The Shipley School: Swapping Out Woke Anti-Semitism for Middle School Gender Grooming
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Like the Latin School of Chicago and Francis Parker, scandals continue at another affiliated National Association of Independent Schools institution in the Philadelphia area
Following the dismissal of its Head of School and DEI Director for “woke” anti-Semitism, the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, has become mired in another controversy relating to its continued embrace of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programming and pedagogy.
Like its peer NAIS schools in Chicago, Latin, and Francis Parker, Shipley appears to be following a progressive self-destruct sequence that it can’t seem to abort despite community members becoming vocal about underlying challenges and wanting to turn the institution around.
And like Chicago’s Francis Parker school, which faced controversy when a dean, who is still employed, bragged about bringing butt plugs and lubricant into the classroom to an undercover James O’Keefe, Shipley, too, has sexualized its curriculum.
These two incidents follow the lead of the private school accreditation and training body, NAIS, which, across many of its member schools, has traded Kafka for kink in its curriculum. Now its previous advocacy for DEI, BLM, and social justice has been exposed for the racist, hateful and anti-Semitic fraud that it always was, elite schools have moved onto the next pedagogical fad: Centering sex and gender ideology in the classroom.
“Teaching outside the binary”
This time at Shipley, middle school science teacher Ace Schwartz, who also runs the organization and Instagram handle “Teaching Outside of the Binary,” has been “grooming children in the classroom” and sharing “them/there’s” techniques for enabling teachers to hide student sexuality from anyone but the teacher in question, according to enraged parents and alumni, who contacted the Chicago Contrarian following its previous coverage of the school.
In a worksheet that Schwartz distributes online and presumably uses in the classroom at Shipley, sixth grade students are simultaneously encouraged to both share their preferred pronouns (after the teacher shares their own on the same worksheet) and then, upon request via active prompting, ask the teacher to hide them from other teachers and parents. This potentially encourages a sexually exploitative relationship which biases the students to imagine they are not the gender they are.
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“May I use these pronouns when I contact caregivers (Yes/No).”
“May I use these pronouns with other teachers, including substitutes (yes/no)
“If you answered No to any of the above, what pronouns should I use instead.”
This exercise, which runs in secrecy away from parents, is particularly concerning in a context in which incarceration data suggests that the rate of sexual abuse (including cases involving minors) for transsexuals is as high as 600 times the rate for women and six times the rate of men, according to a 2023 study based on His Majesty’s Prison Service Data and ONS census data from the UK. U.S. data is not published.
In another social media post, Schwartz shows how “they” and an unnamed “colleague” have been successful at convincing students to promote LGBTQ advocacy in the classroom -- who were probably terrified to not support “them” for fear their teacher might kill themselves, based on previous social media threats, according to Shipley parents.
“My 6th grade students (organized by a team member) made posters and held them up … I looked at them closer, and almost every poster had a version of the transgender pride flag and LGBTQ+ pride flag. I felt so seen and loved by my student[s] … This is why I’m out and open. Kids notice, and it matters.”
In October, Schwartz's post suggested “Weekly Activities” for students to “connect LGBTQIA” history in the curriculum. Recommended advice includes having kindergarteners “learn about identities that make up the queer community and creating an identity flag to represent them at the end.”
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Third grade students are encouraged to have a “queer portrait exploration” project in which students will explore the queer portraits website and pick one person to create a fact sheet on.”
In an Instagram post celebrating “pronouns day”, Schwartz wants to make sure “cisgender folk” have:
- Educated yourself on the importance of respecting pronouns?
- Added pronouns to your email signature?
- Added pronouns to your social media bio?
- Advocated for a place for people to put their pronouns on forms at your workplace?
- Learned how to introduce yourself with your pronouns?
Get the TERFS!
In another recent social media post for the “Trans day of Remembrance”, Schwartz posted a meme that shows a picture of a woman with the caption: “me waiting for TERFS to define womanhood without relying on misogyny.” TERFS, in this case, refers to the phrase “Trans exclusionary radical feminists,” or feminist women who support women’s rights but who do not consider men who choose to identify as women, women.
Let me translate that for you: you must validate everyone’s right to identify as a woman, play women’s sports, use women’s bathrooms, etc., or otherwise, you are a hateful, horrible, racist, transphobic person who should suffer the violent wrath of the trans community.
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Skye Tooley, Schwarz's transgender education sidekick, has also noted on Instagram that “Transpobia and colonialism are tied."
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“You would have thought following rampant woke anti-Semitism that the school would have learned its lesson,” says one alum who is refusing to send his children there based on recent scandals.
Another alum notes that, “Consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want to. I pray for Ace Schwartz and his/her/them/whatever’s mental health. But it crosses a line when personal demons become the centerpiece of classroom education. For example, when children feel compelled to draw trans flags in science class for fear of disappointing their teacher. These students just want to learn science and want their teacher, who has previously expressed suicidal ideation online, something that all the students know about, to be OK. However, the teaching of this material is not consented to by parents or children – like the physical sexual abuse of a minor, those under 18 can never consent. This is coercion and potential abuse by someone who has no place teaching minors and creates risk and legal liability for all of those involved. ”
A third graduate of Shipley puts the situation in a different context: “Look at it this way. Would it be OK if an evangelical Christian teacher tried to convert children to their religion in the classroom at Shipley? Absolutely not. There would be an outcry. So why is it any different when another zealot attempts to do the same thing with their religion, in this case, a potentially highly dangerous one for children because it involves sexuality and potential sexual abuse of minors? Now, take this thought experiment further based on what happened at Shipley: imagine this teacher publicly talking about suicide in their own social media accounts, implying to a young mind that their teacher will kill themselves unless they accept this religion.”
“Perhaps by college, the smartest students are ready to understand how mentally abusive this situation is (at least the logical ones). Consider how Schwartz is aggressively evangelizing and converting sixth graders into a sexualized religion of the self -- which you can’t disagree with for fear of a failing grade, ostracization, or your teacher taking their own life.”
Parents are afraid to speak up
According to Contrarian sources, parents have expressed fear of taking a stand in public and fear reprisal for sharing their names in opposition to Schwartz's sexualization of middle school classrooms and their children, as well as social media accounts which encourage child exploitation by removing parents from any decision-making calculus, including hiding a prompted and encouraged gender identification by teachers in the classroom.
“We can pity Schwartz and teach our kids to be kind in situations like this, but Schwartz has no place putting a religious obsession with their own sex life and gender ideology at the center of a middle school science classroom,” says the alumni sitting on the fence about sending his kids to the school.
“I thought Shipley was supposed to be non-denominational,” he concludes.
J.D. Busch is a graduate of The Shipley School (class of 1993). Mr. Busch is also the author of the forthcoming book, "Who Killed the Preppy."
