RUTHFULLY YOURS

In order to perfect a more diverse, inclusive and equitable education for our children, we respectfully demand an open forum to discuss the seemingly deliberate radicalization of the present curriculum and significant redirection fo the literature being used to teach our children. We further request the immediate cessation of all references to the racist concepts of Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, and the 1619 Project, without any underlying factual basis with which to understand and contextualize such un-proven and intellectually challenged ideas. We demand an anti-racist environment for our children, not an exclusionary, divisive pedagogy that promotes the re-racialization of America.

Each week for months the administration sends us unsolicited incendiary social justice sermons on our shortcomings as individuals, a school, a country, and as a society. Equity is a wonderful goal, but must be realistically taught as a goal of opportunities and not outcomes. Critical Race Theory is nihilistic, and has as much epistemological support as Eugenics. It teaches our children that: 1) all white people are inherently complicit in racism and perpetuating white supremacy; 2) that science, reason, and rationality are biased white western creations; and 3) equality and objectivity are methods with which systemic racism is perpetuated. The same holds true for the concept of Intersectionality which proffers that everything is connected to overlapping discrimination and disadvantage to all but the white ruling class. These are cynical, pessimistic and divisive beliefs that validate destruction over reconciliation, social justice over equality, liberty and mutual respect.

The 1619 Project holds a special place in displacement education. It proposes an alternative universe with which no reputable historian agrees. It places the enslavement of Africans at the center of America’s story, and that protecting the institution of slavery was a primary motive for the American Revolution. At the insistence of historical scholars, the NYT partially apologized for allowing this narrative to act as historical fact. Further, the National Association of Scholars on October 6, 2020, petitioned the Pulitzer Prize committee to revoke the 1619 Project’s award as a duplicitous attempt to alter the historical record in a manner to deceive the public. This is the reckless history BWS wants to teach our, your, children.

No matter how the administration spins the need to alter the primary teaching lens at BWS, it is not acceptable to indoctrinate young children and young adults without any context. To do so borders on child abuse. The book “Stamped” may make the more radical faculty and parents feel good about the message America is racist and bad; but in reality, the concepts in the book rely on a one-size-fits-all secular conditioning. You have replaced “To Kill a Mockingbird” with “Stamped,” the “Crucible” with “Yacqui Delgado wants to kick your Ass,” and “Lord of the Flies,” with “Patron Saints of Nothing.” These books subsidize recklessness and the growing affects of immorality. Nikole Hannah Smith and Ibram Kendi are not without fault, and their ideas are not universally accepted as fact by any renown historian or social scientist. Where are books by Thomas Sowell? Chatterton Williams? John McWhorter? Wouldn’t these Black authors also reflect diversity of thought and inclusion of varying ideas? Why politicize only in one direction the literature our children are reading?

Without notice, BWS has gone from a secular school which supports diverse perspectives, embracing diversity, equity and inclusion (see Mission Statement), to one which has grown hostile to patriotism and parental feedback. It has become an intolerant institution where facts are less important than attitude. At no point in the last year does anyone recall there being any survey or poll as to the need to “re-make” the curriculum. At no point did the administrators seek input from the parents as to what direction or what amends to make, and more importantly, how to teach the social pivot taking place in our country. In the wake of the unacceptable death of George Floyd, and the calling out on social media by various pressure groups, the administration immediate reflex was to sacrifice our children’s innocence vis a vis the unquestioning and disingenuous embrace of questionable prophets of the moment.

The Administration has indicated the board is impotent to request any change to the curriculum, that the children enjoy the new material, and that the faculty has endorsed the pivot from literature to political treatises. Of course, in separate conversations with faculty, the opposite has been disclosed, that the books and concepts assigned were unilaterally designated this summer from above, with little input. So which is it? Have we deferred all our parental rights? Resigned our patriotic belief in America as a good and mostly decent place to live? Rescinded the desire to have diversity of thought, equity of ideas and inclusion of accepted academic standards to an administration that seemingly sees America as an immutable racist institution? We are told to take the long arc of our children’s education, and that there will be a return to “normalcy.” We do not believe this for a moment and feel the time to pause and have an open discussion is now.