Teacher resigns from New Jersey prep school over critical race theory

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Jun 9, 2021

English teacher Dana Stangel-Plowe resigned after seven years at a New Jersey prep school because of the school’s critical race ideology. She wrote a letter to Dwight-Englewood School’s brass.

In the past, Stangel-Plowe claimed there were two occasions where the Head of School said if he could fire the entire faculty and replace them with people of color, he would. The English teacher said instances like this contributed to a culture of hostility and fear.

“I reject D-E’s essentialist, racialist thinking about myself, my colleagues, and my students,” Stangel-Plowe wrote. “D-E claims that we teach students how to think, not what to think. But sadly, that is just no longer true.”

“The school’s ideology requires students to see themselves not as individuals, but as representatives of a group, forcing them to adopt the status of privilege or victimhood,” she went on. “As a result, students arrive in my classroom accepting this theory as fact: People born with less melanin in their skin are oppressors, and people born with more melanin in their skin are oppressed. Men are oppressors, women are oppressed, and so on.”

Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR) published her resignation letter and materials from the school on their website.

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