Looking for schools without a dedicated DEI curriculum

[Anonymous]

The DEI programming was the book about indigenous knowledge written by a white lady who joined a tribe in her forties my kids school put into the curriculum. Richard Wright who wrote Black Boy and Native Son was what I read at school in the ‘90s pre-DEI, same with Mildred Taylor and Chinua Achebe and Zora Neale Hurston, The Bluest Eye and a book called Black Ice, a memoir about being the only black girl at a boarding school in the 1980s, as well as Sounder (fantastic movie, too) and Go Tell it on the Mountain by Baldwin. We read the Education of Little Tree and did a whole project about how the writer was a Pretendian who had been in the Klan. We read Anne Frank and Night by Elie Wiesel. We read Othello so we could understand Desdemona by Toni Morrison (she said reading the play without knowing Othello would be silly) and we read slave narratives in history class. All this we read at my run of the mill nothing private christian school in a flyover state. Whatever lens that was, it wasn’t white, and it definitely seemed less white than what my kid read now.

[Anonymous]

The book written by the white woman about her journey to indigenous knowledge was the DEI pick. Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Go Tell it On the Mountain (Baldwin) and Chinua Achebe were all books I read in my run of the mill private school in flyover country in the Pre-DEI 1990s. We read Othello and then Desdemona, the way Toni Morrison recommended. We read and watched Sounder (oh, that movie) and Mildred Taylor whose family experienced the Great Migration. We read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, and the Joy Luck Club. We read Night, the Diary of Ann Frank, Number the Stars and slave testimonials in US history. We did a project on the Education of Little Tree when it was revealed that the man who wrote was just another white person pretending to be Native American (once upon a time it wasn’t just white women who did that, it was men, too). It seemed very normal, yes, this rich tapestry of opinions and experiences, but it didn’t seem very “white.” I don’t like DEI because it’s shallow not because I am holding onto some Euro-supremacy. I am not a huge fan of Richard Wright’s Marxism (by the end of his life neither was he) or how he treated Zora Neale (he apologized), but Black Boy is a gut-wrenching account about growing up black in the Jim Crow South that stays with you far longer than one of these HR lectures we put our kids through.

*** I regret the snide personal remarks I made about who might have friends, etc. I apologize. It was unnecessarily pugilistic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

I got the same impression reading this, OP is definitely not Black because most Black people I know hate using the term POC. Likely Asian or maybe White Hispanic.

[Anonymous]

White Hispanic or Asian? You guys belong to a terrible church.

[Anonymous]

Pontificating on someone's race rather than responding to or weighing their argument is exactly the kind of crap I don't want my kids to grow up and do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pontificating on someone's race rather than responding to or weighing their argument is exactly the kind of crap I don't want my kids to grow up and do.

+1

[Anonymous]

It’s one thing to ask about a standalone DEI curriculum.

But expanding the regular canon to read important books by black authors who engage with themes about racism is not DEI.

And even if you only read booksabout successful white males with adoring trad wives, there is still a racial lens to that.

So calling this or that the “DEI book” is itself kind of racist, at least when you are talking about books that every educated person should have read.

And so if the question is whether there any good schools that don’t include “DEI books” in the curriculum, then the answer to that is obviously no.

[Anonymous]

Birch Wathen Lenox on UES.

Great new HOS.

Lot of framing around a politically open environment for students.

[Anonymous]

I think it’s fair to say there is a DEI curriculum. My experience of it was that it rarely included great Black authors but instead included a lot of contemporary authors whose politics were easily digestible, aka matched what people think of as the “correct” opinions. There is a rainbow of skin tones but only one opinion.

It often features a focus on the indigenous and native people, although it’s often written by people who didn’t grow up in the tribe or experience the history they are writing about. It asks kid’s their opinion before they have even learned the basic info.

The pre-DEI canon I read in HS was more diverse than what my kids read now, honestly, both in terms of range of opinions and race and class of the writer. Our ideas of “white” are very much shaped by our time and place. I have met a lot of different kinds of “white” people in my life, but by far the most conformist and eager to tell you how righteous they are are white progressives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s one thing to ask about a standalone DEI curriculum.

But expanding the regular canon to read important books by black authors who engage with themes about racism is not DEI.

And even if you only read booksabout successful white males with adoring trad wives, there is still a racial lens to that.

So calling this or that the “DEI book” is itself kind of racist, at least when you are talking about books that every educated person should have read.

And so if the question is whether there any good schools that don’t include “DEI books” in the curriculum, then the answer to that is obviously no.

It is very important how extensive this is and how it is mixed in. Some schools use their summer reading to accomplish this. If a school requires three books and all three are books about race, class, gender, etc., that is an emphasis on DEI. If one of the three is that way, that is healthy.

I don't think anyone opposes reading diverse authors in English and in history studying something other than the history of white men (or at least I hope they don't). But it is the extent to how it is done and which specific topics and authors are taught. Black Boy or Beloved or A Raisin in the Sun are classics by black authors. Some recent book by an unknown author about a black transgender goatherder from Peru seems extreme, particularly when there are several books like this. Classics are classics for a reason. And there is a way to teach classics while also reflecting diversity in a thoughtful, impactful, non-virtue-signaling way.

[Anonymous]

Yes — totally. Nailed it. Well done.

[Anonymous]

https://www.thefp.com/p/i-refuse-to-stand-by-while-my-students

Check out this article about Grace Church. This type of DEI education in the school is exactly i want my kids to avoid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.thefp.com/p/i-refuse-to-stand-by-while-my-students

Check out this article about Grace Church. This type of DEI education in the school is exactly i want my kids to avoid.

I mean if this guy doesn't want to be around a lot of performatively-guilty white people he could teach at a public school (and make more money too) - compared to Grace Church the kids would probably also be smarter.

[Anonymous]

There are people who work really hard to pay for private school and really rich people in public schools. Smart kids public and private. My experience in private school was that the admin just made all these changes and didn’t care what the parents thought, it was very top down, “we are experts,” and that’s an attitude that seems pervasive throughout education right now. Public, private we all have a right to ask for accountability. The NAEP scores are cratering nationally both in elite and public education. You want to change how we do school? Fine, make your case, but they don’t even bother. They said tech was great, turns out it’s terrible and now the head of the teacher’s union wants it to be all AI all the time. Does it work? How are the kids doing?

Two decades of bad literacy rates before we finally got rid of whole word, which expanded inequity across the country because richer people paid tutors, but it’s the very same people who are obsessed with equity who advocated for the changes to curriculum.

We have to change how we vote and think about what politicians are better for education and about teachers unions for any of this to change. We have to stop nodding along at parents meetings and be willing to leave the “best” private schools if they aren’t educating our kids. Who cares if they can get your kids get into Harvard if they can’t do Algebra II once they are there?

Red states are doing so much better than blue right now for so much less money because they have people who notice and call out what people in the blue states dont. One tiny thing that might help is not mocking and calling racist anyone who wants to ask why it’s important for a first grader to learn to develop a math identity rather than learn their times tables, and whether the kids did better longterm in math with these new curriculums. If you say MAGA or but Trump, I know you are incapable of an actual conversation.

[Anonymous]

Collegiate

https://michaelquitscollegiate.com/