The United States Education System is on the verge of collapse. This collapse has been hastened by its obeisance to progressive policies and the confusing science around the Covid-19 pandemic. The latest stramash at the prestigious Dalton School is a perfect exemplar of this coming smash-up.

The Dalton School in New York City is number 25 on the list of the top private high schools in America. Notable alumni include Chevy Chase, Claire Danes, and Antony Blinken, the Biden nominee for Secretary of State.

This year, Dalton parents have had the pleasure of paying nearly $55,000.00 for online education, while most New York City private and public schools have had at least modified in-person learning because of Covid-19. To add insult to this costly injury, the school has now been served a manifesto by its own faculty. Among the low lights of the manifesto:

-Hiring 12 full-time diversity officers, and multiple psychologists to support students “coping with race-based traumatic stress.”

-Assigning a staffer dedicated to black students who have “complaints or face disciplinary action,” and a full-time advocate to help black kids “navigate a predominantly white institution.”

-Paying the student debt of black staffers upon hiring them.

-Requiring courses that focus on “Black liberation” and “challenges to white supremacy.”

-Compensating any student of color who appears in Dalton promotional material.

-Abolishing high-level academic courses by 2023 if the performance of black students is not on par with non-blacks.

-Requiring “anti-racism” statements from all staffers.

-Overhauling the entire curriculum, reading lists and student plays to reflect diversity and social justice themes.

-Divesting from companies that “criminalize or dehumanize” black people, including private prisons and tech firms that manufacture police equipment or weapons.

-Donating 50 percent of all fundraising dollars to NYC public schools if Dalton is not representative of the city in terms of gender, race, socioeconomic background, and immigration status by 2025.

In a year filled with stunning fascist and racist commentary, this still ranks pretty high. Can you imagine the cry about those “anti-racism” statements from those staffers, if they don’t meet the standards of the Racism Police? This sounds like the beginning of a purge or at least reeducation and reconciliation.

Dalton made its own bed, read the mission statement here, and now must deal with the consequences. If Dalton complied with even a portion of the demands in the manifesto, it would send sentient parents’ dollars running for the exit and bankrupt the school.

And, worse than that, if the Dalton School spent all of its time fulfilling even a few of the diktats from these teachers and staff members, when would the school have time to teach reading, writing and arithmetic, forget about science and civics?

The Dalton School is not alone. That is why we see the collapse of the government and private school systems in the United States.

The National Education Association touts Social Justice on its website:

Social justice is about distributing resources fairly and treating all students equitably so that they feel safe and secure—physically and psychologically. Sadly, a look at schools across the nation makes it clear that fair distribution of resources and equitable treatment don’t always happen. Students in poorly-funded schools don’t have the technology, new books, or art and music programs that create a well-rounded education, while students in affluent areas have the latest academic resources, school counselors, librarians, and more to help them succeed. Bringing social justice into schools shines a spotlight on all sorts of important societal issues—from the myriad reasons that lie beneath the deep disparity between the suspension rates of black and white students to how current U.S. immigration policy separates families and violates student rights.

Let’s add racial and social justice to climate justice and the system gets weighed down even further. And, speaking of racism, it is racist to reopen schools during the Covid pandemic:

Nataliya Braginsky is a high school teacher who has been working in public schools since 2007. Based in New Haven, Conn., she teaches African American and Latinx history, and facilitates workshops in anti-racist curriculum and pedagogy development.

Dismayed by plans to reopen schools amid the growing coronavirus pandemic, she has written the following post, a powerful piece that takes up the question of why black, indigenous and Latinx students would be prone to see more deaths from covid-19 in their schools than white students.

With concrete examples and data, she analyzes unequal funding, environmental racism, and toxic stress to which students of color are exposed, showing how the comorbidity is white supremacy.

Her argument adds new dimension to the national discussion over when and how to reopen schools that have been closed since the coronavirus pandemic began to spread in the United States this past spring.

Skip to the money paragraph:

School districts across the country have already begun refusing, from Los Angeles to Baltimore, from Richmond to Chicago — and as we near the fall, more refusals will come. The time is ripe for refusing more than just a return to school. Now is the time to refuse — a time to abolish — the racist education system that we have lived with for far too long.

Pile too much on and collapse the system.

People are screaming that children need to get back into schools. Indeed, depression, anxiety and suicide are becoming legion. But is the problem being in school or is it a lack of routine activities and the current social isolation. I am not a fan of public schools.John Stossel and Ben Shapiro talked about the some of the U.S. school problems:

I was one of the squirmy kids who couldn’t sit still. Plus, having someone stand in front of the class and yammer at me was not my learning style. Were the teachers evil or racist (white girl who spent much time in detention here) because they wanted us all to sit still, in our rows of supremely uncomfortable desks, and listen for 45 minutes without falling asleep? No, they were doing what they were told. It just doesn’t work for most kids.

The cries of racism from the Social Justice Warriors and the Coronavirus pandemic are contributing to the collapse of the education system by piling on. The system was unworkable to begin with so collapse was always inevitable.

Too bad, so sad for the Dalton parents.

Featured Image: Allison Shelley for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action/Flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)