"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. In my professional opinion, the school is failing to encourage healthy habits of mind, essential for growth, such as intellectual curiosity, humility, honesty, reason, and the capacity to question ideas and consider multiple perspectives.... 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."

Writes Dana Stangel-Plowe, resigning from her job as an English teacher at an expensive New Jersey private school.

The full text of her letter is here. I first read about this in The Daily Mail: "Black Columbia professor calls for 'truly antiracist parents' to pull their kids out of $52k New Jersey school after teacher quit over critical race theory lessons and says only this will stop the 'misguided quest'/John McWhorter, an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, tweeted his support for Dana Stangel-Plowe."

The Mail quotes McWhorter's tweet: "All hail Dana Stangel-Plowe, who has resigned from the Dwight-Englewood School, which teaches students 'antiracism' that sees life as nothing but abuse of power, and teaches that cringing, hostile group identity against oppression is the essence of a self."