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Diversity Equity Inclusion at Private Schools

In private schools, the ‘diversity, equity, inclusion’ movement is itself horridly racist

FEBRUARY 14, 2022 

BY  QUIN HILLYER - Washington Examiner

Very few enterprises are as objectively racist as the “anti-racist” racket dominating academia, journalism, and large corporations today.

In the name of anti-racism, the purveyors of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” education positively obsess about race. While claiming the mantle of integrationists such as Martin Luther King Jr., the DEI gang pushes resegregation. And, worst of all, rather than battling against harmful stereotypes of blacks and other ethnic minorities, they embrace and even employ those stereotypes to make hurtful, racist assumptions about those very minority groups.

The latter habit, the most overtly racist one, seems to be an inherent part of DEI training. This is one reason so many people have come to view it as toxic and destructive.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, education-reform advocates Andrew Gutmann and Paul Rossi together report on nearly 100 hours of videos they watched from DEI workshops sponsored by the National Association of Independent Schools. The NAIS sets standards for the accreditation of private schools across the country. The Journal column should serve as a jaw-dropping corrective for anyone who still thinks today’s DEI efforts are harmless "Kumbaya" sessions.

“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,” report Gutmann and Rossi. “DEI practitioners use segregated affinity groups and practices such as healing circles to inculcate feelings of trauma.” The NAIS workshops go to such absurd lengths that if schools fail to “explore the intersection” between science-and-technology teaching and “social justice,” that failure is portrayed as an act of “curriculum violence." Whatever that means.

Yet, none of that is as horrible as what the writers summarize here: “Perfectionism, punctuality, urgency, niceness, worship of the written word, progress, objectivity, rigor, individualism, capitalism, and [small ‘l’] liberalism are some of the characteristics of white-supremacy culture in need of elimination.”

Read that again. It is astonishing. In any sane world, almost every one of those attributes is a virtue. Yes, punctuality, niceness, and objectivity are prized character attributes. Yet, the NAIS ideologues are saying that it is unnatural and thus harmful for blacks or other minorities to be punctual, nice, objective, and adept with the written word.

In the 1950s and 1960s, one of the main complaints against white racists was they assumed blacks were incapable of a work ethic (“punctuality” and “rigor"), common decency (“niceness”), and progress. Now the charlatans who claim to be “anti-racist” are saying yes, such virtues are so alien to blacks that they (the virtues) must be eradicated.

The assumption that skin color governs character is at the very center of racism. Who knew that the grifters involved in these "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" campaigns sounded so much like Jim Crow racism?

Slides that Gutmann shared with me attack the “meritocracy myth,” repeatedly denounce capitalism, cite something called the Nemesis Radical Feminist Collective as being an expert on why “objectivity” is objectionable, and warn against the “white people way,” which apparently is racial code for being on time and showing manners.

And it’s not just the particular DEI trainers hired by the NAIS: As I wrote about in 2020, the Smithsonian Institution’s DEI efforts were pushing the same claptrap that “self-reliance” and “objective, rational linear thinking” are “aspects and assumptions of whiteness” that organizations should banish.

Enough is enough. The whole DEI “anti-racism” edifice must be toppled. This poison plant must be torn out, root and branch. The way to fight racism is to find commonality irrespective of race, treat everyone with kindness and respect, and otherwise stop obsessing about mere skin color. The human race is the human race. That’s all that should matter.

Identifying Critical Race Theory at your school

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‘Undercover Mothers’ Expose Indoctrination Programs Plaguing Private Schools Across the Country

 

A growing group of moms from across America — and across the political spectrum — have created a covert network dedicated to combating critical theory pedagogy in private schools accredited by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), and are setting out to destroy what one mother calls the “head of the snake.” 

The central goal of the group is to expose and put a stop to political indoctrination in their children’s schools, declining academic standards, and opaque school governance and financial management — which they believe stems from NAIS.

 

The moms are of a variety of political leanings — some of whom told Breitbart News they have “maxed out” political donations to former President Obama and to Hillary Clinton — and do not have a collective political ideology. Their only stance is opposition to political indoctrination of any kind in school. 

Speaking to Breitbart News, the “Undercover Mothers” detailed what they believe to be an effort at 'elite capture” of private school kids by Marxist ideologues, hoping to control the worldview of those likely to be influential when they grow up; as one explained, “1.2 percent of the nation’s schools are NAIS private schools.'


The “Undercover Mothers” group was formed after former New York City private high school math teacher Paul Rossi published an open letter blowing the whistle on the rampant indoctrination in America’s schools via critical theory. The group has grown to about one hundred participants across the country, since it formed in the spring of 2021. 

“We came together as a part of what really began with Paul Rossi and his letter. Many of us saw his letter, which included his email address, many of us emailed him, he connected a few of us and here we are,” one mom told Breitbart News. “We started talking, and talking about our experiences and why we were moved by Paul’s letter, and it turned out that most of us had had almost identical experiences in different schools … in different regions all around the country, north, south, east, west, Midwest, Pacific Northwest, everywhere. And that became kind of an alarming realization.” 

The mothers formed a group chat on encrypted messaging app Signal, connecting initially over their shared experiences with their respective schools, their shared disgust for their children’s curricula, and their mutual frustration with unresponsive school administrators, and the similarities across the country pointing to centralized coordination. 

They then set out to map the structure of power over the education system, to pinpoint the entities responsible for the decay.  “It was very eye opening, that the same exact things were happening, and not just the same books and the same lessons, but also the same kind of school structures that hadn’t been that way in decades past,” a mom told Breitbart News. “How they function and how they are administrated is no longer … individual [to each school. They’re all very, very similar. And in fact, some of them use identical language … and that is very fishy. And then once we did our research, we realized that it’s because it’s coming from these centralized sources with NAIS acting as a cartel.”  The main source identified by the inquiring moms is the NAIS, the national accreditation association for private schools across the country.  The NAIS was formed in 1962 — much younger than many of the schools it accredits — and then has regional accreditation associations that branch out from the national organization. 

When the moms investigated what factors are considered in accreditation, they found “two thirds of it was focused on social justice, diversity, equity, inclusion, and nothing about it was focused on actually educating the kids.”   The NAIS statement on Vision, Mission, and Values for 2021 says values include “embracing diversity, championing inclusivity, and empowering community.”  “All learners find pathways to success through the independence, innovation, and diversity of our schools, creating a more equitable world,” the NAIS Vision statement says.

“When schools implement diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, they often seek to re-educate employees on their awareness of such issues as implicit bias and white privilege,” a summary of the annual NAIS teacher training, reviewed by Breitbart News, says. 

A NAIS Trustee Handbook called “Diversity Work in Independent Schools,” reviewed by Breitbart News, provides tips for schools on how to work around federal laws prohibiting student admission based on race.   “You need a justification for an admissions policy that includes considerations of race. A justification might include noting that diversity has ‘substantial’ benefits in your education environment, including preparing students to live in a diverse working world, breaking down stereotypes, and encouraging invigorating classroom discussion,” the manual says.  “It is particularly important that the board exhibit its commitment to equity and justice through its own composition, practices, and public advocacy,” another passage in the Trustee Handbook says, “You ensure that the board lives out a strong commitment to equity and justice in all that you do and say.”

The NAIS “Hopes and Fears” Handbook, for sale on their website, describes certain parents the association calls “The 5 Percenters” — a group the “Undercover Mothers” would presumably be included in.  “The parents we call 5 percenters are different. Very. They cannot be soothed or reasoned with, no matter how hard the school tries.  For a number of sad psychological reasons, they provoke and sustain an abrasive, aggrieved, unhappy, mistrustful relationship with the school, sometimes for years,” the manual says.  “Educators often find it very hard to understand why some parents cannot form and sustain a cooperative, trusting relationship with them.  One immediate cause is mental illness,” the explanation of the “5 percenters” continues.  NAIS did not respond when reached for comment by Breitbart News.

 

Through further research, mothers in the group also found educational consultant Carney, Sandoe & Associates, which they discovered is responsible for recruitment and placement of headmasters at private schools across the country.   Carney, Sandoe & Associates, on their website, boasts a commitment to “the importance of increasing equity, diversity and inclusion — both within our own organization and among the educational communities with whom we partner,” and offers “implicit and cognitive bias training for search committees” as part of their services. 

“Parents need to be aware of what NAIS is and what their long-term goals have been and where they’re going, and then the parents need to pressure our own schools to cut ties with NAIS and then take our own schools back — with more transparency in selecting trustees, and allowing the parents to have a voice and be a real partner, instead of just saying that they’re partners in school leadership and management,” one of the moms told Breitbart News. 

The mothers are raising alarm about schools’ effort to alienate their kids from them, as the school assumes increasing responsibility for child rearing and conceals from parents what the kids are learning. 

“NAIS schools now say to you, ‘you hand your child to me, you, as a parent, you’re now called a caregiver, and you only write the tuition check, and you only donate … money … you do that, and we are [in charge of] the moral, ethical development of your child; we decide if your child is a boy or a girl, and to what extent you are privy to that information; we teach them moral character; we tell them that your moral character is wrong, is outdated.’ … So they are doing exactly nothing of what they promised. And NAIS has captured institutions and is doing exactly what public schools, the Board of Education, wants to do to the schools, which is to remove parents and put them outside the classroom, outside of the school altogether,” another mom continued. 

“What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to raise the red flag and we’re trying to ring the alarm bells, with the intention of not just exposing, but also informing, in a non judgmental way.”  The informal and independent group has participants from all across the political spectrum. 

“We are the mothers of America. We’re every race, religion, ethnicity, whatever you want to say — we’re the mothers of America. That’s all we are. We just care about our children. We care about the future for our children in this country. And we are super, super dedicated,” a third mom added, as she washed dishes while on a call with Breitbart News.

Teaching the 1619 Project 

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