South Carolina students at Lexington-Richland County School District Five’s Chapin High School are pushing back against advanced English language teacher Mary Wood, whose lessons, some say, amount to “indoctrination studies.”
According to the frustrated students, Wood’s lessons — which she has taught in previous years — are making them ashamed to be white.
In an op-ed for The Standard, school board trustee Elizabeth Barnhardt called the lessons, “unacceptable.”
“While in local and national headlines you may hear that ‘white supremacy’ is the biggest threat to our nation, it is my opinion that ANY and ALL forms of supremacy—no matter the race, ethnicity or creed—are unacceptable,” Barnhardt wrote. “I denounce and do not participate or encourage any form of political violence or hatred and I believe every single American should denounce those things as well.”
According to the trustee, Wood began her lesson with the nervous statement, “Hopefully, I don’t get fired for this.”
“Anyone who opens their remarks, including a teacher, with [those]… words already knows they are walking on shaky ground on whether what they are doing is right or not,” Barnhardt said, according to Fox News Digital.
The outlet reports:
One of Wood’s lessons included the book “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates which infamously called 9/11 heroes “menaces.”
Coates wrote about 9/11 responders, “They were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could — with no justification — shatter my body.”
In the same book, he referred to “White America” as a “syndicate” designed to “dominate and control our bodies.”
To prepare the students for the Coates book, Wood allegedly showed her students two videos, one of which is titled, “Structural Discrimination: The Unequal Opportunity Race,” described by Fox as “a metaphor of critical race theory concepts expressed using a track competition of White people racing against Black people.”
One look and it is understandable how the video could make some of the students feel “uncomfortable.”
While black runners are held back at the starting line, falling into holes dug on the track, forced to jump over a pool of shark-invested water, run into barriers that drop from the sky, and are accused of using drugs, the white runners gleefully toss each other batons emblazoned with the dollar sign as they effortlessly cross the finish line holding a Yale University water bottle.
(Video: YouTube)
“The teaching and videos are part of what is also known as DEI, discrimination, exclusion, and indoctrination studies,” Barnhardt said, according to Fox News Digital. “This includes another tenet called ‘identity politics’ which makes one’s identity the focal point of any perceived or imagined discrimination, ie, race, sex (what many wrongly call gender today), sexual preferences, social status, etc.”
Wood defended her lessons on Sunday’s episode of MSNBC’s “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”
She claimed she no longer felt “safe” to allow her students to debate the issues.
“There was a censorship of the material,” she said, “but there was also a censorship of instruction and proper engagement in classrooms.”
South Carolina high school teacher Mary Wood responds to having lessons on racism shut down by administrators after student complaints: “There was a censorship of the material, but there was also a censorship of proper engagement in classrooms.” pic.twitter.com/bdamgeXILZ
— The Mehdi Hasan Show (@MehdiHasanShow) June 19, 2023
But according to one student, Wood believes the material she presented.
“This past week, my teacher presented two videos titled ‘The Unequal Opportunity Race’ and ‘Systemic Racism Explained,'” the student said, according to Fox News Digital. “Prior to showing these video clips, Mrs. Wood spent 20 minutes expressing her personal opinion, telling us she felt these videos to be true. Hearing her opinion and watching these videos made me feel uncomfortable. I actually felt ashamed to be Caucasian.”
(Video: YouTube)
“I am a biracial woman and my children are biracial, so to insinuate that my opposition to this lesson is based in ‘racism’ is ludicrous,” Barnhardt wrote in The Standard. “I am a Christian, first and foremost. I’m an American, and the color of my skin or anyone else’s is irrelevant. I believe that parents are the primary stakeholders in their children’s education, their lives, and their future. I ran for the school board on these principles and I am grateful that my constituents elected me to represent them.”
“Nuggets of truth are being sprinkled onto a mentality that is not based in reality. To attempt to promote this as the prevailing narrative, and to shun or discredit anyone who disagrees with it is unacceptable,” she stated. “Our nation’s children should not be made to feel the division that is prevalent in our society today.”
“The education system was put in place to teach our children things like reading, writing, math and the sciences,” Barnhardt wrote. “While there is an obligation to prepare our students for the world that waits for them upon graduation, our school districts should be using all their time, finances and efforts to EDUCATE our children, not indoctrinate them.”
Meanwhile, the school district has declined to comment on the matter.
“Daily operations of School District Five of Lexington and Richland Counties are governed by School Board Policies,” the district said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “These policies state that matters concerning academic freedom are to be handled between teachers and administration. As a result, School District Five has no further public comment.”
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Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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