Education has become diseducation. Just listen to Ryan Finlay, a student at the prestigious Horace Mann School in Riverdale, New York where there are truths and there are lies and there is nothing in between.
In a recent opinion column in the school’s newspaper, Ryan eloquently wrote about what it’s like to be a student at Horace Mann who dares to disagree in class.
https://record.horacemann.org/8016/opinion/fear-risk-and-the-state-of-political-expression-at-hm/
Ryan lays it out. HM, as the school is called, is rife with anti-right/anti-centrist attitude. Leftist certitude permeates the entire learning environment. If you don’t declare your fealty to the preachings of the progressives, if you don’t genuflect before the lords of wokeness, the kings of the cancel culture, the AOC aristocracy, Ryan says you are ridiculed and you are rebuked.
It’s very simple. Progressive rhymes with moral, no?. Yes, it really does rhyme you just can’t hear it because of your hidden bias.
There is no room for discussion, debate, or disagreement.
As Ryan says, “a fantasy is built for progressive members of the student body, making them believe that their most radical opinions are far closer to the mainstream than is actually the case.”
Ryan, you are so right, I mean correct! Sadly, Horace Mann is a reflection of what has taken place in this country. The so-called woke ideology is merciless. The certitude of its espousers leaves no room for dissent.
The hawkers of their own hubris have been glorified by the government, coddled by corporations and fully ingested by educational institutions. They’ve locked and loaded their lunacy and have inflicted countless casualties on people who have questioned, disagreed or were just doing their jobs.
Read the part in Ryan’s column about the equity vs equality cartoon. Then try to tell your children or your grandchildren that we live in a country where merit still matters, where achievement is still rewarded. As Ryan says, “How can anyone competently argue their position on a current political issue when the conversation assumes that one side has staked out an inherently immoral view?”
And who appointed these teachers to be our children’s critical influencers? Parents, speak up. You must take an active role in what your kids are being taught and how they’re being taught. Don’t send your kids to school and not know who is spending an entire day with them and what they’re saying.
Ryan talks of the self-censoring that is pervasive at HM. Students who want to disagree with the progressive ideology are too scared to speak up. Sadly, that fear is not isolated to Horace Mann. The fear of disagreeing, of expressing a respectful but differing opinion is real, on college campuses, and in corporate conferences.
Ryan is so perceptive when he writes, “many non-progressive students at HM are terrified by the ambiguity of an administration that preaches independent thought but permits and encourages attacks on it…Currently, students’ conclusion is: watch yourself and censor yourself; you are not protected.”
The lowest, loneliest feeling is when you know your principal, your supervisor, your CEO, doesn’t have your back. It paralyzes you. You are surrounded with a force field that inhibits your every action. And for students like Ryan, knowing that in your school it is speak at your own risk, that’s scary as hell.
The Horace Mann School has made its own students, the students they claim to cherish, fearful of the cancel culture. That is beyond horrible. It is inexcusable.
I was almost brought to tears reading the final paragraph of Ryan Finlay’s column. He pleads with the Horace Mann administrators; “Show us we are free to develop our own moral compasses. Only action can reassure us that it is okay to disagree at HM. Prove that we should be — and can be — confident, and the school will truly have safe spaces.”
OMG, that is a teenager talking, pleading for the ability to speak freely without retribution. What has happened to us? What has happened to the right to honestly and respectfully disagree, or sometimes be provocative?
Are we now living in Iran? Afghanistan? North Korea? Will we soon be sent to re-education camps where we will first need to say we’re sorry for being born and then learn the real way to think, the right way to think, the moral way to think?
“Show us we are free to develop our own moral compasses,” young Ryan pleads. I just can’t get those words out of my head because our nation has started racing down the road of developing a moral compass that only points in one direction, dictated by a minority that is driving us and our next generation to ruin.
3 thoughts on “Truth, Lies and Horace Mann”
Absolutely fantastic analysis that gets across the urgency of pushing back against the intolerant minority that seeks to control our children’s minds and mouths. How to do it?
It’s hard to get started alone. One suggestion is to start following Andrew Gutmann and Take Back Our Schools.
I read Ryan’s excellent column and was saddened and shocked at what is going on at Horace Mann. I salute him for his bravery. Wish others would speak up and stop this madness. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I didn’t know about this.
The HM and other educational dogmas, if left unchecked, are leading to what is described by the book review, “Daughters of the Fragrant Flower Garden,” by Zhuqing Li, in the June 18 Wall Street Journal. The Maoists brutally practiced an “assumption of class guilt through family privilege, …re-education,” along with some greedy corruption, humiliation, and hardships. Does this sound familiar? People need to act against the same alarming group think and culture in our country- I think about it all the time, particularly when the predominantly available cheaper Chinese goods are hiding an abusive government none of us would tolerate .