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Why One Woman Says Sending Your Kid To Private School Is Evil
theodp writes "Slate's Allison Benedikt is ruffling some feathers with her recent manifesto, If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person. 'Not bad like murderer bad,' Benedikt writes, 'but bad like ruining-one-of-our-nation's-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what's-best-for-your-kid bad. So, pretty bad.' If your local school stinks and you send your child there, Benedikt explains, 'I bet you are going to do everything within your power to make it better.'"
Thanks for telling me up front that you don't know what you're talking about so I got to save time by not reading the rest.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
where most schools are private, and the public ones are more prestigious than the private ones.
I really hate people that tell me I'm a bad person because I do what I think is best for my kids. They still get my taxes to pay for public education so why the hell should I be a bad person for sending my kids to a better school?
She's just another damned collectivist who thinks that they should have the right to control another aspect of my life.
That's a terrible assumption. First of all, private organizations use money unwisely all the time. It's just that no one makes a big deal about it because "well, it's their own money, they can waste it if they want." They aren't actually any better than public organizations.
Secondly, most schools don't actually waste money. The schools you see spending shitloads of money on fancy laptops for students or things like that are almost always in rich neighborhoods which are swimming in money. They've covered all their necessary expenses (i.e. enough desks for everyone, plenty of textbooks, etc.) but they have money left over, so they spend it on luxuries. Nothing wrong with that. When a school does this and isn't in a wealthy neighborhood, you'll find that the expenses were covered by a private donation. In this case, someone donates money to the school and states that the money may ONLY be used to purchase fancy equipment. The school couldn't use the money on textbooks or school renovations even if they wanted to.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Sadly (and really only generally speaking - there are exceptions), private schools' quality is driven by market forces whereas public school policies are driven by politics. School officials obtain and maintain decision making positions and power by there connections. There is little to nothing even a group of parents can do to address this. When they do, it gets taken away.
For example, in my city, parents organize "booster clubs" to raise money for their local schools and improve the quality. But parents in poorer sections of the city are often genuinely unable to do this. For example, they have a disproportionate number of families with a single parent who barely makes ends meet and works too many hours to have time to invest in a booster club. Since this is unfair, the school system is working to take money from the booster clubs to distribute to the poorer areas. So, the parents have the incentive removed and, disheartened, give up. The school system has decided, essentially, "If those schools are going to fail, it's only fair that all schools fail."
The parents can't do anything to fix their public school, so the ones who can afford it take their kids out and put them in private schools. Ms. Benedikt is correct that there are Bad Persons at play. She is dead wrong about who those Bad Persons are.
I had to go to a private school to get (neo) Marxist indoctrination. It was pretty great ;-) (for one year. Between dropping out of college - I was 13, and got into a fight with my program administration - and going back for lack of other reasonable options.)
Public school... well, one of the lines that annoyed me the most is about how your gifted child will be fine. For some kids, yes. Or maybe your district has a decent gifted program. But for many children gifted education is a type of special needs education, and keeping them in a standard setting is not only cruel, it's likely to turn them into angry disaffected hackers who get lousy grades and blow things up for kicks.*
Er, not that I'd know from first hand experience or anything.
Gods, when people say that your teens are the best years of your life...
* Oh, wait, technically that was the gifted program, right before they decided I needed to try college.
You can vote for a new school board. Volunteer to help their election campaign. Or run for election yourself. You actually have MORE voice there than with a private school, where losing 1 customer is quite frankly not a big deal.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
The school we’re zoned to is not just tough, it’s dangerous- Most teachers don’t try to teach; if they prevent major crimes from occurring, they've had a good day. The stories that come out of that place are gut-wrenching; the kids there aren't being prepared for squat. I've busted my ass and sacrificed a lot to send my son to a private school as a result.
What little good that could come of us participating in the local public school would pale in comparison to the harm it has the potential of doing to my son- not only to his well being day-to-day, but to his chances of success afterwards as well. I'm not sacrificing my son's future on account of Allison's idealist prattle. From what I've seen, not many of the our local public school system's participants: teachers, parents (especially the parents), or the students give a rat's ass about making their school system any better.
I attended a very tough school while growing up, and learned more about avoiding having my ass kicked than anything else that I needed for college- as a result, it took two tries and 6 years to finish my first degree- my first two years were spent learning what I should have learned in high school.
Allison Benedikt has her opinion of me, and I have my opinion of her. My son is my responsibility until he's grown; if his young life is made difficult by starting out with a rotten education, I can't see Allison getting very worked up about it... I mean, it's no skin off of her ass, is it. Allison can go fuck herself.
I say that sending your child to public school is akin to child abuse.
Not supporting Public Schools is Child Abuse on a Mass scale.
The worst thing that has happened to Public Schools in America is they have become a political weapon used by one party against another. Rather than improve the schools, we keep getting assholes who call themselves Education Candidates -- in a way, they are up front, they're going to teach you how not to run your schools.
While public school systems in many countries are great successes, the American public school has become a target of derision, blame and shame. Not quite lofty goals, not what they could be.
I do believe teachers should be held to account, but so should parents. I had good parents and I attended excellent public schools, which received the full support of the community. It should be that good everywhere, then private schools would be the joke.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Your primary duty is to your child. I promise you, responsible parents agonize about the best options for their children. Sometimes private, sometimes public.
We started private and then left. The early years at private were probably worthwhile. I tell myself that. They were expensive.
But we've been delighted with the quality of our public schools. They operate from one third the budget of the private school (per pupil). The buildings and landscaping are dramatically tougher, but we're happy with the change. The teachers have been high quality, highly dedicated to the job and responsive to us. My kids are engaged and enjoy their schools.
You have essentially no control over the private school or the public school. In both cases, you will monitor your kids' work, talk regularly to their teachers, meet their friends and their friends' parents. Your recourse in both cases is to find a different school.
No one should demonize a parent for trying to do the best they can for their child. Your first duty is to your child. Social welfare and activism should come after family.
I dont coment often but i had to do it this time.
Isnt it a tragedy if our public education system is not good enough to make sure your kids get a education that is good enough for them to actually pursue their goal. I mean most families doesnt have the luxury to pay alot of extra money for their kids to go to private schools.
I think its a serious problem for the future when important personalities like Matt Damon, Bill Gates, and the american president says that public shools wont give their own offspring the skillssets needed to progress in the american society. This means essentially that for +80% of the population the "american dream" is stone dead. All the big paid jobs/popular jobs will be reserved to the rich minority who are lucky enough to be born into a rich family, that can afford private schools for their children. The rest of the population will be left in the dust, fighting for the scraps.
I really dont see how a country can keep up the stability and prosperity with that policy and mindset from the people we see at the top of our society today.
Yes, those who doubt massive, growing, and all-encompassing government, and don't wish to be pwned by it, are morally suspect.
Dictators throughout history could not be more pleased useful idiots are trying to build this meme.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Indeed concrete individuals should take priority. I think she's approaching from a kind of categorical imperative. Hence her statement, "Whatever you think your children need—deserve—from their school experience, assume that the parents at the nearby public housing complex want the same. No, don’t just assume it. Do something about it." Or, again, her rather annoying, "ruining-one-of-our-nation's-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what's-best-for-your-kid bad." In other words, she would prioritize the needs of the "nation" over those of your "spawn" [her word, not mine]. After all, wouldn't it be wrong to put your own children before the common good? Isn't it selfish to secure for your own what humanity is often denied?
This kind of thinking always puts me in mind of a passage from the Brother Karamazov. In the passage a woman declare to Elder Zosima her great love for all of humanity, but her apparent inability to actively love an individual. Zosima replies:
Loving and caring for abstractions like humanity or the nation is comparatively easy. Humanity, nations, or the people are objects which can be loved without fear. They will never leave or reject you. They can be readily idealized, so one never doubts the worthiness of loving them. And since they're abstracts, one needn't have to worry about them remembering those times you didn't particularly feel like caring for them. It's also very rewarding. In some cases, all we need to do is vote the way we think best, and then we can hold our heads up high, even regarding neighbors in scorn who have failed to see our good sense.
Loving and caring for concrete individuals is quite hard. They are sometimes ungrateful--in the case of infants and teenagers, it can seem almost constantly so. They have bodily needs which require unpleasant cleaning. They have wills of their own and cannot be idealized. They can remember your bad days. They can suffer and you may feel responsible, even when you're not. They can break your heart. They die.
This, I think, is at the heart of the preference many have, particularly among the educated and white collar, for giving priority to abstracts. A person such as Benedikt can hold you in contempt, for she prioritizes the higher ideal of the national good, while you privilege your "spawn" by giving them the
TL;DR: If we play Prisoner's Dilemma, I'm defecting.
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As always, the problem is that people don't agree on what "success" means. I think that impersonal testing with static measures of success is best. Other people think that you need to factor in how this particular child got to this point.
The problem with Teaching To The Test is you aren't preparing these students for anything, but taking tests.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I hear the frustration, and I identify with it. I'm glad you have solved the problem for your daughter. In spite of the Slate article, I don't think you are evil for sending your child to private school. If I had no options for a good public school, I'd probably look at alternatives too.
The problem though isn't completely personal. It's social, which I think was the essence behind the provocative title of the article. It's a social problem because not all of our children have parents like you or me who are willing to look for those alternatives.
It's in our social interest to educate as large a swath of the population as possible. As tragic as it is to say, the vast majority of parents aren't interested in finding the solution. They often send talented boys and girls to school after telling them that school is a waste of time, or more often never mentioning school.
Public school is vitally important because those kids deserve a chance too, and right now, I'll admit, we aren't giving them the best education we can offer. I can tell you that the teachers and administrators are, for the most part, going into work every day wondering how we can make school more meaningful for our students. We lose sleep over the disinterested students, specifically the talented ones. We try to make it interesting and engaging, but we are blowing against a very strong cultural wind that does not originate in the school. It is the collective force of an indulging society. That's the fight we need to fight. That's the change we need to see.
While I realize you are frustrated and have found a great alternative for your child, public school is still an important issue, and I'm saddened to see your energy sidelined because you found a solution for your child. There are other kids out there without parents as caring as you seem to be.
An important change for education.
I know this is a casual forum, and we're mostly making light of this article, however there is a valid reason that schools have adopted this idea.
The idea is that you're rewarding the child for putting in effort, which has been shown to produce better results for complex cognitive tasks. In fact, there's been a fair few articles which have been either directly related or tangentially related to this, linked on Slashdot.
In addition to this, the student which is rewarded for their innate ability or luck, does not necessarily learn to continue to put in enough effort. This is particularly prevalent later on in life, when study for almost everyone becomes quite a lot harder, and persistence pays off.
Lastly, there is more of an appreciation for the random/luck component of the outcome, which probably makes up more than 99% of the probability of a successful outcome. I was a huge nerd at university, I put in a lot of time and effort, and I'm blessed with a reasonable innate ability to learn easily, and got grades that were quite good. However, I like almost all of the other nerds I knew, had a lot of courses that I did not achieve good grades for, when my competency in that course was amazing. Similarly I had some courses that I did achieve amazing grades for, when my competency in those courses was far below that suggested by the grade.
As always, a caveat, the topic of motivation and what drives people, is hotly debated and researched. Most of the research hasn't been that great into this, but some of it has, and those ones suggest that on average, this is a better method for raising our children.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I went to one of those middle class highschools. While we don't have gunfights in the hallways, I'd say there's plenty of anti-intellectualism (the real deal, not the leftwing slur), dogmatic policy, and athleticentrism while I was there.
1. sports programs need to be separated from academia. move them to camps, state or privately funded. They don't belong in school. This really needs to happen at the university level too. athletics is some kind of cult in public schools in the USA. If you don't play some kind of sport, you're branded a 'loser' by the students AND the staff. While I don't mind them, and I do realize they can teach life lessons when they aren't neutered by political correctness, they compete for academic funding and relative importance within the school culture. that has to stop. same thing goes for other extra-curriculars.
2. The school budget should focus solely on math, science, the english language (in the USA), history (not 'social studies'), and a life-skills program (minus the political correctness in current health classes). This program would cover things like: eating habits, sexual behavior, phys ed, and at least a basic program on managing money. If the kid plays sports in after-school camp, then he's exempt from phys ed.
3. remove the tenure and bureaucracy that rewards non performers. Also, get rid of the crazy overreacting discipline policies. Stop expelling kids for bringing a fork to school to eat lunch, etc. If a kid's trouble, warn, then throw him out for the period. If it happens repeatedly, call the parents. No need to confiscate belongings, search lockers, or tell them what they can wear. If the policy gets in the way of doing these things, change the policy.
4. kids don't need ipads or other stupid toys.. They need teachers, decent textbooks, and buildings that aren't 90F in the summer and 40 in the winter. Bonus if they don't smell like urine. For technology access, a few computer labs are sufficient.
I don't think a massive shift toward socialism would help much actually. It's not just the parents' wealth (or lack thereof) that's the problem, it's their culture and attitude towards education. Poor people generally don't believe that much in it; my mother was always told by her family that education is a waste of time and that a woman needs to get married at 16 and start having babies. Forcibly redistributing wealth to people like that isn't going to change their attitudes towards education. These things can be changed through well-funded education systems that seek to overcome parents' bad attitudes, but it takes generations, and the US has been going backwards for a long time.
So many people use the old "liberal" and "conserative" labels wantonly, when they don't really correctly identify a modern division.
Statist is a word that does correctly distinguish the major division of our times. Are you primary for, or against the state supporting each and every person, to the extent that some (or all) choices are removed at the directive of the state?
The people falling on one side or the other are both Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives.
So instead of stopping reading, you should read more carefully when you encounter the term as it's someone who realizes there is more depth to the matter than the classic labels that would otherwise be shallowly applied.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I agree, it should be, but since the skills aren't being taught at home, what else could be done? My goal was to remove the political bias from the system yet still retain the pragmatic parts. Finance, health/diet/sex, cooking, job search, etc are all needed basic life skills. If they can't be taught at home because the parents never really learned or haven't bothered, then this might be the best way to minimize that state babysitter nightmare in subsequent generations. It sounds a bit backward, but kids that can do these things are less likely to become permanent welfare recipients when they grow up.
I'm sorry, I can't agree with most of that reply. What I'm referring to is awards for "participation", which has nothing to do with effort. We have created a system that actually builds a false sense of worth in students. People that have ability above the norm are termed "gifted" and punished for fucking up the curve. Isolated, uncool geeks and nerds are going to do poorly if they do not have challenges that would humiliate their contemporary classmates. With the exception of sports (where it is OK to abuse the less gifted) everyone else must be equal... until they hit the market place at 18. Thus the only option the (often themselves gifted) parents have is to get their kid the hell out of a school or district that will not work in the best interests of the student. Making everyone feel good only benefits low grade teachers and administrators. Looking at results via cost per student tells us we are not going about education in the correct manner
http://rossieronline.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/
and there is no way for any parent to change that by demanding change at the school level... THEY have to do what is best for their kid, and maybe that kid can grow to occupy a place where accountability will roll down hill and change the system... but given the way things work in the upper levels, I don't hold much hope for that happening.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
And if everyone lives by that principle, no one will have a good life.
That is the problem here. Exceptional egocentrism destroys things. If in grandparent's case everyone was sending their children to public school, it wouldn't be anywhere near as dangerous, as there would be a lot of "good" students. These would quickly balance out the bad ones, improving the situation.
Taking out the good students, and leaving the bad ones among themselves is what causes schools to become bad. Many egocentric people use "it's not my responsibility" excuse to wash their conscience clean, and you end up with system that cannot properly function, starts to become massively inefficient and many people who could have had a good life among the "bad" students if they had a decent environment in school lose out because they don't get.
That's the reality of it. You can wash your hands off it, but it certainly doesn't make you a good person. And fact is, when there are too few good people in the world, it goes bad for EVERYONE.