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PRIVATE SCHOOL (Riverdale, for the uninitiated, is one of three prestigious K-12 country day schools in a ritzy section of the Bronx, generally characterized by the presence of those three schools, but – notably here – it’s not even the Leftiest of them: That distinction goes to its neighbor Fieldston, aka “the Ethical Cultural School,” where parent-teacher conflicts tend to take on a more radical flavor.) I learned of another family, helplessly terrified to hear their third-grader spout off facts about Native American agricultural methods’ categorical superiority. That might actually be true , but I bit my tongue and longed for a mask to hide my out-of- practice poker face. Anyway, the concerned father up and sent her to a rigid Roman Catholic boarding school – run by actual nuns, my narrator emphasized – all of which, to my thinking, lumps him in with last year’s COVID-triggered anti- togetherness trend of parents sending their kids to boarding schools as soon as they resumed in-person classes. But then I learned of another family, too young for the convent option, but helplessly terrified to hear their third-grader spout off facts about Native American agricultural methods’ categorical superiority. That might actually be true , but I bit my tongue and longed for a mask to hide my out-of-practice poker face. These aren’t isolated incidents of pent-
up parental paranoia... A spate of recent tabloid stories – nearly all of them citing the awokened school’s tuition costs in the top paragraph – tell of parents’ pushback against the perceived trend that prestigious private schools have become too intently (and, per some, disingenuously) focused on combatting racism since last summer’s protests popularized the anti-racist ideologies of activist-writers like Ibram Kendi ( How to Be an Antiracist ) and Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility) . HOWTO BE AN ANTI-ANTI-RACIST At New York’s historically progressive – but, in recent decades, simply “elite” – Dalton School, the headmaster resigned in the wake of parents’ protests. “Every class this year has had an obsessive focus on race and identity,” an anonymous letter read. (The headmaster had also controversially delayed Dalton’s in-person reopening, a decision which left high-paying parents no choice but to listen in on classes and compile grievances.) A math teacher at the Grace Church School blew the whistle on his school’s system of “indoctrination” and was asked not to resume his teaching duties. A father at the all-girls Brearley School on the Upper East Side sent a letter to 650 parent households decrying the cancerous anti-racism policies that include training for parents and “color healing” sessions and described the school’s attempts to brainwash their daughters, who should be learning to think for themselves. He announced his daughter, who is 12, would be leaving Brearley at the end of the year. Andrew Gutmann, author of the now infamous Brearley letter, was also at a party of
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June 2021
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