The Next Generation: Washington D.C.’s top prep schools implement “antiracism” curricula. By John Sailer.
In August 2020, the faculty and staff of Sidwell Friends, the Washington, D.C. area’s top private school, convened to hear a special talk … The speaker was Ibram X. Kendi, no stranger to the podium at posh private schools. “We’re either educating our children to be racist, or we are educating them to be anti-racist,” Kendi said. …
The top five D.C.-area private high schools — Sidwell Friends, Georgetown Day, Holton-Arms, the National Cathedral School, and St. Albans — committed to this vision in the form of strategic plans. …
Woke language is now impossible to avoid at D.C.’s elite private schools. Their DEI plans require trainings and readings, while the schools recommend dozens of “antiracist” books, podcasts, and articles on their websites. …
As for the sciences? “Physics classes will include discussions of social justice such as kneeling during the national anthem, title IX, and paying college athletes while learning about concepts such as Newton’s Laws of Motion.” …
Few Christian schools would be so bold as to advertise that they include, say, discussions of Jesus’s outstretched arms on the cross while teaching Newton’s Laws of Motion.
Yes, even “the science” goes better with woke. Would it be rude to note the similarities with the Hitler Youth?
Glenn Reynolds (from 2017):
A lot of Americans resent the meritocrats’ insulation from what’s happening elsewhere, especially as America’s unfortunate record over the past couple of decades, whether in economics, in politics, or in foreign policy, doesn’t suggest that the “meritocracy” is overflowing with, you know, actual merit.
In the United States, the result has been Trump. In Britain, the result was Brexit. In both cases, the allegedly elite — who are supposed to be cool, considered, and above the vulgar passions of the masses — went more or less crazy. From conspiracy theories (it was the Russians!) to bizarre escape fantasies (A Brexit vote redo! A militarycoup to oust Trump!) the cognitive elite suddenly didn’t seem especially elite, or for that matter particularly cognitive.
In fact, while America was losing wars abroad and jobs at home, elites seemed focused on things that were, well, faintly ridiculous. As Richard Fernandez tweeted: “The elites lost their mojo by becoming absurd. It happened on the road between cultural appropriation and transgender bathrooms.” It was fatal: “People believe from instinct. The Roman gods became ridiculous when the Roman emperors did. PC is the equivalent of Caligula’s horse.”
Is western society sliding back into a Orwellian cultural dark age, as it progressively abandons the culture and practices that once made it great? Swapping a past of being admired and respected, for a future of being laughed at and surpassed?
