Today it’s back to school for students in Lincoln, Maskachusetts. They’ll be fully masked, of course, by local order (from June 2: “We will follow state guidelines in the fall, which indicate that we will not require distancing between students but will maintain all individuals wearing masks while indoors.”), and sitting in trailers because the nation’s most expensive school building (per-student) isn’t ready.
A friend’s son attends private school. Here’s an excerpt from his course list:
- English I-Honors
- World History I -Honors
- Anti-Racism
- Algebra II-Honors
While, of course, it is great to see that the academic discipline of Anti-Racism gets equal status with Algebra II, I wonder what fills an entire semester (or year?). A search for “anti-racism high school textbook” does not yield an obvious result. Perhaps there is a lucrative market for a textbook? What collection of school administrators will stand up and say “We don’t need a class on this subject”?
The Lincoln public school’s June 2 email, which announced the “masks now, masks tomorrow, masks forever” policy, devoted a single line (out of three pages) to academics:
- Continued focus on AIDE (antiracism, inclusion, diversity, and equity) and deeper learning for all grade levels.
So there should be demand for anti-racism textbooks at all grade levels!
(Separately, private schools in Maskachusetts usually have at least a handful of non-white students, e.g., Asians. Why are they sentenced to take this class? Surely a non-white student does not need to learn from a (white) teacher how to be anti-racist.)
Related:
- Florida first impressions (white kids in our neighborhood learn about Black people from talking to their Black neighbors, not from a white teacher delivering an anti-racism lesson)
> Surely a non-white student does not need to learn from a (white) teacher how to be anti-racist.
The solution is segregation, see:
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/i-refuse-to-stand-by-while-my-students
“Recently, I raised questions about this ideology at a mandatory, whites-only student and faculty Zoom meeting. (Such racially segregated sessions are now commonplace at my school.) ”
It is interesting that now even the virtuous NYT has picked up that story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/us/new-york-private-schools-racism.html
Is the NYT now alt-right adjacent?
I’m afraid there’s only one cure to this obnoxious collectivist cult. The same cure as our grandfathers applied to the cult’s ideological ancestors, the national socialists.
Obviously it’s generously financed. Who pays for it?
chip_mk:
[I’m slightly uneasy to comment since this site connects to pixel.wp.com which tracks God knows what.]
Who is paying is the big question. We had this situation before during the 1960s/1970s student revolts. It was perfectly normal to be a Mao or Stalin supporter at universities back then. But the university administrations still had some sense and didn’t go overboard.
Now all administrations are staffed with people educated in that era and they’ve lost all sense. The march through the institutions is complete and they implement their cultural revolution.
Why is the industry playing along? Silicon Valley does it for three main reasons:
1) Outrage sells, so they profit from “left” vs. “right” battles.
2) They are advertising based, so they can sell more to e.g. women if they “support” feminism.
3) They want to lower salaries and hire more foreign workers.
In reality the higher ups don’t give a damn about the actual issues, they’d support any ideology if it is profitable.
Why does politics support this:
1) Divide and conquer also benefits politics. If you have continuous battles about pronouns and rainbows, the populace does not notice that health care, houses and education is getting more expensive an that the stock market magically rises despite the bubonic plague (the right is similarly guilty by constantly focusing on divisive abortion issues).
2) There are many people in politics (and industry) with no skills whose income depends on woke politics.
3) Some people in politics (and industry) may cast envious glances at China. The curious system of capitalism steered by The Party (this system was formerly known as fascism) benefits The Party and some of the industry. We now have a unique chance of going directly to this system without a pesky revolution that would care about uncomfortable details like workers’ salaries, housing and re-distribution of wealth.
You can think of the expensive prep schools as cadre schools, where the princeling children of Party members are brainwashed for future positions.
.
@chip_mk, we, all taxpayers, are paying for them. Those who can afford to escape think they pay too little in protection money to marxist racketeers of education and in addition pay double to marxist indoctrinators in “private” or “religious” schools thinking that chickening out would save future generations. It is time to confront and stop financing marxist child abusers and get them fired for good, keep paying them will just promulgate communist racket in education forever.
@Anonymous: Hollywood Wins! No Agenda!
The price of that school is interesting. Suppose you had 110 billion dollars, perhaps acquired during a divorce from a billionaire. Then you could only build 1000 schools, which does not sound like much.
It will absolutely help those kids later in life to become so depressed and unsure and hateful of themselves and their backgrounds, lives and history that they also get a head start with sexual education and begin reflexively masturbating early. Then they can aspire to be Jeffrey Toobin.
WARNING:
@averros:
From the grave: I have had direct, intimate and personal experience with these True Believers (and most people have no idea how Truly they Believe because they themselves have never met someone so committed in their entire lives – including themselves! They are indeed – they are indeed fanatic cultist collectivists, and deeply mendacious, they know it, conceal it and lie through their teeth about it in every way imaginable) over a period of many years and it ruined my life. I WAS A TEST CASE.
It is not about justice in any sense. It is about vengeance – the more catastrophic and traumatic the better. It is a zero sum game. It is about making some people lose so that others can take what they have. It is a REVOLUTION.
If you allow them to indoctrinate and reeducate and abuse your children you might as well throw all their future earnings away, stick a needle in their arm, a loaded gun in their hand, and give them a ride to the bridge.
OVER AND OUT. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
They are also very highly compartmentalized, need-to-know, and peer-to-peer distributed. They are sophisticated. Ignore at your peril.
This post should perhaps be re-titled:
“Some of Philip Greenspun’s Friends Wave Goodbye to Lincoln, Massachusetts.”