The hysteria in the Ivy League does not start there. Those students shrieking Hamas slogans in the squares of New York were not radicalized overnight. It is in schools that civilization is built or destroyed. Schooling determines the calibre of a nation’s governing class, if not its ideology. This is well understood by the Left, which has transformed Western pedagogy since the 1968 publication of the third most-cited work of social science of all time, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by the Brazilian Marxist Paolo Freire. Freire’s book took the USA by storm in the 1970s, helping to decimate such tyrannical norms as the authority of the teacher over the pupil, the memorization of knowledge, and even the idea that knowledge is good for its own sake (he claimed that the sole value in teaching is to reveal the “oppressive nature of reality” to children). So, while the unholy trinity of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (D.I.E.) has enjoyed a growth spurt in the last decade, we can trace its roots back to good old-fashioned 20th century Marxism. Soviet-funded subversive ideology surviving its mother’s demise, yet again.
D.I.E. is, in turn, the mother of poor standards: dumbing down logically proceeds from the ideology of “emancipatory education,” which attacks “logocentric” (or, more recently, “Eurocentric”) knowledge for being the fruit of Dead White Male labor. This explains the lack of classroom rigor and teaching authority that underpins the appalling standards in American public schools. US literacy and numeracy scores have now dropped to their lowest level in decades. (Though there is some evidence suggesting this has partly to do with demographic changes.) This decline preceded 2020 but was undoubtedly worsened by the closure of schools during the pandemic.
But poor test scores are only part of the problem: the ideological equivalent of paranoid schizophrenia, poorly concealed by woke buzzwords like “inclusion,” now has a stranglehold on the schools. Children are being fed ideas which are not just nakedly ideological, but bewildering: there are as many genders as there are numbers and racial color-blindness is oppressive. This allegedly pastoral education eats into the time that children might otherwise spend learning a language.
Top institutions are not invulnerable to the ideological madness and philistinism of D.I.E. In some cases, they lead the charge: flagship independent schools like Eton and its American parallel, Philipps Exeter (attended by now-disgraced Harvard President Claudine Gay), have officially DIEd a demeaning death.
At Eton, English master Will Knowland was fired in 2020 for refusing to retract his statements in a lecture entitled “The Patriarchy Paradox,” in which he challenged the idea that masculinity is by nature toxic. In defending masculinity, Knowland sought to emancipate a classroom full of boys from the idea that their sex is irrevocably stained with the sin of “patriarchy.” Knowland’s goal – and crime – was to encourage boys to have confidence. This was too much for the school: Knowland was fired at the hands of Head Master Simon Henderson, who, in the wake of George Floyd’s death, pledged to teach a school of English boys the fanatical dogma of the American left: that society is plagued with “systemic racism” and (in a nation which abolished slavery throughout much of Africa) must be “decolonized.”
The events in May 2020 likewise prompted a period of insanity at Phillips Exeter. “Intersectional” studies of science and race abound, as do “queer readings” of Shakespeare; most alarmingly, children are subject to cynical “anti-racist training,” based on the idea that white children are inherently racist – an idea which is sure to shatter the self-confidence of those children.
It may sound elitist to mourn top institutions like Eton and Exeter rather than focussing on the abject conditions of state-funded schools in the Anglosphere. To that I say: yes! The health of the body politic depends on the health and caliber of its political elite. It is in any nation’s best interest to be governed by men and women who know right from wrong, are well-versed in the languages and literatures of their global allies, and conduct themselves with responsibility rather than racially motivated neurosis or self-victimization. At the very least, can’t politicians possess the basic knowledge required to do their jobs? It seems not: last month, it was revealed that the chief secretary to the Treasury in the UK, educated at top grammar school Oxted and Pembroke College, Oxford, doesn’t know how to interpret statistical data.
But education isn’t just instrumental. Knowledge may be power, but it is also true “emancipation.” The perversion of D.I.E is that it removes the real freedom which excellence and emotional robustness gives children, shackling them with poor-quality learning and a host of neuroses. This particularly betrays children from unstable backgrounds, whom D.I.E. claims to help. The distress which anti-colorblind dogma brings children is palpable: parents have reported that their children leave classrooms in tears because they are white, therefore monstrous oppressors. Chaya Raichik, known for her Twitter account “LibsofTikTok,” has drawn attention to dozens of cases of overt anti-white propaganda in American schools, many of which are elementary schools; typical occurrences include schools hosting playdates which exclude white children. Despite her primary tactic being to simply repost content which teachers and schools willingly publish themselves, Raichik has come under fire for “inciting hatred” (as a glance over her outrageously partisan Wikipedia page reveals). Since her platform has such a wide reach, her critics claim she is irresponsibly drawing attention to humble elementary school teachers; it doesn’t occur to them that these teachers should probably restrain themselves from posting about their ideological schemes on TikTok, the most popular mobile app in the USA.
Perhaps even more pressing is the explosion of transgenderism in schools. As a recently censored study shows, “rapid onset gender dysphoria” is a real and growing phenomenon. The contagious nature of trans identities contradicts the claim that these identities are innate; evidence of exploding numbers of insecure, pubescent children identifying as transgender in social clusters shows otherwise.
The social contagion effect in schools is compounded by ideologically driven teachers who work to alienate parents from their children by concealing and abetting their young pupils’ new identities. In April 2022, Chaya Raichik exposed footage of an 8th grade English teacher in Owasso, Oklahoma, who stated in a video “If your parents don’t accept you for who you are, f*ck them. I’m your parents now. I’m proud of you. Drink some water. I love you.” Tyler Wrynn, the teacher in question, is far from alone in his stated mission to “emancipate” children from parents who are concerned that their children might seek out and access cross-sex hormonal therapy, which risks sterilization and myriad permanent ailments. In this way, D.I.E. in schools poses a threat to fundamental unit of society which overwhelmingly determines outcomes for children: the nuclear family.
Parents are waking up. Demand is growing for classical schools where great books will be devoured rather than dismissed as relics of a world of Dead White Men. Schools which champion the principles of authority, stability, order, and emotional fortitude are already boasting unusual academic success and good discipline: Michaela Community School in London, run by the effervescent Katherine Birbalsingh, is a testament to how strict authority can transform the prospects of children who come from deprived, largely nonwhite backgrounds. Birbalsingh discourages the victimhood mentality which is typical of Generation Z, eschewing appeals to “mitigated circumstances” if homework is late.
Often described by the British press as the “strictest school in Britain,” Michaela attained among the best GCSE results (the rough British equivalent of the Iowa tests) in the country in its very first student cohort. In 2022 and 2023 the school boasted the highest “value-added” (or progress) score in the country, all while autocratically banning mobile phones and making it compulsory to sing the National Anthem. In Alberta, Canada, Caylan Ford (who has written incisively about the pernicious philosophy underpinning Freire’s Pedagogy) has been overwhelmed by the demand for her newly-founded classical charter school, Calgary Classical Academy. The Great Hearts School network, exploding across the American southwest, is another heartwarming example.
Stuffy, strict, concerned parents: take stock. You are not alone.