The headmaster of England’s most expensive private day school is leaving her post after a revolt from parents who claim an “ultra-woke” curriculum lead to anti-Semitic incidents.
Robin Appleby, who has led the prestigious, $50,000-a-year American School in London since 2017, is allegedly exiting to “focus on her own wellbeing and that of her family,” but insiders tell the Daily Mail she is being booted from the star-studded school — and her $550,000-a-year position — because of her controversial curriculum.
Parents, who include Salma Hayek and soccer coach Thierry Henry, received notice of her abrupt departure last week.
Appleby’s staff allegedly used the words “Nazi,” “swastika” and “Hitler” to describe the reaction parents had to the school’s lessons on race, a claim the school denied, the Mail reported.
The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, an influential Jewish organization that documents hate crimes told the Mail: “We have been receiving disturbing reports about the American School in London. There are claims that terms like ‘Nazis’ were used at a staff meeting. Although the school denies this extreme language referred to Jewish parents, it apparently does not dispute that these terms did appear in their discussion, which allegedly also featured language suggesting that anti-Semitism and racism are different.”
Last year, Appleby announced a “detailed action plan” involving sweeping changes to the school’s “diversity, equality and inclusivity” curriculum. Parents were instructed via email on how to “raise anti-racist children” and “recognize their own implicit biases” — and were then told the school was adopting a critical race theory curriculum.
Gym classes were replaced with debates on “politics in sport” and CRT infiltrated all academic subjects, with reports circulating that teachers were accusing students of “white fragility” and of having inherited “white guilt.”
According to messages seen by the Mail on a parental WhatsApp group, students were told they were “either oppressors or oppressed,” depending on their ethnicity and the school then decided to “introduce racially segregated after-school clubs, in an initiative one parent branded ‘offensive and immoral’, arguing that it breached UK equalities law,” the Mail reported.
Some Jewish parents complained of a “culture of fear” in which their children had been ostracized by peers following lessons focusing on Israel, according to the Mail.
One parent accused the school of “institutional racism,” while another parent compared the school to a “woke cult,” adding in a letter of complaint that “every subject, from art to literature to history, is now being taught through a prism of race and gender, at times to very young children.”
Regarding the “woke” curriculum the rep said: “We are committed to building and sustaining a diverse, equitable and inclusive school community and firmly believe this will lead to a better future for all our children,” a school rep told the Mail in regard to the curriculum.