A sixth grader's father has caused a tempest in uptown Manhattan by mailing an angry letter to the 650 parents whose kids are enrolled in Brearley, an elite private girls school that costs $54,000 a year to attend.
Recipients of the letter include Chelsea Clinton, Tina Fey, Drew Barrymore and Steve Martin.
Last week I attended my first woke training course.
"Our family recently made the decision not to reenroll our daughter at Brearley," wrote Andrew Gutman.
"We no longer have confidence that our daughter will receive the quality of education necessary to further her development."
Gutman went on to say the school "has completely lost its way."
"The administration and trustees have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob, and then allowing the school to be captured by that same mob," he wrote.
The mob Gutman had in mind: the advocates of woke.
I'm embarrassed to say I almost fell asleep.
The silliest portion of the training, by far, came when the presenter shamed herself for describing things as "crazy," pledging never again to use a word offensive to psychotics.
Her self-mortification generated a couple dozen red-heart emojis and prompted one participant to pledge never again to describe things as "lame," a word offensive to cripples.
But sadly, in the hands of hacks, their contribution to Western thought has devolved from insight to idiocy.
Andrew Gutman's letter, although harsh, comes, I believe, as a predictable gut-reaction to moral grandstanding by Brearley.
While worried about his daughter's "indoctrination," what actually set Gutman off was the school's insistence he attend woke training, which he called "simplistic and sophomoric" and likened to Mao-like rehabilitation.
As far as the training went, he took the word right out of my mouth.
Woke's roots lie in French "post-structuralist" philosophy, which claimed that truth and righteousness are the solely property of the marginalized.
Many great philosophers contributed to post-structuralist thought.
Woke training is inane.
"Moral grandstanding is the use of moral talk for self-promotion," says philosopher Brandon Warmke.
"Moral grandstanders have egotistical motives: they may want to signal that they have superhuman insight into a topic, paint themselves as a victim, or show that they care more than others."
Rather than mending society, moral grandstanders' soapboxing is divisive.
"Moral grandstanding contributes to political polarization, increases cynicism, and causes outrage exhaustion," Warmke says.
Moral grandstanders are also "free riders," Warmke claims.
"They get the benefits of being heard without contributing to any valuable discourse."
"I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs," Gutman told The New York Post.
Too bad he didn't realize he simply could have napped through the training.
Please, woke me when it's over.
