As this space told you a few weeks ago, heads would roll.
Rollins, I'm told, rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, including some longtime and supportive Dalton families. "He is completely dismissive of people not of color," one parent told me.
Rollins
His scalp won't be the last, but only because Dalton has been embarrassed about the publicity, not because they fundamentally disagree with the "Anti-racist" agenda.
The timing of the announcement was interesting. The decision was actually made some weeks ago, but they wanted to put off the announcement so it didn't look like they were caving to outside pressure.
But why now?
It seems parent contracts are due Monday, and I'm told lots of extensions have been granted. A parental survey was just completed and there's lots of blowback. People wanted a signal that their concerns were being taken seriously. Rollins was the sacrificial lamb.
(Don't shed any tears. DEI is a booming industry. Rollins will find work, and probably a higher salary to boot. Coincidentally enough, he is following precisely the same narrative arc as the villain in Campusland.)
Rollins will not be the last person sent to the gallows before the academic year is out.
Parents: this is all meaningless theater. Rollins' ouster means nothing, and will change nothing. Per their announcement, Dalton will do a "national search" for Rollins' replacement, and they remain as committed as ever to "Anti-racism." It's right there on their website.
Remember, "Anti-racism" is the application of Critical Race Theory (CRT). They are the same thing.
If you think any of this simply means being against racism, you are WRONG. If you are a parent, you are negligent if you don't do independent research into what CRT really means. CRT is an anti-intellectual virus that has spread through the vital organs of our country in just a few short months.
GET UP THE CURVE.
Here's a few pointers:
CRT is, itself, racist. It seeks to define us not as individuals, nor by the content of our characters, but as mere products of our skin colors. If you are white, no amount of self-abasement can wash the stain of your DNA.
CRT is anti-meritocracy. Equal results are paramount. Anything else is evidence of systemic racism, and must be forcibly corrected. The concepts of "excellence" and "equity" are mutually exclusive. The very word meritocracy is considered a micro-aggression.
CRT divides us, it doesn't unite. It inculcates our youngest children with angry racial distinctions that they themselves don't draw.
CRT is Marxist. It's a new strain, called by some "cultural" Marxism. In the old version, the "oppressed" were defined by class (the proletariat). In the new version, the they are defined by skin pigmentation. It's all the same thing.
CRT is anti-science. Objective truth does not exist. It is a social construct used as a tool of oppression. Even the idea of a correct answer in math is now being challenged as a social construct meant to lift some at the expense of others.
Not kidding or exaggerating about any of this. For God's sake, look it up yourselves. Take these people at their word.
After you realize what's being perpetrated on your children, say something.
Do something.
Nobody will say or do anything because they don't want to be branded a racist by the mob. Like the poor lunch lady and teacher at Smith College, who were exonerated by an independent investigation that the school pretended didn't exist. It's like being accused of being a witch in colonial Salem. Nobody wants to end up like John Proctor.
ReplyDeleteThe witch hunts in Salem ended in a matter of months and the perpetrators covered themselves with sackcloth and ashes. Our problem today is that people who run our institutions tend to be sociopaths, Dunning-Kruger exemplars, and ICNBW narcissists.
DeleteAnd, no, some people will do something. They're affluent and educated people who are paying customers. But you can wager that not enough people will do something. That Dalton is rescued with radical surgery would be the best solution. That Dalton closes in a few short years would be the second best.
The parents need to stop importuning, line up alternatives for their children, and issue demands to the board. The demands have to include a list of people who must go, or we walk. The list has to include the headmaster, anyone on the board with a conflict of interest, any administrator who signed that letter, and the worst of the faculty. Another demand has to be that an interim headmaster be selected from the membership of the National Association of Scholars. You don't have much margin here. Gangrene requires amputation.
ReplyDeleteCRT divides us, it doesn't unite. It inculcates our youngest children with angry racial distinctions that they themselves don't draw.
ReplyDeleteWe don't need to be united. We do need to be courteous to each other and have consensual rules for mediating and adjudicating conflict and competition. CRT is diametrically opposed to all of this. It's shot through with lies and demands submission of ascribed groups. It has no validity.
CRT is Marxist.
It isn't. It's just a set of social fictions and excuses for bad behavior by functionaries.
He's been hired by the Harvard School of Education. He's a pure product of the teacher's colleges, by the way.
ReplyDeletehttps://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/handle/1903/19449/Rollins_umd_0117E_17958.pdf?sequence=1
ReplyDeleteHis dissertation.
His dissertation supervisor was one Sharon Fries-Britt. She has since 1994 produced a paper about every other year for an academic /professional journal in the student affairs / black studies self-enclosure. As far as I can tell, she does not do quantitative research.
ReplyDeleteHe's evidently 36 years old. The School of Education at College Park awarded him a research degree in 2007. Unless I'm confused, his previous employers include Perdue University and some institution in Vermont, perhaps St. Michael's College or the Community College outside Burlington.
ReplyDeletein 2017
DeleteScott, we've glimpsed these problems at most NYC private schools. Dalton. St Ann's. Collegiate. The problem of over-wokeness generally, not always on matters of race but also LGBTQ+. You would do your readers a great service of highlighting other schools with this intellectual cancer. Otherwise we just glimpse fragments, like Megyn Kelly withdrawing her kids from Collegiate, or Brearley prostrating itself in response to an alum posting a vociferous Facebook page. Few parents are willing to push back, the only one that comes to mind is the financier John Paulsen at Spence. Sunlight, I say!
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that parents have no alternatives to "line up" as leverage. This cancer has spread everywhere, and there is no place to send kids to school that isn't now a radical brainwashing camp. I'm glad my kids are through school and I don't have to deal with it, but I'm terrified about what will happen to their kids if they have any . . . .
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that parents have no alternatives to "line up" as leverage.
DeleteRubbish. And these people can set up homeschool co-operatives if it comes to that. They've got the resources.
That's really the answer here - band together as a group, pull your tuition and donations from Dalton and Spence and all these other schools that teach that white kids are only successful because of their race privilege and not because of family-instilled values of hard work, curiosity, responsibility, dedication, etc., and form a home school group. And hire the teachers that refused to go along with signing the manifesto and refuse to bow to this rubbish.
DeleteThe homeschooling option isn't very practicable. To do it right, you'd need to hire a dozen or so subject-matter experts (Math, Physics, Life Sciences, French, Latin, English, European history, American history, art history, music, etc.) who can teach varying age groups. How big must the group be in order for the economics and practicalities to work? And then there is still the problem of college: homeschooling is much likely to lead to an Ivy League acceptance than are schools like Dalton.
DeleteWell, if the goal is Ivy League, and you don't care about the actual education or mind pollution of your kids, then stay at Dalton - the top colleges are all infected with this CRT virus themselves and are probably looking for kids that have already been pre-brainwashed and indoctrinated. But just don't expect your kids to learn anything about math, science, history, literature, etc. at Dalton unless it was something accomplished by non-whites.
DeleteThe homeschooling option isn't very practicable. To do it right, you'd need to hire a dozen or so subject-matter experts (Math, Physics, Life Sciences, French, Latin, English, European history, American history, art history, music, etc.) who can teach varying age groups. How big must the group be in order for the economics and practicalities to work? And then there is still the problem of college: homeschooling is much likely to lead to an Ivy League acceptance than are schools like Dalton.
DeleteMost of these people are shelling out > $50k a year. Lots of options are practicable, including co-operative homeschooling.
As for the Ivy League, a grand total of 0.5% of each youth cohort manages to enroll there and a great many of their graduates go on to lead very ordinary lives. Screw it.
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ReplyDeleteSorry- I got scared! Isn’t that pathetic, and telling? I was at St. Paul’s School, NH. The same disease is there and fear rules anyone who might want to dissent.
DeleteIf you're afraid of nitwit school administrators, your rearing was deficient.
DeleteReading Wallerstein on “world systems theory “ we live in the aftermath of the disassembled European hegemony pre 1945. “White” is a shorthand for core European society and values..non white suggests stage 2 of intermediary Asian society and black is short hand for the peripheral sub Saharan African third world
ReplyDeleteCRT is the res sentiment of previously dominated peoples..the problem is that elite education has as its mission to internalized core European norms of socialization..
ReplyDelete“Internalize”
DeleteIt would be absolutely inconsequential if gentry liberals were not in the business of pretending the likes of Ibram X Kendi and Robin DiAngelo were scholars. And the 'previously dominated' would be devoting themselves to learning practical skills and actual knowledge were they not, as has been DomOnic Rollins, getting positive re-inforcement for mastering nonsense jargon.
Deleteinternalized core European norms of socialization..
DeleteThe people who do that are parents, employers, and peers. The Dean of Students has a hand in it. Teachers need a modicum of order in their classrooms, so there are norms, but enforcing standards of conduct is an ancillary function of teaching. Elite secondary education's signature is it's investment in academics in lieu of trade education; it's rather less esoteric than it was four generations ago, when learning Koine Greek and Latin was common.
Wow this is scary to think that bringing change to systemic racism will cause so much outcry. Things will never change. SAD
ReplyDelete"systemic racism" is sociological phlogiston. And, no, people aren't going to lie down while their children's learning is neglected in favor of political propaganda, nor will they willingly allow their children to be gratuitously demeaned.
Delete“Racism” is shorthand for systematized core nations ( European ) hegemony which gave civilized enlightenment as well as military repression to the peripheral colonies..the bad faith insincerity of the Mau Mau CRT activist the focus on the military domination ALONE..and not the benefits of the scientific revolution and intellectual revolution of the “mother society “..
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete“Activist ( is that they ) focus on the military domination alone..”
Delete"European norms of socialization...." You mean civilized behavior, love of learning, dedication to hard work, etc.? If these are seen as bad things, the world is doomed.
ReplyDeleteSo "civilization" - moving from violent tribal anarchy to a peaceful functional society that advances in technology, arts, health, etc. - is "repression?" Wow.
ReplyDeleteIn summary..yes..truncated reason and ressentiment
ReplyDeleteSee, with a PROPER education focused on those European civilization things like language, grammar, spelling, etc. you'd know it is "resentment" and not "ressentiment"
ReplyDeleteLook it up
ReplyDelete*burn*
ReplyDelete*crickets* lol
ReplyDeletehttps://nypost.com/2021/04/16/head-of-nycs-posh-dalton-school-to-leave-at-end-of-2021/
ReplyDeleteJim Best is under the bus. That's one down and about 90 to go (more if you count the majority faction of the trustees).