Flashback to April 2019. Mariemont conducts its Academy Days professional development sessions for teachers and staff. One of those sessions, “Ways to Take Action,” reinforces the principles of Beacon 4 Mariemont Schools, as described in our About Us section:
We believe that judgment of our fellow humans should be based on the content of their character as defined by principles of honesty, integrity, and kindness. We promote teaching fundamental ideals of our nation in liberty and individual freedom, including the successes and shortcomings of our shared history. We support teaching a vision of hope and optimism based on these ideals and common goals.
As shown in these slides from the April 2019 Academy Day session, Mariemont was aligned with a principle generally viewed as a positive attribute of a just society: a common ground based on the unalienable rights of the individual. Our nation, at its best, values political democracy, limitations on the powers of government, universal human rights, equality for all adult citizens, due process, freedom of expression, respect for the value of viewpoint diversity and honest debate, respect for evidence and reason, the separation of church and state, and freedom of religion.
These particular materials present this hopeful, optimistic viewpoint. They present fundamental concepts of equality. They assume all stereotyping is undesirable.
A Shift From the Individual to Oppressors and Oppressed
Over the next two years, Mariemont shifted focus in its professional development. Mariemont’s outside consultants attacked these basic principles of individual freedom.. They implanted a radical Critical Social Justice dogma into the Academy Days curriculum. For example, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (Reynolds, Kendi) became required reading. Stamped presents a pessimistic view of the world by which every interaction, institution, utterance and cultural artifact must be viewed through a racial lens. Everyone is stereotyped – put into a box – as a racist, an assimilationist, or anti-racist. Every interaction between humans is viewed through systemic power structures of race.
In the STAMPED world, objective truth is dismissed in favor of a radical relativism in the form of double standards such as assertions that only white people can be racist, only men can be sexist, and in the wholesale rejection of a universal tenet of nondiscrimination.
B4MS commends Mariemont Schools for its stand against stereotyping and respect for the individual in its 2019 Academy Days curriculum. All of us, teachers included, benefit from a reminder to reject stereotypes, to focus on each one of us as individuals, and to seek common ground and universal truth.
However, in 2020 Mariemont’s administration drifted from these long-established, objective, optimistic attributes. Suddenly, the administration turned over Academy Days to Critical Social Justice Warriors. Watch for future content highlighting this shift. Importantly, you can’t have it both ways. B4MS rejects the stereotyping of the Critical Theorists and recognizes their views as unreasonable, untenable, and devoid of hope. Not only intuitively but by objective measures, we see that wokeism lacks reason, equality, due process, and freedom of expression.
