The indoctrination of a generation
by Guy Adams, Mailonline:
Racially segregated clubs, white pupils told they’re ‘oppressors’, and teachers banned from saying ‘boys and girls’. A dangerous dogma has gripped London’s American School – but parents are fighting back.
The American School in London is Britain’s most expensive day school, charging an astonishing £32,650-a-year in fees to the capital’s loftiest bankers, corporate lawyers and celebrities.
At pick-up, parents rub shoulders with footballers Thierry Henry and Mikel Arteta, Hollywood siren Salma Hayek and the occasional plutocrat and oligarch.
To a certain breed of turbo-powered Londoner, having children at ‘ASL’ is a badge of wealth and privilege, denoting membership of an exclusive club where your child becomes what the prospectus dubs a ‘lifelong learner and courageous global citizen’, hopefully with top academic grades and a place at a major university.
Or at least it was.
For behind the secure walls of its state-of-the-art campus near Regent’s Park — where famous alumni range from actress Kathleen Turner to NFL star Andrew Luck and Police drummer Stewart Copeland — you will today find a spiralling culture war.
Despite its rarefied status, this elite seat of learning is at the epicentre of a spectacular and utterly toxic dispute over claims that a cabal of Left-wing staff are seeking to brainwash impressionable pupils via ultra-woke ‘identity politics’.
The row culminated last week in a group of concerned parents sending its headteacher, Robin Appleby, a 12-page complaint accusing ASL of ‘institutional racism’ and ‘indoctrination’ of children via the teaching of ‘critical race theory’, a ‘controversial and divisive’ ideology that revolves around the concept of ‘white privilege’.
The parents argue that ‘partisan’ teaching has created a ‘culture of fear’ that is ‘harmful to our children’s mental health’ and claim the school’s treatment of race and gender issues breaks the Education Act.
The detailed letter also alleges that a recent decision by ASL to create racially segregated after-school clubs, in which pupils mix solely with peers of the same ethnicity, breaches the Equality Act.
‘It feels like ASL has fallen into the hands of a woke cult,’ says one of its authors. ‘Every subject, from art to literature to history, is now being taught through a prism of race or gender, at times to very young children.
It’s pernicious and divisive, and we think illegal. In the case of after-school clubs, they are operating what amounts to a system of apartheid.’
Please right-click links to open in a new window.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
