The controversy over a mandatory all-school, all-day Leftist seminar on “racial civil rights” at New Trier High School on Chicago’s North Shore continues to intensify. It has now become a national story with Peter Berkowitz, senior fellow with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, publishing an editorial in the Wall Street Journal in which he accurately describes the event:
What passes for education at many American public schools is too often closer to indoctrination. Consider the seminar day that New Trier High School, in Winnetka, Ill., on Chicago’s affluent North Shore, is planning for Feb. 28.
The title for the all-school seminar is “Understanding Today’s Struggle for Racial Civil Rights.” That very term, “racial civil rights,” is misleading, since civil rights protect Americans’ freedoms regardless of their race. Judging from the roster of scheduled events, the seminar might be more accurately titled “Inculcating a Progressive View of Social Justice.”
The Chicago Tribune published three letters from supporters of this ideologically-imbalanced event that reveal the steadfast refusal of “progressives” to respond to the substance of the arguments of the seminar’s critics.
First there is Lake Forest College professor emeritus of American history, Michael Ebner, who questions the appropriateness of any parental criticism of the leftist seminar day:
I have a pertinent question for the dissenters to contemplate: Once your daughters and sons receive their highly valued baccalaureate degrees from New Trier High School, will you closely monitor the content of the curricular offerings and extracurricular activities at the esteemed colleges and universities in which they choose to enroll? I taught American history at colleges and universities in New York City and Illinois for 40 years. Never did I encounter criticism from parents—or administrators—about the design of the courses I offered or the content of their subject matter.
It seems a leap to suggest that because parental attention to and involvement in college curricula is little (or non-existent), parental attention to and involvement in high school curricula should be little (or nonexistent) as well. Does Ebner believe that since parental attention to and involvement in high school curricula should be non-existent, then so too should it be with regard to middle schools, and so on down the academic line? Ultimately we arrive at the goal of statists: absolute autonomy and no accountability.
The involvement of New Trier parents in curricular matters seems quite small and has emerged only because of the serious violation of sound pedagogical principles and betrayal of parental trust in administrators to uphold those principles.
Chicago attorney Joseph Morris, who was the assistant attorney general of the United States under President Reagan, challenges Professor Ebner’s apparent view that parents who subsidize at great expense the post-secondary education of their children should pay no attention to what professors are teaching:
Mr. Ebner’s stunning admission—that for 40 years no one paid any attention to what he was doing in his classrooms–explains how and why American higher education has gone to hell in a handbasket in the last 40 years, setting the stage for infectious political correctness and related boobery to pass from the colleges to the high schools.
The second letter was from Deerfield resident Mary Kay Koerner who is a New Trier graduate, retired Lake Forest High School teacher, and wife of a retired New Trier High School teacher. Ms. Koerner, who is a “progressive,” expresses her concern about the influence of a “small but vocal group of parents”:
I am concerned that a small but vocal group of parents in the community is trying to influence the presentation of a seminar on “Understanding Today’s Struggle For Racial Civil Rights.” Now, more than ever, our young people need to be reading and hearing authors like Colson Whitehead and Andrew Aydin. They are both National Book Award winners who will be speaking at the seminar.
How wonderful for our children to grow up here and be educated in such great schools. We want to count on them to be the leaders of tomorrow who will remember what they learned at school and lift up their fellow citizens. I have faith that this seminar will inspire this new generation to inquire, commit and serve. We entrust the expert educators at New Trier to have these goals in mind. New Trier has always been a beacon in the educational community. Let’s let these professionals do their job. Great dinner table discussions should ensue.
Mr. Morris offers some perhaps relevant information on the speakers Ms. Koerner views as essential to the formation of tomorrow’s leaders:
At the ceremony held in New York City last fall just days after the national election, as the prestigious national book award was presented to Mr. Whitehead, the honoree said, “We’re happy in here; outside is the blasted hellhole wasteland of Trumpland. Be kind to everybody, make art and fight the power.” Will he convey a similarly objective, politically-neutral, uplifting, and dignified message to the students of New Trier High School?
Andrew Aydin’s day job is as the “Digital Director and Policy Advisor” to Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia) in the latter’s office on Capitol Hill; before that he was employed on the Lewis campaign staff in Georgia. I suspect that the number of paid Republican political operatives who will be paid by New Trier High School to grace the Seminar Day can be counted on zero fingers, and I suspect, further, that the disparity is no accident.
Odd that Ms. Koerner doesn’t swell with gleeful anticipation of the visits by others among the Seminar Day’s speakers, such as Monica Trinidad (who organizes boycotts of ballet companies featuring Jewish artists because she doesn’t want to “dance with Israeli apartheid”); and the “poet” whose nom de plume is “John the Author” and whose oeuvre includes “poetry” such as the following stirring anthem to racial tolerance and what education can accomplish, an exhortation that no doubt embodies what Ms. Koerner imagines to be the school’s lofty goals to “inspire, commit, and serve”: “Not graduate from back, Give back, nigga, Tell them get back, nigga”.
Once again, a “progressive,” that is Ms. Koerner, ignores the arguments of critics of All-School Seminar Day. These critics have not argued that students ought not read or hear the words of Whitehead or Aydin. Rather, the critics are arguing that our young people need to be reading and hearing the words of those whose perspective on race-related issues is different from Whitehead’s or Aydin’s.
The critics believe that the words of writers and speakers like Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Carol Swain, Star Parker, Michelle Malkin, and Jason Riley—all members of minority groups—also have the potential to inspire this new generation to inquire, commit, and serve. Supporters of intellectual diversity believe that great dinner table discussions are informed, enriched, and deepened by exposure to the work of diverse writers and speakers.
The final letter comes from Nick Sloane of Glendale Heights:
Officials at New Trier Township High School are requiring students to attend a day on learning about the struggle for equal rights by African-Americans. Although they plan to stick with the original program, many parents have complained because it has a “liberal” bias. It’s too bad the views of these parents cannot be included, as I’d sure like to know what that other take looks like. This is especially so if the high school is focusing on the fight for equal rights in the 1950s and 1960s. I’d be really interested to hear what a conservative has to say about it. In my view, attendance by these parents should be mandatory, as it seems to me they also need to be educated.
Mr. Sloane evinces the arrogance of leftists who believe that those who disagree with their assumptions should be required to be re-educated.
Mr. Morris is baffled that Mr. Sloane doesn’t know the era on which the all-day event focuses:
[I]t is puzzling that [Mr. Sloane] wonders “if the high school is focusing on the fight for equal rights in the 1950s and 1960s” when the title of the Seminar Day program is “Understanding Today’s Struggle for Racial Civil Rights” [emphasis added]. The word “Today’s” is a dead giveaway that the aim of the program is not a retrospective on the history of half a century and more ago. Another dead giveaway of the aim of the program is the insertion of the word “Racial” which, of course, undermines the fundamental American proposition that “rights,” civil and otherwise, belong to individuals and not to races.
Here are the three primary defenses of All-School Seminar Day offered by its ardent supporters within the New Trier community:
- Most community members support it.
- Students are permitted to dissent.
- Racism exists, so it must be addressed in public school.
First, it shouldn’t matter how many or few oppose it. Minority voices should be honored.
Second, no one is arguing that the seminar prohibits discussion, debate, or dissent. Opponents are arguing that a good debate (and sound pedagogy) requires that students be exposed to the best arguments from the best thinkers on all sides of arguable issues. Conservative students should have their views reinforced and challenged by session speakers and materials, and “progressive” students should have their views reinforced and challenged by session speakers and materials. Those students without settled opinions deserve to hear speakers and read materials from all perspectives in order to have a better-informed grounding from which to form opinions.
Third, no one is arguing that racism doesn’t exist. What seminar critics are arguing is that the seminar approaches the manifold issues surrounding race from a leftist perspective. Surely the seminar organizers and supporters know that blacks like Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Jason Riley, Carol Swain, Condoleezza Rice, Star Parker, Allen West, and Ben Carson think differently about racial issues than do “John the Author,” “queer latinx” Monica Trinidad, and Andrew Aydin.
My father, World War II veteran Jack Blackburn, who grew up in Glencoe and attended New Trier, shared his views on the New Trier event:
From reading the seminar schedule, it seems that Big Brother has finally arrived. Such a patently one-sided indoctrination program is clearly a violation of education principles and parental rights. As for community member Paul Traynor’s comment that opposition to the seminar is small, I would say, that’s what Hillary and the cabal of progressives thought.
I hearken back to William Buckley’s statement that “In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think but is positive he arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. He’s usually outraged by the suggestion he is a flesh and blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinator.” And to think we pay taxes to finance another liberal assault on conservative values.
What’s most notable in the public comments from New Trier administrators and community supporters of the seminar is that none addresses the concerns of community members who oppose the ideological bias inherent in the seminar. In other words, not one seminar defender claims that the seminar sessions are unbiased or ideologically balanced. Worse still, the administration has thus far steadfastly refused all requests for additional speakers or an additional seminar to provide balance to what is currently an indefensibly imbalanced all-day event. That should trouble anyone concerned with sound pedagogy.
Take ACTION: If you live in any of the communities served by New Trier High School, please attend the school board meeting tomorrow night, Feb. 20, 2017 at 7:30 p.m. (doors open at 6:00). If you know anyone who lives in these communities, please share this information with them. Come alongside those courageous parents who are fighting for sound education:
Cornog Auditorium
New Trier High School—Northfield Campus
7 Happ Road
Northfield, IL 60093
