Recently, Andrew Guttmann decided that he’d had enough.
His daughter has attended New York City’s posh Brearley School for seven years, since kindergarten. And in that time, he’s watched the administration plunge the school headfirst into the twisted, destructive world of Critical Race Theory.
He sent a letter to other Brearley parents explaining his decision not to re-enroll his daughter for the 2021-22 school year:
A father at Brearley pulled his daughter out of the school and sent this absolute barn-burner of a letter to every family in the school. Is the dam starting to break? https://t.co/sJj2h3SrXj
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) April 16, 2021
The letter is a must-read. Here’s how it begins:
Our family recently made the decision not to reenroll our daughter at Brearley for the 2021-22 school year. She has been at Brearley for seven years, beginning in kindergarten. In short, we no longer believe that Brearley’s administration and Board of Trustees have any of our children’s best interests at heart. Moreover, we no longer have confidence that our daughter will receive the quality of education necessary to further her development into a critically thinking, responsible, enlightened, and civic minded adult. I write to you, as a fellow parent, to share our reasons for leaving the Brearley community but also to urge you to act before the damage to the school, to its community, and to your own child’s education is irreparable.
It cannot be stated strongly enough that Brearley’s obsession with race must stop. It should be abundantly clear to any thinking parent that Brearley has completely lost its way. The administration and the Board of Trustees have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob, and then allowing the school to be captured by that same mob. What follows are my own personal views on Brearley’s antiracism initiatives, but these are just a handful of the criticisms that I know other parents have expressed.
I object to the view that I should be judged by the color of my skin. I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs. By viewing every element of education, every aspect of history, and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race, we are desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and utterly violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believed, fought, and died.
Please do yourselves a favor and read the whole thing. If you do, you’ll likely be in a far better position to comment than Brearley Head of School Jane Fried, who apparently didn’t bother to actually take in any of what Guttmann was saying:
A couple of days ago, a brave parent of a student a Brearley, the tony girl’s school in Manhattan, sent round a devastating letter to all parents excoriating the school’s preposterous wildness. Here is the pathetic response from the Jane Fried, head of the school. Pathetic. pic.twitter.com/rg62BcEREX
— Roger Kimball (@rogerkimball) April 20, 2021
Pathetic is an understatement. Fried’s response is nothing more than a woke word salad.
I love how the basic message of not judging people by their skin color and treating everyone as an individual is somehow "deeply offensive and harmful"
— John Lawrence (@jkreese84) April 20, 2021
Did they even read the letter? Seriously how did the school get any of that from the letter. At least the parent tried to raise awareness, their daughter is better off. https://t.co/m1lZmBX5pZ
— John Doe (@SassyBobo1984) April 20, 2021
Let’s hope that, as Bari Weiss suggests, the dam could be starting to break. It needs to break. Wide open.
Our kids’ futures depend on it.
It’s very telling if students truly reached out that they were frightened by words. What’s the old saying? Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can land you in jail?
— Tee Tallent (@teetallent) April 20, 2021
“You scared me” is the trump card of those who define disagreement as harm, or trauma, or oppression, or abuse, or violence.
We’ve raised unbelievably fragile psyches, and put them in charge of raising others. It all ends in a whimper contest.
— Cris (@Cristotokos) April 20, 2021
In large part… academia has lost its ever loving mind and it does not possess the intellectual faculties to teach our children any longer.
— Thanks Murphy (@JoNathanVol77) April 20, 2021
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