We need more brave teachers like Paul Rossi, who guest-authored this article on Bari Weiss’ Substack website: “I Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated: Children are afraid to challenge the repressive ideology that rules our school. That’s why I am.” Here is an excerpt:

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. But witnessing the harmful impact it has on children, I can’t stay silent.

My 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. The morally compromised status of “oppressor” is assigned to one group of students based on their immutable characteristics. In the meantime, dependency, resentment and moral superiority are cultivated in students considered “oppressed.”

All of this is done in the name of “equity,” but it is the opposite of fair. 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.

Rossi offers details and it is shocking to see what goes on in the name of education, especially the fact that his school excels at telling those with contrarian viewpoints to shut up and feel ashamed for thinking.

I notice from the school’s “Message from the Head of School” page, that the school is not inclined to do real work, to look in the mirror or to consider the long-term consequences of its incredibly divisive approach to running Grace Church High School. That message ends:

So if the boorish “cancel culture” press wants to condemn us a newly dubbed “Woke Noho” school of politeness, dignity and respect, then I embrace it, and I hope you will too.
George P. Davison
Head of School

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