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Dana Stangel-Plowe has stepped down from her teaching position at the prestigious Dwight-Englewood School in New Jersey. Stangel Plowe, a scholar and poet, cited the school's "hostile culture of conformity and fear" as the reason for her departure.
In a lengthy resignation letter, Stangel-Plowe accused the head of the private school of threatening to fire all of the white teachers at the school. She also took issue with the school's introduction of critical race theory and discussions about race and discrimination.
"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. They must locate themselves within the oppressor or oppressed group, or some intersectional middle where they must reckon with being part-oppressor and part-victim. This theory of power hierarchies is only one way of seeing the world, and yet it pervades D-E as the singular way of seeing the world," Stangel-Plowe wrote.
"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. This is the dominant and divisive ideology that is guiding our adolescent students."
Stangle-Plowe's resignation was co-signed by the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, a nonprofit group that works to combat critical race theory teachings.
“A lot of what’s going on here kind of perpetuates a lack of empowerment. Bullying tactics. That’s not a valid educational philosophy,” FAIR Advisory Board Member Erec Smith told NBC 4 New York.
Dwight-Englewood has not issued a statement regarding Stangle-Plowe's decision to walk away from the school.
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