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English teacher resigns from NJ prep school over 'culture of conformity and fear'
Hotair.com ^ | 6-9-21 | John Sexton

Posted on 06/09/2021 11:18:11 AM PDT by DeweyCA

The Dwight-Englewood School in New Jersey is a private prep school where high school tuitions costs just over $50,000 per year. Tuesday an English teacher at Dwight-Englewood named Dana Stangel-Plowe announced she was resigning her position because of the school’s embrace of Critical Race Theory, an ideology she believes is harming students at the school. A group called the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) published Stangel-Plowe’s resignation letter, which reads in part.

I believe that D-E is failing our students. Over the past few years, the school has embraced an ideology that is damaging to our students’ intellectual and emotional growth and destroying any chance at creating a true community among our diverse population. I reject the hostile culture of conformity and fear that has taken hold of our school.

The school’s ideology requires students to see themselves not as individuals, but as representatives of a group, forcing them to adopt the status of privilege or victimhood. They must locate themselves within the oppressor or oppressed group, or some intersectional middle where they must reckon with being part-oppressor and part-victim. This theory of power hierarchies is only one way of seeing the world, and yet it pervades D-E as the singular way of seeing the world.

As a result, students arrive in my classroom accepting this theory as fact: People born with less melanin in their skin are oppressors, and people born with more melanin in their skin are oppressed. Men are oppressors, women are oppressed, and so on. This is the dominant and divisive ideology that is guiding our adolescent students.

In my classroom, I see up close how this orthodoxy hinders students’ ability to read, write, and think. I teach students who recoil from a poem because it was written by a man. I teach students who approach texts in search of the oppressor. I teach students who see inequities in texts that have nothing to do with power. Students have internalized the message that this is the way we read and think about the world, and as a result, they fixate on power and group identity. This fixation has stunted their ability to observe and engage with the full fabric of human experience in our literature…

Sadly, the school is leading many to become true believers and outspoken purveyors of a regressive and illiberal orthodoxy. Understandably, these students have found comfort in their moral certainty, and so they have become rigid and closed-minded, unable or unwilling to consider alternative perspectives. These young students have no idea that the school has placed ideological blinders on them.

But it’s not just the students who feel it necessary to self-censor in this environment. It’s also the teachers who’ve been forced to accept the new CRT hierarchy including segregations of teachers by race:

In 2019, I shared with you my negative experiences among hostile and doctrinaire colleagues. You expressed dismay, but I did not hear any follow up from you or other administrators. Since then, the stifling conformity has only intensified. Last fall, two administrators informed faculty that certain viewpoints simply would not be tolerated during our new “race explicit” conversations with our new “anti-racist” work. They said that no one would be allowed to question the orthodoxy regarding “systemic racism.” The message was clear, and the faculty went silent in response.

The reality is that fear pervades the faculty. On at least two separate occasions in 2017 and 2018, our Head of School, standing at the front of Hajjar Auditorium, told the entire faculty that he would fire us all if he could so that he could replace us all with people of color. This year, administrators continue to assert D-E’s policy that we are hiring “for diversity.” D-E has become a workplace that is hostile toward educators based solely on their immutable traits.

During a recent faculty meeting, teachers were segregated by skin color. Teachers who had light skin were placed into a “white caucus” group and asked to “remember” that we are “White” and “to take responsibility for [our] power and privilege.”

In addition to her resignation letter, Stangel-Plowe provided FAIR with documents collected from the school. One document labeled “Faculty Training Materials” included faculty responses to leading questions from a recent training session. In addition to things like pursuing “equitable grading practices” and calling out microaggressions, someone suggested they launch a “‘targeted deprogramming / de-radicalization strategy toward identitarian white boys.”

This was all published yesterday and has only been picked up by Fox News and a few other outlets. We’ll have to wait and see if there is any response from the school or if other teachers are willing to back up some of these claims. Here’s Stangel-Plowe’s video announcement about the reasons for her resignation.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: New Jersey
KEYWORDS: arth; blackkk; criticalracetheory; crt; danastangelplowe; dwightenglewood; genderdysphoria; globalwarminghoax; greennewdeal; homosexualagenda; johnsexton; k12; newjersey; racism; teachers; whitecaucus
It is so sad to see the effects of this CRT indoctrination. The Leftists are successfully brainwashing many members of an entire generation to hate "racist" America and its ideals. The kids are becoming smug close-minded bigots, and they don't realize at all that they are being lied to. So sad.
1 posted on 06/09/2021 11:18:11 AM PDT by DeweyCA
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To: DeweyCA

I lived just about 3 miles from this school. It is very exclusive and in a town which even for NJ is ultra Left.


2 posted on 06/09/2021 11:27:31 AM PDT by billyboy15 (')
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To: DeweyCA

Can the victim ever be an oppressor ??? That’s what they need to answer....Can black men rape women and still be victims??? Can the blacks kill Asians and still be victims????


3 posted on 06/09/2021 11:29:58 AM PDT by Hambone 1934 (Dems love playing Nazis.....The republicans love helping them)
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To: DeweyCA

The West has lost its way.


4 posted on 06/09/2021 11:32:34 AM PDT by Altura Ct.
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To: DeweyCA

Teaching the students to become America’s Red Guards.


5 posted on 06/09/2021 11:39:06 AM PDT by Sans-Culotte (11/3-11/4/2020 - The USA became a banana republic.)
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To: DeweyCA

I’m thankful for this teacher who has the integrity to denounce Obama/Commie doctrine and the demonization of white people and also Christians and Jews!
It’s no wonder today’s youth think it’s okay to burn, loot and murder!
This CRT must be STOPPED immediately before a real war starts due to reverse discrimination!
Blacks have had every opportunity to make better lives for themselves!
CRT is disgusting, criminal and hateful brainwashing.
One way or another it WILL end.
Congress needs to thwart this NOW.
No summer leave! Get off your asses and DO YOUR JOBS.
If they don’t, it will be ON THEM.


6 posted on 06/09/2021 11:51:46 AM PDT by doc maverick
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To: DeweyCA

When the really great teachers walk away from teaching because of CRT the liberals will have crossed the finish line.


7 posted on 06/09/2021 12:00:01 PM PDT by cnsmom
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Arthur Wildfire! March; Berosus; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; ...
Wild guess -- she had her choice in November, and chose poorly.

8 posted on 06/09/2021 12:01:55 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: Altura Ct.

I assume that all of the children going to that school are from extremely wealthy families. How very sad for them. If this continues, the human functioning in this world will cease and human beings will become more like animals, seeking their own kind and being hostile unto death towards those who look different. If this cruelty and abuse of the humanity of our children does not cease, all beauty will be gone from the human experience, for it is the beauty of nature and the artistic gifts that individuals have which make life bearable for most of us. Not only that, but the giftedness of scientists to discover more and more about our world will stop, for those who have those gifts hidden inside may not be allowed to develop them if they are the wrong color. All children of all colors, creeds and nationalities should be free to follow their interests in school for that tells them what they are good at and everyone is good at something. All should receive a education of solid truths which have been built over 1000s of years. The real truth of this brief life is that is holds suffering for almost everyone if he/she lives long enough. God bless this courageous lady. She has a loving teacher’s heart and she is brilliant to see through what is happening to those kids and what it will bring to them in the future. Just think, if you love something when you are a kid..a sport, dance, cooking, painting pictures, acting, reading, music, etc., etc., and someone tells you that you cannot do that activity because you are bad and do not deserve to learn that thing because it isn’t fair that someone else does not want to do it. I fear that this nation is hurling towards suicide at breakneck speed. Everyone will live the nightmare when it comes and that includes the very rich who seem to be the authors and perpetrators of all this. I hate to think that the idea of pseudo genocide is lurking in the minds of some of the leaders who are trying to ruin the lives of kids but the realities of past world history tells us that such a danger is ever present in any society if the wrong people gain power. My guess is that we may have more of those now than at any time in our history.


9 posted on 06/09/2021 12:24:20 PM PDT by jazzlite
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To: DeweyCA

“. The kids are becoming smug close-minded bigots, and they don’t realize at all that they are being lied to. So sad.”

And COVID gave the left a convenient way to create a captured audience and isolate people.

“Never let a good crisis go to waste.”


10 posted on 06/09/2021 12:52:33 PM PDT by EQAndyBuzz (I got the shot. Not because I wanted to. Because I had to, in violation of my civil rights.)
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To: Sans-Culotte

There is always hope..Look at conservative writer DAVID HOROWITZ..A total communists believer.....Grew up a red baby,stuck to it for years.....I think the murder of his friend by the black panthers brought him around...He brought her into the group..Sometimes it takes real suffering to bring people to their senses.....


11 posted on 06/09/2021 1:13:09 PM PDT by Hambone 1934 (Dems love playing Nazis.....The republicans love helping them)
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To: jazzlite

For the younger set,they will experience HOLOCAUST 2....


12 posted on 06/09/2021 1:14:06 PM PDT by Hambone 1934 (Dems love playing Nazis.....The republicans love helping them)
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To: DeweyCA

A clip was played on War Room this morning.


13 posted on 06/09/2021 1:16:17 PM PDT by MayflowerMadam (Faith, not fear. Faith, not faintheartedness.)
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To: DeweyCA

Where do the supporters of CRT and the demonizing of whites think this will lead?


14 posted on 06/09/2021 3:06:54 PM PDT by subterfuge (RIP T.P.)
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To: metmom

Ping


15 posted on 06/10/2021 6:15:31 PM PDT by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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