Much has already been made of Allison Benedikt’s insipid article at Slate titled, “If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person. A manifesto.” The one point I want to make is that her entire thesis is constructed on the premise that having every child in Public School will eventually cause the Public Schools to become better quality education… in 3 or 4 generations.
Personally, having been through the Public School system, I believe there are plenty of kids in the system and adding more will just add more. Regardless, she and I agree that the CURRENT public school education is miserable and inadequate. Where we diverge is in what to do. She says send all kids to PS. I say in order to get to a better future we need better educated kids NOW, and that better education is to be had in private school. Not. Rocket. Science.
The problem is that if we have well educated children growing up into capable adults, they won’t believe, and in fact will call out historical untruths like what the Los Angeles Times served up today with an article on the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights March that included the zinger:
“Former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush could not attend for health reasons, their spokesmen said. The elder Bush, who at 89 uses a wheelchair, rarely attends public events. His son, the 43rd president, is still recovering from a recent heart procedure, his spokesman said.
The absence of even a gesture of bipartisanship was a reminder of the enduring political legacy of the civil rights battles. Since Democrats led the passage of civil rights legislation that marchers pushed for in 1963, Republicans have struggled to recover with black voters, leaving a stark racial divide in American politics.”
Emphasis mine. We’ll skip right past the backhanded assault on the Bush’s ability to appear bipartisan and right to the lie: Democrats led the passage of civil rights legislation that marchers pushed for in 1963. That is simply not true. Republicans outnumbered Democrats in their support of the Civil Rights Act. And in fact, when the bill hit the floor of the legislature, a bloc of Southern Senators, 18 Democrats and 1 Republican, launched a filibuster that lasted 54 days, saying, “We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our states.” Strom Thurmond, the most vocal detractor said, “This so-called Civil Rights Proposals, which the President has sent to Capitol Hill for enactment into law, are unconstitutional, unnecessary, unwise and extend beyond the realm of reason. This is the worst civil-rights package ever presented to the Congress and is reminiscent of the Reconstruction proposals and actions of the radical Republican Congress.”
Yep. Thoughtful, common-sense Democrats pointing fingers at those radical Republicans again. Some things never change, eh?
But back to my point. The LA Times either lied deliberately or they actually don’t know history, or both. Considering that Allison Benedikt’s world view matches the Times almost perfectly, do think the actual point of Allison’s piece is better educated kids? Do you think that is what she and the Times want? Oh hell no. What they want is the control in a world populated with 3 or 4 generations of kids taught by biased, activist, unionized public school teachers who grow our kids into pliable, unquestioning adults, also known as Democrat voters.