English Teacher Quits Exclusive New Jersey Private School Over Critical Race Theory
“students have found comfort in their moral certainty, and so they have become rigid and closed-minded, unable or unwilling to consider alternative perspectives”
An English teacher named Dana Stangel-Plowe has quit her job at the Dwight-Englewood School in New Jersey over their decision to implement Critical Race Theory in the school’s curriculum.
Her description of the effect this ideology has had on students and staff is disturbing.
Dana Kennedy and Tamar Lapin report at the New York Post:
Teacher at posh NJ prep school quits over critical race theory
An English teacher has resigned from a top New Jersey prep school that is using critical race theory to create a “hostile culture of conformity and fear” — causing white and male students to believe they are “oppressors,” she said.
Dana Stangel-Plowe accused the Dwight-Englewood School in Bergen County of forcing students and faculty to embrace a single set of beliefs, choking off free speech in the process.
“The school’s ideology requires students to see themselves not as individuals, but as representatives of a group, forcing them to adopt the status of privilege or victimhood,” Stangel-Plowe wrote in her letter to school brass.
“As a result, students arrive in my classroom accepting this theory as fact: People born with less melanin in their skin are oppressors, and people born with more melanin in their skin are oppressed. Men are oppressors, women are oppressed, and so on,” she continued.
Stangel-Plowe published her resignation letter. Here is an excerpt via FAIR (Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism):
In my classroom, I see up close how this orthodoxy hinders students’ ability to read, write, and think. I teach students who recoil from a poem because it was written by a man. I teach students who approach texts in search of the oppressor. I teach students who see inequities in texts that have nothing to do with power. Students have internalized the message that this is the way we read and think about the world, and as a result, they fixate on power and group identity. This fixation has stunted their ability to observe and engage with the full fabric of human experience in our literature.
In my professional opinion, the school is failing to encourage healthy habits of mind, essential for growth, such as intellectual curiosity, humility, honesty, reason, and the capacity to question ideas and consider multiple perspectives. In our school, the opportunity to hear competing ideas is practically non-existent. How can students, who accept a single ideology as fact, learn to practice intellectual curiosity or humility or consider a competing idea they’ve never encountered? How can students develop higher order thinking if they are limited to seeing the world only through the lens of group identity and power?
Sadly, the school is leading many to become true believers and outspoken purveyors of a regressive and illiberal orthodoxy. Understandably, these students have found comfort in their moral certainty, and so they have become rigid and closed-minded, unable or unwilling to consider alternative perspectives.
In the video below, Stangel Plowe goes over all of this in detail. She describes incidents at the school that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, such as administrators segregating teachers by race at a faculty meeting. Watch:
It’s worth noting that this issue keeps coming up at exclusive private schools. In January, parents at the Dalton School in New York objected to a similar situation.
In March, we reported on parents at the Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles who held meetings in secret to figure out how to oppose the implementation of this ideology.
In April, a father in New York City went viral after pulling his daughter out of the Brearley School and penning a letter condemning the school’s adoption of Critical Race Theory.
Featured image via YouTube.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
She is a hero. Standing Up for what is right.
America need 100+ million more like her.
DON’T BE FOOLED
The sneaky school administrators are trying to push this agenda under different names now. They know that a majority of people oppose CRT. So now they call it “Racial Sensitivity Training” and other innocuous sounding names. Sneaky and underhanded.
In California there is a bill in the state Senate called AB 101. It’s proponents say it is not CRT but “race sensitivity” – it is a straight-out lie. It includes all the same elements of CRT. It is all about indoctrinating CA public school kids. New York Progressives are trying to push similar school initiatives.
Do not be fooled by such deceptive marketing. By any other name, it’s still CRT’s agenda of racist divisiveness, racist struggle, and absolutism, in schools, workplaces, politics, and media.
It is my earnest hope that MORE will follow her example.
Exclusive private school?
Wonder how many title ix students they have?
Well in my son’s school, private,religious, Texas, College Prep, scholarships plentiful based on income and scholastic merit, Not Elite. The breakdown is White: 29.8, Hispanic: 48.4
Asian: 11.0, Two or more races:5.4, African American: 4.8, American Indian:0.5, Pacific Islander:0.1%
What is most disturbing to me is that when we talk about the dissemination of woke propaganda in government schools by government teachers, we always speak of withdrawing and enrolling our children in private schools as a potential solution. If the private schools are falling as quickly, what do we do?
Carefully screened religious private schools. And watch them closely too. If you can’t find even that Homeschool pods in your area run by moms and dads who quit teaching.
At some point, we have to decide if we want the diplomas or an education. Having a parent strike where everyone pulls their children out of school may be the answer. I am sure we are smart enough to figure out an alternative way to provide an education. Lots of sacrificing is ahead of us if we are going to get through this intact. That is the key right there. Are we up to it?
Someone is actually doing this:
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/06/10/columbia-prof-john-mcwhorter-calls-on-parents-to-pull-kids-from-new-jersey-prep-school-over-crt/
Getting the children out of these schools is step one. It should be non-negotiable. Stop this Marxist indoctrination right now… as in IMMEDIATELY!
What the hell, the teachers unions shut them down for over a year already and here in LA, it looks like they mean to close them down permanently. We need to change the battlefield where the teachers are GONE! Make them come to US!
Go even further and disband the school districts. Shut the whole thing down and sell the facilities off. If a private outfit buys it, or if a new district is put together, see to it that NO one from before is re-hired unless they are the
janitors “custodians”, and maybe the lunch room lady. And, under NO circumstances let anyone with degrees in eduction anywhere near the children.OOPS…
The ghost in the machine?
To Phil: the failure of me to prew-phreed before hitting Submit.
“Having a parent strike where everyone pulls their children out of school may be the answer”
What would that accomplish? Tax dollars don’t follow the student, so the local school with no students will still be fully funded. The offending teacher’s unions would love it, full pay with no work, just like they’re getting now under covid in many districts.
Wrong. It puts the schools and their unions out of business. Better to take a year or two off as we reorganize new schools to do some actual education than to allow these Marxists to spend ANY time indoctrinating our children. That is one of the sacrifices I am talking about.
If you don’t think parents emptying the schools of students would make a difference, you need to do more thinking. It would certainly put a big flame under the butts of the politicians to finally confront and abolish the unions. And if the parents get organized first, that tax money gets redirected to THEIR new schools. You can bet your top dollar that parents would finally be “consulted” for what they want and a return to the old way would be off the table permanently.
Well that’s likely true for federal and state dollars which are attendance/enrollment based. Local tax funds though? Maybe. Worth a shot.
Dennis Prager often states bravery is the rarest human
trait
She has it.
Being a diehard capitalist, I expect that market forces will drive drive creation of schools which reject CRT. Is ther any reason that non CRT charters cannot be created? How about homeschooling cooperatives?
Especially where expensive private schools are concerned, 10-20 students could be educated as a group by a single teacher in a rented space. America was built with one room school houses.
The truth is that a dedicated teacher can teach well motivated children in that environment.
CRT is the anti-gospel.
Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
I wish CRT still meant Cathode Ray Tube, just like PC once meant Printed Circuit.
They’ve even stooped to appropriating electronics language. The nerds won’t like this.
Americans getting up and moving to establish enclaves of normalcy will accelerate until we reach a tipping point and before you know it we’ll be talking about secession.
Or Federalism in actual practice not just in the abstract.
What she says about victim/oppressor has already permiated much of our culture and is correctly identified as the new path to marxism. Psy Ops to gaining power. Why are progressives so hell bent on controlling everyone?
There are many people that either have very little or are afraid of the rough and tumble of daily life and this is a very potent force. The leaders of “Progressivism” recognize that and have simply moved to exacerbate and harness it for their own means. It can be pretty sweet to be at the top of such a movement, and righteous hatred of the imaginary racist society is a pretty potent drug for everyone else. I think it has become a self-perpetuating psychosis with some serious money to be made. In addition, even if mainstream democrats behind closed doors know this is all stupid, they are more than happy to tie up our resources fighting this nonsense everywhere it appears while they advance other policy agenda items.