Anonymous wrote:Maret. We applied and got into both. I found Maret much warmer and a smaller school suited our child. I also found GDS insufferable! Their ‘call teachers by their first name’ even if you are a kindergartner was too woke! Actually I’m not sure why we even applied to GDS - that’s how turned off I was.
We looked at GDS and ended up sending our kids elsewhere, but I really wonder if parents who criticize the "first names" policy at GDS are actually racist. Everyone who has looked into the school seriously knows that the reason for the first names policy was to defy the Jim Crow laws and culture that were still in place. White children and adults had to be addressed as "Miss/Mrs./Mr." by Black people regardless of age; Black children and adults were not given that respect. Even Black adults had to call young white children "Miss X" or "Mr. X" and white children were allowed to call a Black man "boy." If you understand why those "honorifics" were eliminated, I don't understand why you would think that custom to be too "woke." Instead, I kinda wonder if maybe you're actually racist or think that's OK. Also, FWIW, my kids' Jewish preschool also didn't use "Mr." or "Mrs." or "Ms." so you had a bunch of 2 year olds calling adults by their first names, too.