Editor,
I guess I am sort of lost after reading “We want to be that voice” in Current in Carmel on Feb. 22. At what point did any Carmel parents say they were against inclusivity or the teaching of inclusivity at our schools? What I have heard said, over and over again, is that we don’t want very specific aspects of CRT/DEI taught that go beyond showing our children how to get along with people who may be different than them. The problem has been that we don’t get to see a clear DEI curriculum that assures us this is the case. That is what parents are against.
That is a very simple message. It does not require any specially educated diversity specialists who may or may not be teaching our children that they are inherently racist simply because of their skin color. And we don’t want anyone teaching our children they do or don’t have inherent privileges because of their skin color, either. All people have advantages and disadvantages for a whole multitude of reasons and should be respected simply for being human beings.
My first son graduated from Carmel before all the debate about CRT and DEI. He was close friends with a Black classmate at school. He could clearly see that his friend was not the same color, but that never mattered to him in the least. He will tell you he never even thought about it, and they considered each other brothers from another mother. Now, thanks to all this diversity and inclusion wrapped up in CRT and other junk science, he is very aware of how his whiteness is considered a bad thing by many people. Of course, the advocates of CRT will tell you that my son is a perfect example of the problem because he didn’t even know he was a privileged racist.
I will tell you that it is not up to the school system to teach our children morals, and that is exactly what the DEI crowd wants to do. Some of the “diversity” being taught is clearly immoral, in my opinion. Many people will not agree with me as to what I believe is moral or not, and that is the point. They have every right to disagree with me. No group of people will agree 100 percent on just about anything, and morals are especially tough to agree on, given history, culture and religion.
The school has the reasonable expectation that my kids will respect and work with other kids in school no matter how they feel about them personally, but that is as far as it goes. What my kids believe in terms of morals are my business until they move out of my house. Beyond being generally kind and capable of working with the other kids in school is all you get to expect and all that you should be teaching and enforcing.
Stick to preparing my kids in math, science, technology, languages, arts, etc., and I’ll stick to teaching my kids the morals I want them to have — that is none of your business.
Matt Rowe, Carmel
