A woke educator at elite Brooklyn Technical HS is “brainwashing” kids by swapping lessons on Steinbeck and Hemingway for tomes on gender fluidity and anti-Israel propaganda, outraged parents told The Post.
The parental complaints about 10th-grade English Language Arts teacher David Whitman comes as antisemitism concerns heat up at the Fort Greene school for gifted students. Just last week a swastika was found etched into the chalkboard of a Brooklyn Tech classroom, a school source told The Post.
Unable to remove the hateful carving, staffers concealed it with a bunny sticker.
“With course curriculum that is biased against the Jewish community, it’s no surprise that a swastika would show up at the school,” United Jewish Teachers President Moshe Spern told The Post.
Whitman’s curriculum reads like a woke indoctrination manual with required tomes such as “Funny Boy” — the story of a feminine Sri Lankan boy “trying to engage his truest self” — and a worksheet entitled “The Splendor of Gender Fluidity in Africa.”
“Colonialism has played a major role in exporting homophobia, transphobia and more across the African continent and its diaspora,” the text scolds.
The one classic on the reading list is Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” but even that is studied with a woke approach.
“The play is interpreted through a post-colonial lens due to its themes of indigenous subjugation, specifically the enslavement of the island’s native inhabitant Caliban,” Whitman’s syllabus declares.
Another assigned reading was a 2023 New York Times column called “The Eight Genders of the Talmud,” which argues that the ancient Jewish commentary on the Torah promotes transgenderism.
“Perhaps unknown to many who practice Judaism today, our most sacred texts reflect a multiplicity of gender,” Rabbi Elliot Kukla wrote in the op-ed, which Orthodox Jewish scholars strongly refuted.
Both parents and students were aghast by the lefty lesson plans, which they said defies President Trump’s 2025 executive order banning federal funds from supporting the teaching of “gender ideology.” NYC schools get about $2 billion in federal money annually, according to the DOE.
“Education becomes indoctrination when a teacher replaces facts with ideology and pushes personal bias disguised as learning. He doesn’t have permission to brainwash my child,” one parent told the Post.
Added former Brooklyn Tech parent and Citywide Council on High Schools member Linda Quarles: “[Whitman] clearly has an ideology they’re trying to push on the kids. The kids do not like it, they do not want it.”
And students at the Tech — one of only nine specialized NYC high schools for gifted students — agreed.
“It’s extremely boring, tedious and redundant,” on student told The Post.
Part of the course’s lessons on colonialism include movies and books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, all from the Palestinian perspective, with zero pro-Israeli works offered on the syllabus, parents said.
Students must watch the film “No Other Land,” an Oscar-winning documentary about the Israeli Defense Forces clearing out homes in the Palestinian Masafer Yatta settlements in order to build a new military training ground.
Jewish parents worry the one-sided narrative will radicalize students against Israel and Jews and could put a target on their kids’ backs.
Parents have raised the issue to the school’s principal and vice principal, but they say their concerns have been dismissed.
“As public educators, we are sensitive to the fact that there are many different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences in our classes, and we are all aware that we as educators cannot share our personal political stances with our students,” Brooklyn Tech Assistant Principal Jess Rhoades Bonilla wrote in an October email to parents.
After The Post reached out for comment, Bonilla told parents this week the movie would “most likely not be screened,” a source said.
“While we have not heard of any complaints at this school regarding content around gender, the principal of this school has worked hand in hand with concerned parents to address issues they have raised in other instances,” a Department of Education spokesperson told The Post.
“That’s bulls–t. We had a meeting with the principal and the principal didn’t participate at all. He said he didn’t even know the topic for the meeting . . . I definitely don’t think they care about our concerns,” a parent told The Post.
Whitman and Bonilla did not respond to requests for comment by The Post.
