Private Schools Wokeness Over the Top

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly OP, I know you have a more thoughtful critique of progressive identity politics than the rest of the anti-woke posters on here. But you are landing in the same place as them: completely eliminate any DEI discussion from schools. Why? Does it not give you any pause that you are aligning yourself with the Ron DeSantises of the world?

Lol land in the same place how? Because I think all this DEI stuff is BS and is harmful? It is. I am not aligning myself with Ron DeSantis because well we have completely different world views. Seems like we are back in the Bush era where “you are either with us, or against us.” According to you if I criticize DEI culture and it’s influence in schools then I am with Ron DeSanctis? I can’t criticize anymore? That’s just insane. Get out of your America bubble. The rest of the non-western world doesn’t agree with the BS being spewed by the cultural left either. What they say is so bizarre, so absurd, that the US has become a laughing stock around the world (read the article on Qatar and the World Cup as an example).

You are landing in the same place because you want to eliminate DEI from schools. Like I said in my post.

I am done engaging with you, you are disingenuous at best. But by all means keep trying to convince yourself that you are different from the rest of the regressive anti-woke MAGAs because you read some race theory in college.

OP here. You are done engaging with me that's fine. But to accuse me of being disingenuous is not. I have my views. You may disagree with them and you clearly don't understand them, but to reduce my views to "race theories" I read in college is absolutely disgusting. You clearly cannot take yourself out of the tiny little bubble of US politics. The world is a large place and most of us non-westerners thinking what US progressives are spewing these days is complete nonsense (and yes we can't stand conservative politicians who want to bomb us either). There are a lot of people who think like me - you just haven't been exposed to them. Speaking of ppl, I haven't read his book or watched the interview about the book but I am excited about Norman Finkelstein's new book "I'll Burn that Bridge When I get to It: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom."

As for Ron DeSantis, well I'm not a fan (though I get his normie appeal). I'm actually not a fan of the majority of US politicians except Bernie Sanders I guess - he seems like an honest guy (though post 2020 Bernie Sanders seems to adopted some identity politics language after he was criticized in 2016 by the clintonites). Bernie is popular in the Arab world - viewed as a person with a good heart (though I think he gets it wrong sometimes).

DP just to add one quick point. Most liberal "westerners" hate this woke ideology too, that's why so much push back has come from Canada, the UK, France, Australia.

The ideology and the mob reminds us too much of the totalitarian regimes of the last century. Or the medieval inquisition if you want to go back in time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly OP, I know you have a more thoughtful critique of progressive identity politics than the rest of the anti-woke posters on here. But you are landing in the same place as them: completely eliminate any DEI discussion from schools. Why? Does it not give you any pause that you are aligning yourself with the Ron DeSantises of the world?

Two options here.

A) you just wrote a very good parody of a typical wokester

B) you are truly unaware of the dangerous, anti-democratic nonsense you wrote. DeSantis just won his second election with 60% of the votes, including MANY in the center and even the left. Because he delivered "good fruits" for years and for the vast majority. But you ask OP to reconsider her points, which you admit make much sense, because otherwise she'd align herself with a popular and proven and just re-elected public official?

Either your school or the crazy US media has eaten your brain.

60% of the votes! I didn’t know you guys believed in election results. Maybe things are improving

But yes, how “anti-democratic” of me to disagree with an elected leader. Throw me in the gulag

Ah the woke ignorance.

FL has been a swing, moderate state for decades. DeSantis won just 49.4% of the vote in 2018. The fact that he was re-elected with 60% of the vote shows that he has actually done a good job and that many many many people not in the right appreciate it and support it.

That you choose to live in conspiracy land and in partisan propaganda land says much about you and your bubble.

[Anonymous]

Another foreigner here attempting to navigate the D.C. private school landscape.

Two terms that are tortured by U.S. progressives are "liberal" and "BIPOC." Liberal used to mean someone who was open to new ideas; based conclusions on empirical facts; rejected dogma; and was a humanist. Today, "liberal" is used as a pejorative by the right to mean anyone who is on the left politically, and is used a badge of honor for those on the left who accept "the agenda" (which is ever-shifting): today it's race essentialism, anti-male bias, and a post-gender world. True liberals who remain focused on shared humanity and accept biological science have been left out in the cold in the U.S. (and the U.K.--this might be an English speaking world phenomenon), and are now labeled with terms like "TERF" (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) and "Karen," (which is such a misogynistic term, it disgusts me, I guess I am a Karen.) The coalition behind this seems to be made up of mainly nasty super-online men and impressionable teenage girls. It's insane to me as a parent that we've all just accepted it.

"BIPOC" is another one that is mystifying to a non-U.S. liberal. It means "Black, Indigenous, People of Color". So, in the U.K., for example, I guess people with Celtic blood are BIPOC? But they're not, because the POC trumps the I, which any good progressive knows, LOL. What color qualifies as POC, btw? Are we bringing back color lines? To someone approaching this without context, it is simply insane, and wildly totalitarian... but Americans just can't seem to see this. It's this weird collective guilt / Kabuki theatre that America seems to have to perform continuously to make up for the fact that is a powerful, prosperous democracy that most people around the world would do anything to live in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you to everyone who has been pushing back in this discussion and elsewhere. I am not sure how to pierce through the insanity that has captures so much of the education establishment, but it needs to happen. A significant course correction is necessary for the sanity and education of today’s students and society generally.

The left seems to be suffering from some sort of mass psychosis. They need to wakeup or be removed from positions of influence.

Oh, think of the children!

Yes, actually. This is a school forum. Children are actually what the focus is here. The fact that you mock that idea says everything—you are more concerned with pushing some objectionable gender or racial ideology than you are with what is actually good for kids. You shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near kids, including own, if you even have any.

You want to take away people’s kids bc their political views are different from yours? But the progressives are the ones we need to fear.

Keep politics out of schools.

Except your definition of politics means no talking about slavery or civil rights, or the plight of native Americans all as a part of US History, just to name a few examples.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you to everyone who has been pushing back in this discussion and elsewhere. I am not sure how to pierce through the insanity that has captures so much of the education establishment, but it needs to happen. A significant course correction is necessary for the sanity and education of today’s students and society generally.

The left seems to be suffering from some sort of mass psychosis. They need to wakeup or be removed from positions of influence.

Oh, think of the children!

Yes, actually. This is a school forum. Children are actually what the focus is here. The fact that you mock that idea says everything—you are more concerned with pushing some objectionable gender or racial ideology than you are with what is actually good for kids. You shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near kids, including own, if you even have any.

You want to take away people’s kids bc their political views are different from yours? But the progressives are the ones we need to fear.

Keep politics out of schools.

kind of ironic given the Evangelicals are trying to take public money and degrade public education in the form of religious based charter schools.

It IS this simple.

Keep politics and indoctrination out of schools, you Evangelists and Wokes and Scientologists and Communists.

Schools are for Education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you to everyone who has been pushing back in this discussion and elsewhere. I am not sure how to pierce through the insanity that has captures so much of the education establishment, but it needs to happen. A significant course correction is necessary for the sanity and education of today’s students and society generally.

The left seems to be suffering from some sort of mass psychosis. They need to wakeup or be removed from positions of influence.

Oh, think of the children!

Yes, actually. This is a school forum. Children are actually what the focus is here. The fact that you mock that idea says everything—you are more concerned with pushing some objectionable gender or racial ideology than you are with what is actually good for kids. You shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near kids, including own, if you even have any.

You want to take away people’s kids bc their political views are different from yours? But the progressives are the ones we need to fear.

Keep politics out of schools.

It IS this simple.

Keep politics and indoctrination out of schools, you Evangelists and Wokes and Scientologists and Communists.

Schools are for Education.

kind of ironic given the Evangelicals are trying to take public money and degrade public education in the form of religious based charter schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly OP, I know you have a more thoughtful critique of progressive identity politics than the rest of the anti-woke posters on here. But you are landing in the same place as them: completely eliminate any DEI discussion from schools. Why? Does it not give you any pause that you are aligning yourself with the Ron DeSantises of the world?

Two options here.

A) you just wrote a very good parody of a typical wokester

B) you are truly unaware of the dangerous, anti-democratic nonsense you wrote. DeSantis just won his second election with 60% of the votes, including MANY in the center and even the left. Because he delivered "good fruits" for years and for the vast majority. But you ask OP to reconsider her points, which you admit make much sense, because otherwise she'd align herself with a popular and proven and just re-elected public official?

Either your school or the crazy US media has eaten your brain.

60% of the votes! I didn’t know you guys believed in election results. Maybe things are improving

But yes, how “anti-democratic” of me to disagree with an elected leader. Throw me in the gulag

Ah the woke ignorance.

FL has been a swing, moderate state for decades. DeSantis won just 49.4% of the vote in 2018. The fact that he was re-elected with 60% of the vote shows that he has actually done a good job and that many many many people not in the right appreciate it and support it.

That you choose to live in conspiracy land and in partisan propaganda land says much about you and your bubble.

Florida Man gonna Florida.

“Conspiracy land”? Are you disputing that Republicans don’t believe election results?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly OP, I know you have a more thoughtful critique of progressive identity politics than the rest of the anti-woke posters on here. But you are landing in the same place as them: completely eliminate any DEI discussion from schools. Why? Does it not give you any pause that you are aligning yourself with the Ron DeSantises of the world?

Two options here.

A) you just wrote a very good parody of a typical wokester

B) you are truly unaware of the dangerous, anti-democratic nonsense you wrote. DeSantis just won his second election with 60% of the votes, including MANY in the center and even the left. Because he delivered "good fruits" for years and for the vast majority. But you ask OP to reconsider her points, which you admit make much sense, because otherwise she'd align herself with a popular and proven and just re-elected public official?

Either your school or the crazy US media has eaten your brain.

60% of the votes! I didn’t know you guys believed in election results. Maybe things are improving

But yes, how “anti-democratic” of me to disagree with an elected leader. Throw me in the gulag

Ah the woke ignorance.

FL has been a swing, moderate state for decades. DeSantis won just 49.4% of the vote in 2018. The fact that he was re-elected with 60% of the vote shows that he has actually done a good job and that many many many people not in the right appreciate it and support it.

That you choose to live in conspiracy land and in partisan propaganda land says much about you and your bubble.

No, it shows voter suppression in Florida is a serious problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you to everyone who has been pushing back in this discussion and elsewhere. I am not sure how to pierce through the insanity that has captures so much of the education establishment, but it needs to happen. A significant course correction is necessary for the sanity and education of today’s students and society generally.

The left seems to be suffering from some sort of mass psychosis. They need to wakeup or be removed from positions of influence.

Oh, think of the children!

Yes, actually. This is a school forum. Children are actually what the focus is here. The fact that you mock that idea says everything—you are more concerned with pushing some objectionable gender or racial ideology than you are with what is actually good for kids. You shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near kids, including own, if you even have any.

You want to take away people’s kids bc their political views are different from yours? But the progressives are the ones we need to fear.

Keep politics out of schools.

It IS this simple.

Keep politics and indoctrination out of schools, you Evangelists and Wokes and Scientologists and Communists.

Schools are for Education.

kind of ironic given the Evangelicals are trying to take public money and degrade public education in the form of religious based charter schools.

And even in public schools they want to:
- ban books
- hate LGBTQ
- take away sex ed

[Anonymous]

OP, do you agree with this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you to everyone who has been pushing back in this discussion and elsewhere. I am not sure how to pierce through the insanity that has captures so much of the education establishment, but it needs to happen. A significant course correction is necessary for the sanity and education of today’s students and society generally.

The left seems to be suffering from some sort of mass psychosis. They need to wakeup or be removed from positions of influence.

Oh, think of the children!

Yes, actually. This is a school forum. Children are actually what the focus is here. The fact that you mock that idea says everything—you are more concerned with pushing some objectionable gender or racial ideology than you are with what is actually good for kids. You shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near kids, including own, if you even have any.

You want to take away people’s kids bc their political views are different from yours? But the progressives are the ones we need to fear.

Keep politics out of schools.

It IS this simple.

Keep politics and indoctrination out of schools, you Evangelists and Wokes and Scientologists and Communists.

Schools are for Education.

You don’t even know what any of what you said means. Just capitalizing random words like your orange god.

Funny how you forget that it’s the loud left white elites who demand everyone capitalize the B in Blacks but not others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you to everyone who has been pushing back in this discussion and elsewhere. I am not sure how to pierce through the insanity that has captures so much of the education establishment, but it needs to happen. A significant course correction is necessary for the sanity and education of today’s students and society generally.

The left seems to be suffering from some sort of mass psychosis. They need to wakeup or be removed from positions of influence.

Oh, think of the children!

Yes, actually. This is a school forum. Children are actually what the focus is here. The fact that you mock that idea says everything—you are more concerned with pushing some objectionable gender or racial ideology than you are with what is actually good for kids. You shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near kids, including own, if you even have any.

You want to take away people’s kids bc their political views are different from yours? But the progressives are the ones we need to fear.

Keep politics out of schools.

It IS this simple.

Keep politics and indoctrination out of schools, you Evangelists and Wokes and Scientologists and Communists.

Schools are for Education.

You don’t even know what any of what you said means. Just capitalizing random words like your orange god.

Funny how you forget that it’s the loud left white elites who demand everyone capitalize the B in Blacks but not others.

And how evaluating people as individuals based on their behavior and character is somehow "racist" while discriminating them as a group based on their skin color is somehow "anti-racist."

Orwell would have a field day today. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't send his kids to any woke school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another foreigner here attempting to navigate the D.C. private school landscape.

Two terms that are tortured by U.S. progressives are "liberal" and "BIPOC." Liberal used to mean someone who was open to new ideas; based conclusions on empirical facts; rejected dogma; and was a humanist. Today, "liberal" is used as a pejorative by the right to mean anyone who is on the left politically, and is used a badge of honor for those on the left who accept "the agenda" (which is ever-shifting): today it's race essentialism, anti-male bias, and a post-gender world. True liberals who remain focused on shared humanity and accept biological science have been left out in the cold in the U.S. (and the U.K.--this might be an English speaking world phenomenon), and are now labeled with terms like "TERF" (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) and "Karen," (which is such a misogynistic term, it disgusts me, I guess I am a Karen.) The coalition behind this seems to be made up of mainly nasty super-online men and impressionable teenage girls. It's insane to me as a parent that we've all just accepted it.

"BIPOC" is another one that is mystifying to a non-U.S. liberal. It means "Black, Indigenous, People of Color". So, in the U.K., for example, I guess people with Celtic blood are BIPOC? But they're not, because the POC trumps the I, which any good progressive knows, LOL. What color qualifies as POC, btw? Are we bringing back color lines? To someone approaching this without context, it is simply insane, and wildly totalitarian... but Americans just can't seem to see this. It's this weird collective guilt / Kabuki theatre that America seems to have to perform continuously to make up for the fact that is a powerful, prosperous democracy that most people around the world would do anything to live in.

“Americans just can’t seem to see this” — what? You have summarized the worldview of a few administrators at Sidwell and GDS, not America as a whole. If you want out of the liberal private school bubble then get out of the liberal private school bubble. Perhaps as a foreigner you don’t know that 90% of American children go to public schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another foreigner here attempting to navigate the D.C. private school landscape.

Two terms that are tortured by U.S. progressives are "liberal" and "BIPOC." Liberal used to mean someone who was open to new ideas; based conclusions on empirical facts; rejected dogma; and was a humanist. Today, "liberal" is used as a pejorative by the right to mean anyone who is on the left politically, and is used a badge of honor for those on the left who accept "the agenda" (which is ever-shifting): today it's race essentialism, anti-male bias, and a post-gender world. True liberals who remain focused on shared humanity and accept biological science have been left out in the cold in the U.S. (and the U.K.--this might be an English speaking world phenomenon), and are now labeled with terms like "TERF" (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) and "Karen," (which is such a misogynistic term, it disgusts me, I guess I am a Karen.) The coalition behind this seems to be made up of mainly nasty super-online men and impressionable teenage girls. It's insane to me as a parent that we've all just accepted it.

"BIPOC" is another one that is mystifying to a non-U.S. liberal. It means "Black, Indigenous, People of Color". So, in the U.K., for example, I guess people with Celtic blood are BIPOC? But they're not, because the POC trumps the I, which any good progressive knows, LOL. What color qualifies as POC, btw? Are we bringing back color lines? To someone approaching this without context, it is simply insane, and wildly totalitarian... but Americans just can't seem to see this. It's this weird collective guilt / Kabuki theatre that America seems to have to perform continuously to make up for the fact that is a powerful, prosperous democracy that most people around the world would do anything to live in.

Well said.

The bolded in particular is well said. The unchecked rise of misogyny in the progressive left has been terrifying to watch. The discourse has changed such that open misogyny is acceptable in progressive circles now. My only disagreement is that I don’t blame the teen girls you reference; they are exercising survival instincts in an era when overt misogyny is acceptable discourse.

Years ago, Susan Faludi wrote a book detailing how the fight for women’s equality in the US is characterized by periods of intense backlash against that progress, and that the backlash transcends political alignment. I think that we are in the backlash period now. The misogynist ends of the right and the left are joining forces in response to ten to twenty years of significant advancement by women. Yes, their means are different; no progressive is aligning with the right on abortion rights, for instance. But the end goal is the same: the subjugation of women and reversal of the progress they’ve made.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a parent from a foreign background, this article resonated with me. I feel lost here and feel like I no longer fit in.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/who-is-included-by-inclusive-language

What this "Slow Boring" author seems not to understand or account for is that elite high schools are responding to the preferences of elite colleges, because the sole purpose of an elite high school is to help its students gain admission into an elite college. If it cannot fulfill this singular purpose it will not survive, no matter what other acculturation in the norms of fancy manners and society it may otherwise provide. College admission is king.

And what this author similarly seems to not understand about elite college "wokeness" is that it is the product not only of demands from the culture at large (and, crucially, the demographic of affluent teenagers that elite colleges cater to) but also its highly educated and abnormally intelligent faculty, who often lead the charge in determining intellectual and cultural norms on campus. Although this imperfect attempt at semi-meritocracy has been under attack in America for decades, for the most part smart people still run universities (not necessarily in the administration buildings, but in the lecture halls and research labs). So colleges tend to be on the progressive cutting edge, because the more educated you are, the more likely you are to hold progressive beliefs. If you really understand systemic racial and economic oppression you are going to support efforts to dismantle it (unless you are a sociopath or otherwise lacking in normal moral sensibilities, super-ego, empathy, or conscience). Even if those efforts to dismantle become absurd or performative (as, of course, they eventually do as dumber and less genuinely other-regarding people jump onto the PC train) the efforts are rooted in the result of education itself: a deeper, more nuanced, and more accurate understanding of how the world actually works.

If you don't like it, don't fret: the pendulum will swing again because not everyone with power and influence in American culture is smart or well-educated, or equipped with a functioning super-ego.

Brilliant! Pedantic, condescending and naive all in one post. Well done!