ People of Color Conference (PoCC).
Here is an excerpt from the Op-Ed:
Last spring we exposed how two elite independent schools in New York had become corrupted by a divisive obsession with race, helping start the national movement against critical race theory. Schools apply this theory under the guise of diversity, equity and inclusion programming. Until now, however, neither of us fully grasped the dangers of this ideology or the true motives of its practitioners. The goal of DEI isn’t only to teach students about slavery or encourage courageous conversations about race, it is to transform schools totally and reshape society radically.Over the past month we have watched nearly 100 hours of leaked videos from 108 workshops held virtually last year for the National Association of Independent Schools’ People of Color Conference. The NAIS sets standards for more than 1,600 independent schools in the U.S., driving their missions and influencing many school policies. The conference is NAIS’s flagship annual event for disseminating DEI practices, and more than 6,000 DEI practitioners, educators and administrators attended this year. Intended as professional development and not meant for the public, these workshops are honest, transparent and unfiltered—very different from how private schools typically communicate DEI initiatives. These leaked videos act as a Rosetta Stone for deciphering the DEI playbook.The path to remake schools begins with the word “diversity,” which means much more than simply increasing the number of students and faculty of color—referred to in these workshops as “Bipoc,” which stands for “black, indigenous and people of color.” DEI experts urge schools to classify people by identities such as race, convince them that they are being harmed by their environment, and turn them into fervent advocates for institutional change. (read more)
The article has generated enormous attention, shared widely on social media and approaching 2000 comments on the WSJ site, as of this writing. Here are a few responses from readers.
The response to our piece has been overwhelming. Many parents and even fellow teachers have also emailed to express gratitude for bringing this to light. Others shared their own stories that reflect the downstream effects of these types of training sessions, as they are implemented by administrators and teachers in their private schools.
Some on Twitter, however, have questioned the accuracy of our reporting.
In response, I wanted to share receipts in the form of video excerpts from the sessions we referenced, so that readers can make up their own minds about our citations. Since our op-ed was limited by space, I also want to expand on the ideas animating the content of these sessions, and the damaging effects of these ideas when applied to students in the classroom. We will also be publishing more clips in the upcoming weeks. There’s more. Much more.
In this clip, we learn that, among many other things, “omitting queer history from the curriculum,” “teaching gender without examining the effects of toxic masculinity”, and “failing to explore the intersection of STEM and social justice,” are examples of “curriculum violence”. In addition to equating speech acts with “literal violence”, the presenter also stresses the importance of “impact over intent”–an essential moral value broadly applied in independent NAIS schools. While the maxims “impact over intent” and “speech can be violence” are directed at teachers here, they become more damaging when applied in combination as expectations for students in the classroom, and particularly harmful to viewpoint diversity. Students inculcated in these precepts 1) learn to anticipate that the value of their utterances are entirely subject to the judgment of a roomful of recipients, any one of whom could object, and furthermore that no generosity will be extended to them with regards to motive. Also, that 2) the full extent of potential harm claimed by either the listener or a bystander could rise to the level of physical violence. Given that the potential consequences for speaking their thoughts freely have now been ratcheted up to astronomical levels, students are understandably loath to deviate from accepted views in class discussion. I witnessed this stifling of discussion in my own classes, as students trained by my colleagues struggled to honor these established norms.
The clip is a prime example of how sophisticated social justice indoctrinators “build upon the mindset of a kindergartener” by exploiting the child’s innate sense of fairness and reciprocation, “in order to do fabulous things in the social justice realm”. The presenter lays out how her lessons are informed by the “Six Elements of Social Justice” framework of Dr. Bree Picower, a Professor at Montclair State University in the College of Education and Human Development, and a highly influential scholar in the field. Picower’s book “Practice What You Teach: Social Justice Education in the Classroom and the Streets” encourages teacher activism in their classrooms. This speaker recommends establishing a strong sense of “self-love and knowledge”, then “we’re going to move, we’re gonna slowly move” leveraging the budding empathy of the children to awareness of social issues with a specific political bent, “to get the results that we want for them”.
This clip is one instance of an overall preoccupation throughout the conference with “whiteness” and “white supremacy”. References to Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones’ auto-ethnographic scholarship (loosely defined) on “White Supremacy Culture” are common across the sessions. As Alcid’s fellow presenter gushes here, “those two slides amongst themselves can just be a workshop by themselves.” Matthew Yglesias wrote a deep dive into the “White Supremacy Culture” framework, which is sadly familiar to many students (and parents) at NAIS schools. Watching it pushed on children in a whites-only segregated meeting was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me at my school, which led to my ouster. It even appeared in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture in our nation’s capitol, and was withdrawn only after public outcry. In addition many of the most scholarly presentations at PoCC were also preoccupied with the overarching project of “deconstructing, dismantling, and disrupting” everything from capitalism to “colonialism” (often vaguely and broadly defined as a “mindset” as well as an ongoing reality), and “Western thought”.
*Note: ‘PWI’ = predominantly white institution
I hope these excerpts from the conferences give a sense of what we witnessed, and I encourage you to read our op-ed for yourself over at WSJ Opinion. There is so much more to reference and discuss, to shed light on what is happening to our “independent” schools, and their relationship to the NAIS.
Tips arrived from many sources after this project launched early this week at Legal Insurrection. So please stay with me in the coming days and weeks as I continue to investigate and share what I find with readers. Contact me at teachingfortruth@protonmail.com
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Paul Rossi is a high school mathematics teacher, tutor, and writer. In April 2021, he went public about the impact of Critical Race Theory and pedagogy on his students at Grace Church School, where he had taught since 2012. He is currently an advisor to the Educational Liberty Alliance and a co-host of Chalkboard Heresy (launching soon) Please send tips and stories to teachingfortruth@protonmail.com or DM on Twitter at @pauldrossi.
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