A concerned parent in New York has set up a website to “speak up for education” after pulling his daughter out of The Brearley School in New York City in April over the school’s “obsession with race” and “appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob.”
Following his first viral letter in April, Andrew Gutmann, whose daughter attended the elite all-girls private school, penned a second open letter in May sharply criticizing “the school’s obsession with race and adoption of critical race theory,” which is rooted in the Marxist theory of class struggle but applied to race.
He now vows to “continue to fight for our children’s educations, for free speech, and against indoctrination, cancel culture and critical race theory.”
He wrote that he was “gratified by the overwhelmingly supportive emails and messages that I have personally received” for his first letter to 650 families of the school.
Gutmann said that before he sent the first letter, he “had no idea how pervasive and entrenched critical race theory had become in our schools, including public and religious schools,” and “many parents were dealing with the same issues as our family, with captured and close-minded administrations and racist, age-inappropriate and indoctrinating curriculums.”
He wrote that children as early as kindergarten are being asked to draw self portraits, with explicit instructions to focus exclusively on accurately depicting their skin tone, and young adults at elite medical schools spending weeks of instruction on transgender issues and “antiracism” in lieu of pediatrics and geriatrics.
He said that these educational problems cannot be fixed until “we eradicate the insidious cancer that is cancel culture,” citing the Biden administration’s recent plan to promote critical race theory in America’s schools with federal grant money.
He criticized the “appalling stench of cowardice emanating from the corporate boardrooms” in the United States, which he said is “literally under assault by the proponents of critical race theory, by the purveyors of cancel culture and by the high priests of wokism.”
“This is not an academic debate between liberals and conservatives or a political skirmish between Republicans and Democrats,“ he wrote. ”This is a fight for the soul and for the future of our country. If we lose this battle, I fear that we risk losing the freedoms and the prosperity we take for granted, and eventually I believe our country will fracture.”
Gutmann, 45, is a former investment banker-turned-software developer and entrepreneur who now leads his family’s chemical business.
On his newly launched website, he has set up a “for Brearley Parents” page for parents to submit or co-sign letters to the administration and Board of Trustees, as a way of “organizing for maximum effectiveness.”
