Looking for schools without a dedicated DEI curriculum

[Anonymous]

Post 2020, Brearley dedicated themselves to becoming an anti-racist institution. They changed the curriculum after an equity audit, and equity and anti-racism is now built into the mission statement. The head of the DEI office used to be at Bank Street, and the school has followed his lead. He is very dedicated to moving the school from diversity to belonging, and they teach equity as the ideal concept starting very young. I think they have dialed back some of the gender stuff now, but they were big into teaching it in lower school for a bit (aka -- asking kids to declare a gender identity). Collegiate grades kids based on whether the teacher thinks they are working up to their potential, and their current head of admissions used to be at the School at Columbia, which is/was a very progressive school. People will call you a liar or a racist or a Trump supporter if you point it out, even though it is information available on either school's website, so if it is a lie that has a lot has changed over the past five years, it means the school is either lying to make itself look good or wasting a lot of money on consultants and faculty whose suggestions they have no intention of taking. Neither is great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also, DEI and a diverse community are not the same. There are plenty of schools with very few minorities that have bustling DEI offices and are very dedicated to the ideas of anti-racism, and very diverse schools that have no DEI office at all. It's a particular approach and a particular lens to education that not everyone wants, and that's okay. This person asked a particular question and did not appoint you their judge and jury. I very much highly doubt any of you have done all that much work to advance civil rights other than vote the party line and call people names on message boards so chill.

The first person to say "MAGA" loses.

Exactly. A DEI office and a truly diverse, inclusive community are not the same thing. What I'm skeptical of is the performative side: schools that load up on DEI programming and anti-racism frameworks as a signal, while the actual student experience may tell a different story. In my opinion, real inclusion is lived, not administered. I'd rather my child be in an environment where belonging is just the norm, not a curriculum unit.

[Anonymous]

I doubt you are a POC, not that it matters. Are you new around here? The US invented and reinforced racial categories since the inception of the country and still does. It also operates a de facto caste system. So, the color blind world you are imagining just never existed here. That's not to say each person will experience it, but to pretend it doesn't exist seems a bit naive.

You clearly know very little about DEI programming incorporated into the mission of most independent schools, including the active recruitment of a diverse student body (racially, religiously, gender, sexuality, economic class, and immigrant status, if possible). The inclusion of ideas that may discuss any of these identities in history and LA courses. My children attend 2 different independent schools (one TT, one 2T) and both schools are VERY thoughtful in how they design their history and LA programs. They also have guest speakers/performers who may touch upon a cultural theme. All if this programming feels like cultural expansion, not dogma or ideology. My children's previous experience at their mostly white public school included none of this. I found it to be rather unsophisticated.

[Anonymous]

I can't believe in a world that is more global than ever, in one of the most diverse cities in the world, some fragile people are still claiming to be wounded that their children are learning about the experiences of the people they pass on the street every day. Makes no sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of the TT have dedicated DEI curriculum.
Brearley changed its whole curriculum around it and is dedicated to it. Collegiate, same thing. Look at the schools the current heads used to lead before the one they are at now. Also, look at who is in charge of the curriculum, the academic dean, see if they are really tied into conferences through the NAIS.

Read the copy on the website, count the number of diversity "officers." If the website has a lot of corporate copy pasta, it's probably a good bet that's their approach to students is similar to an HR office to their employees.

Trinity has a lot of multi-cultural programming, but it's more like a chapel, and the people I know who go there love it. Allen-Stevenson is a very ecumenical school and has a lot of different kinds of people in it. Buckley, I think is particular, but anecdotally the people I know who are there are happy.

Brearley and Collegiate have identity-based curriculum? Hard to believe.

It's hard to believe that the curriculum expanded beyond the Euro/Euro-American experience. Do you hear yourself?

[Anonymous]

My issue with the DEI curriculum in my kids school was that it cuts things like Richard Wright and Mildred Taylor and Camus and Things Fall Apart and Solzynitsn and Orwell, books written by people who faced real oppression and pain for pushing against the political manners for their time and place
in favor of books written in the past 10 years based on ideas that have only come out of one kind of university that serves only one kind of elite person. Preferring books written about indigenous people and their “ways of knowing” by women who didn’t grow up in the tribe is pretty much the whitest kind of lit out there and hasn’t been new since Rosseau. Feeling like you are one of the elect “few” and one of the “better” people has been around since the Puritans, but I’ll say this for those guys, at least they knew the Hebrew Bible wasn’t written in some castle in Wales.

[Anonymous]

Also, my kids don’t walk by people on the street, they have all sorts of people from all sorts of classes in their lives as part of their lives. The only thing you thinking you can’t be a POC and against DEI tells me is that you don’t have many as friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My issue with the DEI curriculum in my kids school was that it cuts things like Richard Wright and Mildred Taylor and Camus and Things Fall Apart and Solzynitsn and Orwell, books written by people who faced real oppression and pain for pushing against the political manners for their time and place
in favor of books written in the past 10 years based on ideas that have only come out of one kind of university that serves only one kind of elite person. Preferring books written about indigenous people and their “ways of knowing” by women who didn’t grow up in the tribe is pretty much the whitest kind of lit out there and hasn’t been new since Rosseau. Feeling like you are one of the elect “few” and one of the “better” people has been around since the Puritans, but I’ll say this for those guys, at least they knew the Hebrew Bible wasn’t written in some castle in Wales.

Give me examples of these books that are “based on ideas that have only come out of one kind of university.”

In any event, schools that care about DEI are still reading Orwell and Wright.

[Anonymous]

You're right, some of them still do, which is great, but I was at a school that pulled those writers in favor of books written by people like Robin Lee Kimmerer, a woman who grew up a upper middle class white woman and enrolled in a tribe as an adult who now claims access to indigenous ways of knowing. My kids can read whatever they want by whoever they want but not liking that kind of curriculum change is not the same thing as being "euro-centric." How joining a tribe as an adult isn't colonial is beyond me, but I'm happy to hear theories.
I want people to argue for their actual ideas rather than assuming that the other side is auto-racist or motivated by racism. It prevents an actual diverse conversation by assuming that because you agree with an insta-meme, you're one of the "good ones" on the "right side of history." Everyone thinks they are on the right side of history -- it's those that "know" they are that have done a lot of damage throughout history.

[Anonymous]

At several schools we visited they wasted a lot of time in their presentations having overpaid DEI leaders go on and on about commitment to diversity, etc. Then they would allot 30 seconds to a smart, funny, well-spoken minority kid to talk about how much they love the school, how many friends from different backgrounds they have, etc. Stop wasting time and money on the phony virtue signaling DEI admins and let the kids do the talking for you.

[Anonymous]

Here, here! It's all about appearances. Don't trust any place that wants extra credit for not being racist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also, my kids don’t walk by people on the street, they have all sorts of people from all sorts of classes in their lives as part of their lives. The only thing you thinking you can’t be a POC and against DEI tells me is that you don’t have many as friends.

Huh? Not OP. I am a POC with tons of friends of color. But not relevant. Not everyone has those relationships, and even if they did, that's even more of a reason to include everyone's "lens."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You're right, some of them still do, which is great, but I was at a school that pulled those writers in favor of books written by people like Robin Lee Kimmerer, a woman who grew up a upper middle class white woman and enrolled in a tribe as an adult who now claims access to indigenous ways of knowing. My kids can read whatever they want by whoever they want but not liking that kind of curriculum change is not the same thing as being "euro-centric." How joining a tribe as an adult isn't colonial is beyond me, but I'm happy to hear theories.
I want people to argue for their actual ideas rather than assuming that the other side is auto-racist or motivated by racism. It prevents an actual diverse conversation by assuming that because you agree with an insta-meme, you're one of the "good ones" on the "right side of history." Everyone thinks they are on the right side of history -- it's those that "know" they are that have done a lot of damage throughout history.

Odd example since this tracks as far more of an exception than the rule with DEI curricula . . . and then using this anecdote as a basis for what? Getting rid of DEI programming. Frankly, your example is likely something that often occurred BEFORE DEI was implemented anywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here, here! It's all about appearances. Don't trust any place that wants extra credit for not being racist.

LOL. Yeah! Those schools should be immediately ruled out!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Post 2020, Brearley dedicated itself to becoming an anti-racist institution. They changed the curriculum after an equity audit, and equity and anti-racism is now built into the mission statement. The head of the DEI office used to be at Bank Street, and the school has followed his lead. He is very dedicated to moving the school from diversity to belonging, and they teach equity as the ideal concept starting very young. I think they have dialed back some of the gender stuff now, but they were big into teaching it in lower school for a bit (aka -- asking kids to declare a gender identity). Collegiate grades kids based on whether the teacher thinks they are working up to their potential, and their current head of admissions used to be at the School at Columbia, which is/was a very progressive school. People will call you a liar or a racist or a Trump supporter if you point it out, even though it is information available on either school's website, so if it is a lie that has a lot has changed over the past five years, it means the school is either lying to make itself look good or wasting a lot of money on consultants and faculty whose suggestions they have no intention of taking. Neither is great.

As you complain about this, I hope you understand that "white culture" was the DEFAULT lens in teaching. So, while it felt "normal" to you, and this feels like a departure from your norm . . . I think you need to give some more thought to your norm. Are racial dominance and racial hierarchy the values we want to continue to preach?