SACRIFICE Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive bright creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon’s dead body moved out towards the open sea.
Jordan Park. Jack Reid. Nate Bronstein. Jonah Anschell. Matthew Clemson. Kyle Miller. Claudio Mandia. Carl Worth.* Say their names. Today, Memorial Day, as we remember countless Americans who gave their lives for our country, and as we contemplate our complicity in allowing their deaths to protect the geopolitical industrial structure, we also remember children who are dead after taking their own lives. Look at their faces. We see our children. We see children who did not have the chance to build their foundations, who did not have the chance to grow their armor. We failed them. We allowed our schools to be overtaken by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS). But we do not allow it anymore. These children were marooned in the shadow of the SEL/DEI/ESG/CEI (“SEL”) monster without adults. If we do not want more of our children to die, we must be the grownups.
The conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.
Harvard-Westlake (CA), Episcopal School of Dallas (TX), Exeter (MA), Lawrenceville (NJ) (Brearley – NY alum), and Marlborough (CA) have all experienced student suicides since January 2023. Last year, students from Latin School of Chicago (IL), McDonogh (MD), Lawrenceville (NJ), Kincaid (TX), Aiglon College (Switzerland), EF Academy (NY), and Exeter (MA) took their lives. Before that, Choate (CT), Pace (GA), and Cushing Academy (MA). These are merely the ones we know from the past few years. There were others, grieved by their family, their friends, their community but unnamed, unpublicized. Some received an article in the school paper and a memorial. Most were swept under the rug merely used as justification to expand “wellness” with new departments of community, health and wellness, newly appointed wellness directors, new partnerships with psychiatric groups, increased SEL, and less emphasis on learning content. This new SEL infrastructure is building a foundation devoid of the principles of our quickly fading society where individuals were judged by the content of their character not by the color of their skin, where hierarchies based on merit and hard work provided indispensable societal rules, and where basic kindness and decency were the ultimate goals. Devastating suicide after tragic suicide, the agenda advances without question that the very SEL Industrial Complex claiming to improve and progress society is the very monster causing the ills and breakdown of society which compelled these innocent children to take their own lives.
