Instead, their kids are getting their goodthink indoctrination very early in life.
Bari Weiss formerly wrote for the NY Times, but she got pushed out for being insuficiently woke, despite remaining a liberal. Here she meets with and reports on groups of parents who send their children to the most elite grade schools and high schools in the land, and are terrified at what’s going on there now. They all remain anonymous because of that terror:
The dissidents use pseudonyms and turn off their videos when they meet for clandestine Zoom calls. They are usually coordinating soccer practices and carpools, but now they come together to strategize. They say that they could face profound repercussions if anyone knew they were talking.
But the situation of late has become too egregious for emails or complaining on conference calls. So one recent weekend, on a leafy street in West Los Angeles, they gathered in person and invited me to join…
…[A] school that costs more than $40,000 a year—a school with Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s right hand, and Sarah Murdoch, wife of Lachlan and Rupert’s daughter-in-law, on its board — is teaching students that capitalism is evil.
For most parents, the demonization of capitalism is the least of it. They say that their children tell them they’re afraid to speak up in class. Most of all, they worry that the school’s new plan to become an “anti-racist institution”—unveiled this July, in a 20-page document—is making their kids fixate on race and attach importance to it in ways that strike them as grotesque.
“Grotesque” is one way to put it, although “hypocritical” would be another. One might consider calling it “evil” as well, because it is the return of racism in Orwellian guise, cloaked in woke virtue. And it is voluntary.
One might well ask why these people don’t just pull their kids out of school. Some do; witness Megyn Kelly (remember her?):
Journalist Megyn Kelly encouraged parents who have students at New York City’s Dalton School in their fight against the school’s shift toward an “anti-racism” curriculum.
“Parents at Dalton Sch. fight back against ‘anti-racist’ agenda: ‘Every class has had an obsessive focus on race & identity, ‘racist cop’ reenactments in science, ‘de- centering whiteness’ in art, learning about white supremacy in health…Many of us do not feel welcome any more,’” Kelly posted on Twitter.
Kelly attached a copy of an open letter addressed to the “Dalton Community” from a group of concerned parents and alumni, which highlights the way the group feels the school has abandoned its mission to educate students…
The letter argues that the school’s new curriculum is “extremely exclusionary,” while pointing out that many members of the community do not “identify as part of an oversimplified racial dichotomy in a beautiful and diverse world.”…
Kelly has previously expressed similar concerns in her own children’s school, pulling her two sons from their New York City school in November after a letter allegedly circulated and accused white people of “reveling in state-sanctioned depravity.”
Kelly is more brave and more activist than most. Here’s a description of their fears, from Weiss’ article:
The parents in the backyard say that for every one of them, there are many more, too afraid to speak up. “I’ve talked to at least five couples who say: I get it. I think the way you do. I just don’t want the controversy right now,” related one mother. They are all eager for their story to be told—but not a single one would let me use their name. They worry about losing their jobs or hurting their children if their opposition to this ideology were known.
“The school can ask you to leave for any reason,” said one mother at Brentwood, another Los Angeles prep school. “Then you’ll be blacklisted from all the private schools and you’ll be known as a racist, which is worse than being called a murderer.”
One private school parent, born in a Communist nation, tells me: “I came to this country escaping the very same fear of retaliation that now my own child feels.” Another joked: “We need to feed our families. Oh, and pay $50,000 a year to have our children get indoctrinated.” A teacher in New York City put it most concisely: “To speak against this is to put all of your moral capital at risk.”
It’s easy to ridicule these people and say they are cowards, and rich ones at that. But although I think they are indeed cowards, I have tremendous sympathy for them – a sympathy some of you may not share. I don’t know that I’d be more brave if I were standing in their shoes. I like to think I would – and in fact I do think I would, because I have spoken up long ago in circumstances only vaguely analogous. But I don’t know. These are people who were not necessarily born to wealth, who have built a life they thought would afford their children wonderful opportunities, and they are facing the crumbling of their world. It’s a shock. The vast majority of them are probably liberal Democrats who didn’t see this coming. They really don’t want to lose their jobs, and that’s a distinct possibility, nor do they want their children ridiculed on social media.
But at a certain point my sympathy ends. Why is being called a racist more frightening than having your child’s mind and sense of self destroyed by being taught he or she is evil because of skin color? Is a child being ridiculed on social media really worse than that?
Why is courage in such short supply? Easy for me to say, because I’m not in their position, but why is it so hard to stand up to this form of institutional (and expensive) child abuse? Like Megyn Kelley did, they must pull their kids out of these schools – although, unfortunately, they may have great difficulty these days finding schools they don’t teach this sort of destructive “anti-racism” racism. Even red states are probably not immune.
What’s even more amazing to me is that so many parents are not “dissidents,” however clandestine. So many seem to meekly accept it or even buy into it, just as I’ve seen some friends buy into the self-abasement of White Fragility and the like. Apparently, self-loathing can only be alleviated by self-flagellation and virtue-signaling – and sometimes child sacrifice is part of the bargain.
