74 Comments

The "skip college" advice is solid. I joined the military and did other things for my first ten years out of H.S. When I started college I was armed with tons of experience and some armor against this ideology. I ended up being more disciplined and grounded than my fellow students and will be starting Medical School next year.

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“In Burbank, the school district just told middle- and high school teachers to stop teaching To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men.”

The very two pieces of literature (and cinema) that were most influential to me as a high school freshman in 1980, and instructive and inspirational to my career as a screenwriter.

I weep for what we once were.

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Critics of private schools are barking up the wrong tree. I've sent my kid to a private pre-school, then public kindergarten, and will probably switch to a private elementary school.

Public school offered no encouragment in the subject my kid excells at. This aligns with their messaging about "reducing the achievement gap" and accordingly high achieving kids with the wrong skin color are discouraged. Anyone who acts like education is a zero-sum game ought not be allowed within a mile of schools, but the public system is full of them. I digress, but who will discover a cure for cancer if not the brightest of the bright?

In my neck of the woods, private schools get marginally more money per student than public ones. Private schools also offer encouragement to everyone and promise to help all students reach their potential. This positive message is what I want to hear, and we are fortunate to be able to pay for it. Of course I wish families with fewer resources had the same opportunities, not only because it would dilute the spoiled brat population at private school, but I deeply want society to be uplifting for the young. In fact, the real source of inequality is the political order that allows the disastrous public schools to persist. It boggles the mind that they spend almost as much per student as private schools while providing a hugely inferior experience.

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Thank you Bari for writing this. This sums up my thoughts on the article too. Not standing up to what is wrong regardless of where it comes from is cowardly. And no parent has an excuse for it. Cowardly behavior is what allowed the worst things in our country to live on. The thing that annoys me the most is the parents I have witnessed who will go to a BLM protest or tweet about BLM but wouldn’t think of sending their kids to their local school district (where these very lives are being poorly educated) to try to affect some meaningful change. The same thing goes for teachers unions. They will spit all kinds of social justice buzz words and phrases, but will fight you not to measure their pay raises by how well they educate students under their care.

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Never realized how good I had it going through primary and secondary schools(and later college) in the 60's and 70's. I believe(hope) my parents would have fought back against this lunacy had it poked its nasty head above ground back then. For better or worse, I do not have kids BUT I try and support financially those folks with courage whom are fighting back now. Finally, a college education is vastly overrated. Three of my most successful friends never spent a day in college(and one barely graduated high school). Anecdotal to be sure , BUT college is far less necessary then it ever was.

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I've loved your work for awhile...but subscribed because you turned us on to Gabby and William's lawsuit. Lots of pundits are out there telling us how destructive critical theory is...this is the first time I've seen something actionable.

Thank you!

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I loved the article. I also loved the quote that if you really wanted things to be equal, you would lock the gate. Reminds me of what a few of my friends and I used to talk about. A few wealthy wokes are social friends. But, we often thought, if you want to have more equality, just give away 90% of your money. That was never going to happen. Its very funny when we receive "lefty" emails from these people who are actually on golfing trips in Ireland.

In any event, the other comment that I think presents a very practical solution is one that my wife and I have discussed...take the kids out of expensive private schools and put them in Catholic schools, where I am sure wokeness is not being taught. Thank you again for your article.

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founding

Thanks Bari for your posts. You are fast becoming my favorite substack contributor. Glenn Greenwald is close. When you feature people like Grabrielle Clark and Jodi Shaw, I gladly donate to help their causes. Keep them coming.

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This is an interesting point: "My sensei, the writer Caitlin Flanagan, says that there’s a saying in journalism that you have to publish stories to get stories. "

Thomas Sowell gives the perfect example of this. He had a son who could not talk approaching age 4, yet was otherwise very bright. He searched for years for information about these late-talking, yet intelligent children (his son graduated from college). So he wrote about this in his widely-circulated newspaper column. He got many letters from parents with stories about their similar children.

By getting many of the stories and doing research starting with them, he discovered that the children were not autistic or mentally unfit. He ended up publishing two books on the subject, "Late-Talking Children" and "The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children who Talk Late" Without his initial article with the story about his son, the evidence for the bigger story would not have been available.

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We homeschooled off and on with our five children and had the gift of an excellent K-12 charter school in the midst of our 28 year dance with the public school system.

I have so many thoughts jumbling around about the various issues raised by Bari's education articles. My youngest son is graduating HS this spring from an online school attached to the local high school. He plays on the school varsity soccer team and we have been so grateful for the Colorado laws that are in place to allow homeschooled children participate in extracurricular activities.

The main message I have for parents is that just because you pick one path, does not mean you have to stay on it. Eighth grade boys have a deep desire to attend school. There is a huge debate in the homeschooling forums about this. And some little girls are very happy with the structure of public schools and do not like spending every waking moment with their siblings. Dang, I just broke the gender stereotyping rule. My bad.

I shared my insights on education issues in this little booklet: https://www.amazon.com/Uncommon-Lore-Jenny-Hatch-ebook/dp/B00CNFV4IC

All four of my big kids graduated from universities and one son in getting a PhD in Chem and another son just scored a 178 on his LSAT.

So our mish mash approach did not keep them out of higher ed.

I hope everyone will be kind as we reason together.

Jenny Hatch

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And in Northampton, MA, where Jodi Shaw stood up to wokeness at Smith College, which you wrote about recently, a group of students (supposedly) at the local middle school started a Facebook group for whites kids because they do not want the school to teach things like CRT. To make their point the profile image on the page uses a confederate flag. This in turn caused protests and local politicians introduced a measure banning the confederate flag. For anyone who doesn’t know, Northampton, MA is a veritable progressive utopia yet because of this nonsense racial divisiveness is spreading where it almost didn’t exist before.

https://www.gazettenet.com/School-committe-votes-on-banning-Confederate-flag-39384925

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You and Chris Rufo deserve kudos for bringing these issues to light.

My take from your article is that if it's happening at the most elite prep schools in the country -- where parents are engaged, and children actually perform at or above grade level -- then those of us, and our children, in the 99% have no way out.

Meaning, this is not a rich people problem. It's a fucking problem for everyone. The more it's cast as a joke for wealthy people to be up in arms the more shiny objects pull attention away from the real problem, which is that America's kids are being fed toxic garbage from everyone involved in their education. It's a total travesty.

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I really hope the court case gets to SCOTUS. And, that SCOTUS has the balls to take it on.

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Critical Theory is promoted over critical thinking.

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The newest way to teach foreign languages is to immerse the students in Social Justice Theory. That is the new position of NECTFL: https://dangerousintersection.org/2021/03/15/northeast-conference-on-the-teaching-of-foreign-language-nectfl-goes-full-woke-for-2021/

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Bari, you should help the subjects of these interviews by introducing them to the work of Dale and Kruger on the measurable value of attending an elite institution. The value has been a couple of percent higher annual income at best. The two economists use comparisons of students who were accepted at both a state school and an elite institution but chose to go to one or the other.

Not enough to sell your soul, or the souls of your children, over. Especially given that by keeping them in one of these ridiculous institutions you do teach them that all that matters is virtue signaling rather than actually caring about the less fortunate.

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