Tuesday, August 19, 2008

The Abandoning of Public Schools

Tim had a great blog post about this yesterday. Then today he sent me an awesome interview from Salon about a woman who has made this a crusade. Check it out.

I LOVE this quote of hers: "It's also a shift in terms of conversation. I think for good liberal Democrats of my ilk, for people to sit around and say, "Public education, no one can go there" -- I don't think that's a fight that should be allowed to be abandoned in conversation anymore. It's a bit like if you said, "Yeah, I toss my recycling right into the landfill. I don't even bother to separate my recyclables. What's the point? We're all going to hell, anyway." That wouldn't pass in nice company. I think we need to start changing the conversation so it's not just a given that we're going to send our kids to private school and that that's better. "

Amen sister! As Democrats part of our party platform is to make the world better for everyone, not just rich white people. But yet, most of the supposedly "liberal" people I know see absolutely nothing wrong with sending their child to private school. It's a disgrace. And yeah, I said it, I believe in sacrificing for the greater good, go ahead, call me a damn dirty hippie in this every man for himself world.

2 comments:

Kate said...

That was an interesting article. I still am more interested in parents whose students have been in school a little longer. And yes, parental involvement is KEY. You should see the number of parents crawling all over my school. And they're not all fancy schmancy parents. They're just involved.

I still don't see that she's sending her kids to some inner-city hell-hole. But I suppose that's her point--the schools are not necessarily as scary as many liberal parents automatically think. But what about the lower-SES parents? What about when most of the parents are working 2-3 jobs and can't be involved? A few parents can't so it all.

I'm not meaning to be completely argumentative today. I'm just discouraged. I have kids from my old school at my new school. I know they're not supposed to be there, but they're getting so much they couldn't get at the old place so I am keeping my mouth SHUT. I don't want to snatch away their dream and send them back to the ghetto.

M1EK said...

Even the inner-city schools aren't as bad as people say. That's just a load of crap - people shouldn't buy into the right-wing talking points about public schools.