Five years ago, I he whistled at the school I loved. Did it make a difference?
I taught high school English at a private school in New Jersey for seven years. I loved the school’s focus on resilience and growth. I loved my colleagues, who challenged and nurtured our students, including my children, who attended the school. And I felt lucky to be a part of such a vibrant learning community. All that changed in 2014.
A young teacher, who recently participated in an education conference hosted by the National Association of Independent Schools, led the faculty in what we now see as a “privilege walk,” where participants were forced to take a step forward or step back based on their identity.
When they end up having a relationship with their colleagues it shows how much privilege or oppression they are said to receive.
Soon, the school hired a DEI official, who privately admitted that his job was to “turn around” the school. The oppressor-victim idea quickly appeared everywhere: weekly student programs, professional training, and scholarship offerings.
In my department, the “dead white males” were clearly “separated” from the core curriculum.
My colleagues debated whether the emphasis on “rational” thinking was too Western compared to other ways of thinking. By my final year, the institutional transition was complete.
The Faculty was informed that the central idea – the increasing pressure of the system – could no longer be debated.
Our colleagues began to talk openly about “de-radicalizing” and “de-radicalizing” students who disagreed with their beliefs.
The cost of adopting an ideology was undeniable. My young students criticize themselves. In the classroom, they stop really sharing about the story and each other, for fear of hurting their classmates or being called a thinker. I had often expressed concern about school. Most of my colleagues agree with me, but only behind closed doors. The management completely ignored me.
So I decided to resign publicly, out of responsibility to my students and to the school itself. I panicked. I lost many friends, near and far.
Even after I resigned, my children were separated from the events of the students. I didn’t know what was going to happen next.
So what did I do? I wish I could say that K-12 education has changed for the better, but it has only gotten worse.
After my resignation from society, I contacted educational reformers who shared my concerns. I started working in the advocacy area, where I met hundreds of parents and teachers who saw the damage of this new theological system in schools. I now understand that the problem was not isolated in my school, but rather systemic. The organization I work for recently released a report report that explains the institutional nature of the problem.
As we detailed in the report, a dangerous ideology perpetuates itself systematically through the pipeline from teachers’ colleges and unions directly into K–12 classrooms, reinforced by state accreditation and licensing laws, school boards and courses.
What we are seeing is a fundamental restructuring of the teacher’s role. I have seen how many well-intentioned teachers, in addition to other parents, accept limited types of ideas when they are lumped together as “equality.”
This language sounds like it promotes favoritism and minimizes partisanship, but it hides hidden political drivers who stifle dissent and, in its most extreme forms, seek the dismantling of America and its institutions.
In my field of working on the left, I know that many teachers are not radical activists. But their good intentions lead them into the path of least resistance opened by those present. In the catch-up system, politicization of education becomes the breath of teachers.
They tend to advance their ideas without realizing what they are: politics. It may sound like saying something that these ideas incite hostility towards anyone who they label as an oppressor, but it is all too true.
In my school, very strong and often young teachers aggressively insisted on this new approach. They have pushed the school to reduce complex problems, such as racial or gender inequality, to double standards and treat contested conclusions as settled truth.
At that time, Thursday meant student meetings. Administrators brought in outside activist speakers and led identity-focused sessions aimed at re-establishing group identity in our community. Week after week, I’ve seen my students despair over ideas that, by design, cast someone — themselves or the student sitting next to them — as the villain.
Children are at risk of taking this teaching as truth, which is the point of religious fanatics. These were times of real life struggle. Clear incidents of anti-Semitism – swastikas in the stadium and in the toilet – were unfairly controlled; they did not worry because the Jews had a lot of power in the school. According to the identity category, Israel and the Jews are the oppressors, despite the history of persecution. It was not controversial.
It was sad to see young people growing confident in their new moral convictions, while failing to cultivate curiosity or humility.
One student openly condemned the Jewish slaves in the story of Exodus because, as oppressors, they caused the death of the Egyptians. It’s hard to imagine anyone abandoning slaves – or enslaved people – in any other era in history by fleeing their captors.
In my work now, I see even more extreme versions taking hold across the country.
Organized activists from the Democratic Socialists of America and other political groups enter the classroom with disdain for political and labor union organizing, school district relations, and studies that often focus on Israel, leaving out important historical facts and competing viewpoints in favor of their own politically biased narratives.
No school – private, public, rural, urban, urban – is immune to this teaching.
Education should strengthen our social life. It should equip children with the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind required for democratic life. But we fail at scale, and that failure has consequences far beyond the classroom. It’s time to stop whispering and start sounding the alarm.
Dana Stangel-Plowe, attorney and educator, serves as Chief Program Officer at the North American Values Institute (NAVI).
