Slate: If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person

This is the real issue with private schools. The district that neighbors mine is one of the worst examples I have ever encountered. This used to be the best district in the county, but now the school board is dominated by parents who send their kids to private schools. What they have done to that district is a disgrace. Finding ways to divert funds to the private-school kids, wasting money while they cut teachers and programs and default on payments to a county-wide special needs program, with test scores falling into the toilet. It makes me sick to see what a few people are doing to rob these kids of the education they should be getting.

That said, there is NOTHING wrong with sending your kid to a private school. You do what is best for your child. It's that simple.

Maybe Benedikt really is trolling, or perhaps it is that crappy education shining through in that lousy piece of writing. There is so much wrong with her opinion piece, I don't know where to start. Maybe this idea that the private school is always better, which just isn't true.

 

I know that it's hard to get people to pay attention to school board elections, but I would think it should be really easy to run a campaign that beats a candidate who sends his/her kids to private school.

 

Exactly. Couldn't agree more.

 

Well that was a steaming pile of crap that wasted five minutes of my life.

 

Not only was it a waste of five minutes, you come out with a lower IQ for having read it.

 

It should be, but it has been tougher than you would think there. Tough to explain without digging into the politics and other crap in that district.

 

Writer is an example of a poor public school education. To suggest
that sending kids to public school is a moral decision is a ridiculous
notion.

 

I would suspect that a relatively small proportion of candidates actually have school-age children at the time of their candidacy.

 

Perfect.

 

Basically perfect. Except I think her real target is those who send their kids to private school and then actively try to undercut the public schools (so the equivalent would be someone who escapes N. Korea but then somehow, from the outside, actively gives aid to the Kim Jong Un regime).

But the writer is indeed trolling. Full disclosure -- I grew up in a neighboring state of hers and the writer was a camp and the writer was a friend of my younger sister's from summer camp. I don't remember her particularly well myself -- she's a few years younger than me -- but this is not the first trolling piece she's written (in fact my sister and a few others from their camp crowd were indirectly referenced but not named in one of her other trolling pieces). She's got issues and she clearly takes herself way too seriously.

 

May I posit an extreme hypothetical in the opposite direction? Say a rich billionaire spends extravagantly on his kids: fancy cars, multi-million dollar birthday parties, etc. Would we at some point say it is morally irresponsible to spend your money on that rather than donate money to starving children in Africa? If so, then we can discuss to what degree you might sacrifice* the interests of your children in the name of the public good.** If not, then obviously you will not agree with the author.

* Assuming it's even a sacrifice. The children of people that can afford/are thinking about sending their kids to private school will probably turn out fine either way. Moreover, they may, in fact, get a better education.
** Having more dedicated parents and bright kids in public school would likely raise the quality of schools for all.