This first ran on Splice Today.
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I send my son to a private Waldorf school. This makes me one of the bad parents Allison Benedikt singled out in a controversial post at Slate recently, in which she excoriated (and/or trolled, as Mary McCarthy said) parents of private school kids. According to Benedikt, “[I]f every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve.” Therefore, folks like me are morally evil for sending our kids to a private school and beggaring our neighbors. Benedikt thinks that my kid would probably get a worse education at a public school. However, she tells me:
You want the best for your child, but your child doesn’t need it. If you can afford private school (even if affording means scrimping and saving, or taking out loans), chances are that your spawn will be perfectly fine at a crappy public school. She will have support at home (that’s you!) and all the advantages that go along with being a person whose family can pay for and cares about superior education—the exact kind of family that can help your crappy public school become less crappy. She may not learn as much or be as challenged, but take a deep breath and live with that.
The worst that will happen to my child, Benedikt insists, is that he won’t know poetry or the dates of the Civil War. He’ll just have fun drinking before football games rather than having fun learning about komodo dragons or drawing.
And maybe all of that’s true. Maybe I’m hurting the public schools by not sending my son there, and maybe it’s all for nothing, since he’d be just as happy filling in test bubbles as he is knitting. But I couldn’t help thinking of Benedikt’s proscriptions when I read Emily Yoffe’s most recent advice column. Yoffe’s interlocutor is a member of a religious minority living in the Deep South. The community, and therefore the public school, is deeply Christian, and the separation of Church and State appears to be honored entirely in the breach. There are school-sponsored Bible studies; the choir concert includes little but Christmas songs. And — the one that really matters — the woman’s middle-school aged daughter is frequently told by peers that she is going to hell.
Yoffe’s response was long on sympathy and short on actual practical advice.
Being in middle school is for many kids a kind of torture at best, and being told you’re going to hell must only add to the fun. But unless your daughter finds her treatment intolerable, you have to help give her some tools to deal with this: “Thanks for thinking about my soul. But my family is happy to be Jewish/Muslim/Hindu.
Which rather begs the question — what if her daughter does in fact find the treatment intolerable? What do you do then?
Benedikt would probably say that the mother should confront the school, and insist that they stop with the Bible studies and that they prevent the harassment. This is, in fact, Benedikt’s central argument; active parents, she feels, need to direct their energy, not towards building up some happy Waldorf community, but rather towards improving their local public schools. They should be, as Kim Brooks wrote at Salon, “super-parents who, through tireless volunteering and organizing and advocacy, turned our neighborhood school around.” By this reasoning, the questioner here needs to march up to the overly evangelical administration and start doing some transforming.
Brooks, who sends her kids to private school, admitted, with much guilt, that super-parenting wasn’t something she could face. For her part, Yost is savvy enough to realize that, for the non-Christian mother, super-parenting could make matters worse, not better. “[B]ringing a complaint,” she acknowledges, “might not do much except make school more unpleasant for your kids.” And, indeed, schools are often quite bad at dealing with bullying, especially when the bullying is directed at folks who are seen as outsiders by the adults as well as the children. Among the kids profiled in the film “Bully,” for example, is one girl named Kelby, who is a lesbian. For a while she stays in school because she wants to try to change people’s attitudes towards gay people. Eventually, though, her parents, who are afraid for her safety and her mental health, pull her out. By Benedikt’s reasoning, that makes them bad people. After all, if your kid isn’t in public school, you’re part of the problem.
I’m sure Benedikt does not intend to morally condemn the parents of bullied queer youth for trying to prevent their children from killing themselves. And, of course, the young girl whose peers keep telling her she’s going to hell may well not be in as dangerous a situation as Kelby. And my son almost certainly wouldn’t be in as bad a situation as either if he went to our local public school here in Chicago.
Still, the point is that if you place your moral duty to society over your moral duty to the person in front of you, you can end up with some fairly monstrous conclusions. Benedikt had an okay time in public school. So did I, despite some unpleasant brushes with bullying. For that matter, I have friends who did better in public school than in private. But still, some kids who go to public school don’t have okay experiences. And if that kid is your kid, are you really supposed to tell them that they need to stay in school for the good of the school system as a whole? Do they just have to take it until it becomes “intolerable” — at which point we can give them no advice and no options?
It’s true, and tragic, that many people don’t have options. But in some cases, at least, the problem is as much a lack of knowledge as a lack of funds. I wish Yoffe had told that family that there are a lot of affordable distance-learning options these days. They might not have wanted to pull their daughter out of school, and she might not have wanted to go. But just knowing that there’s an escape hatch if things do become impossible can sometimes make the day-to-day grind a lot more bearable.
Public schools need more money and more resources. But I don’t see how we get them those resources if we don’t care about kids. If what happens in school doesn’t matter, if learning doesn’t matter, if we’ve convinced ourselves that kids are going to be all right no matter what, then where’s the incentive to improve things? And if we’ve decided that the child must stay in that building for the good of society, then what difference is there, finally, between school and prison?
Schuyler Avenue in Kingston, PA, my public elementary school
Noah, does your child ever express interest in public school? Does he have public school friends? Not judging, I promise truly, just curious.
Good article Noah… I think this is one of those issues where neo-liberal thinking has taken hold and just won’t let go. The issue is framed in terms of consumer choice… The notion that the best way to change schools is through individual parents who buy into the system is ridiculous. The most likely outcome is that a few select students achieve, while others continue to fail. After all, even the most super of super parents can’t be expected to remediate an entire class, and even if they could, why should they?
So yeah, what we have is individuals being asked to exercise their political power as consumers, when what they need to do is exercise their power as citizens… Press for systematic reforms, pay for those reforms through bonds or taxes if necessary. Even if you end with a public-private partnership (a market solution of sorts), you at least get a collective or community investment.
Is it “Yost” or “Yoffe”? You have both versions.
As a child in New York, I went to a private bilingual school (French/English). It was of paramount importance to my French father that I maintain a link to that half of my heritage. This would not have been possible at a public school.
Good point Nate. But if you are going to be an activist for better public schools, having skin in the game is likely to make for a somewhat more compelling claim- although, the actual input of the child involved, as Noah says, is a pretty central concern.
Re: the fundamentalist public schools point, I do want to mention the flourishing of private schools for whites in response to desegregation in the South– which Milton Friedman welcomed as a perhaps unpleasant but necessary step toward justice through the expression of individual freedom.
@ Noah Berlatsky
“Still, the point is that if you place your moral duty to society over your moral duty to the person in front of you, you can end up with some fairly monstrous conclusions.” True as far as it goes, but so is the opposite. Authoritarian regimes from the Soviet Union to modern Saudi Arabia COUNT on being able to silence or extract confessions from opponents by threatening their families. Or, to use a less extreme example, companies in the developed as well as developing world count on workers who would otherwise be prepared to fight for better conditions to stay in line because of obligations to support family. The only thing necessary for evil to thrive, etc.
And if cases where a child is being bullied in public school – and there is good reason to believe the same won’t happen in particular private school, which isn’t a given – are one thing, cases where it is simply a matter of the private school having more resources is another. In the latter cases, it isn’t a matter of duty to society versus duty to your child, but simply a matter of duty to society versus SELF INTEREST: do you sacrifice the time and effort to pick up the school’s slack, or not. (Let’s assume it’s not a matter of having to work sixteen hours a day to feed your family, or private school probably wouldn’t be under consideration in the first place.)
It would be Puritanical to say that nobody should ever chose self interest over the general welfare, but we should frame the choice clearly and correctly.
@ Alex Buchet
I’m not convinced that maintaining a link to “heritage” is more than a frivolous pursuit, but regardless, it so happens that my younger brother and I both went to public school and maintained our link to our mother’s Austrian heritage just fine (we speak German, which was not taught at the public school in question, are conversant in Austrian history and art, and can produce respectable essays in the cuisine). There may have been conditions that made it prohibitively difficult for to do the same in public school, beyond simply the fact that it was a public school, but if so, you haven’t said.
Hey; I was away from the computer most of the day.
Bert, my son really likes his school, and hasn’t expressed interest in going elsewhere. I don’t know if he has friends who go to the public schools; he’s got various friends through various activities…and yes, I’m sure some of them go to various public schools. The school system in Chicago is so screwed up though…Benedikt doesn’t really make it clear whether going to a magnet or a charter or some such counts as morally okay or not, for example. And the city is closing public schools willy nilly at the moment; it’s kind of a disaster.
Graham, the point is that the interest of the child is kind of self-interest, and kind of important. Insisting that there’s a moral duty to go to public school over and above the interest of the child seems problematic to me. Though I’d agree that private schools might well have many problems of their own.
Yoffe; thanks for the catch.
Noah, I agree with you on this. My duty is to my family first, because no one else can or will look out for their interests to the same degree that I can and will. The quality of the public schools is a duty shared by the entire community, and as Nate points out, I can do my duty in this area even if my children are not in the public school, or even if I am childless. People meet this civic responsibility when they vote for school board members and contribute to school fund-raising, to name just a couple ways.
Regarding the school in the Yoffe column, I’d like to make a few points. I surmise (as you do) that what is making the child most uncomfortable is the proselytizing by the other children. They, of course, are within their rights to talk to others about their faith (or even lack thereof) in any circumstance where undirected discussion is allowed (e.g., the cafeteria lunch table). If the child representing the religious minority is distressed by this, that could be because the other children are sharing their faith in a less than loving and respectful manner. That’s not the only possibility, but it wouldn’t be surprising. Faith is a sensitive topic that involves issues of identity and self-worth, and these are children. This may be something the child needs to address solely and directly (“I’m uncomfortable discussing this right now; if you truly care about me and respect me, show me by changing the subject.”). It may be something the parent can talk with the teacher about. Just because the teacher is a Christian doesn’t mean she’ll approve of students pressuring someone of another faith, intentionally or unintentionally. At the very least, it could make the class environment less conducive to learning. At worst, it could make the environment hostile. We can’t and shouldn’t shield our children from everything that makes them uncomfortable, of course, but simple courtesy demands some limits, especially at school.
I think the parent is providing the other examples to show how openly Christian people often are in her environment. This could contribute to feelings of isolation for both the child and the parent. That said, isolation is probably not the intended effect. The teacher has a right to mention Christ on her own web page, and people commonly talk about the things that are important to them on such pages. If I’m in a crowd excitedly discussing European football and I can’t tell ManU from RealMadrid, I’ll feel isolated. It’s different, and much more difficult, if the topic becomes my ignorance of European football.
The Bible studies are a different issue. The school cannot legally sponsor Bible studies unless it’s for a theology class or some other academic pursuit — e.g., translation of the Bible into modern languages and its impact on European history, or the Bible’s contribution to archaeology and ancient history. However, if the school allows student-led clubs to meet in classrooms outside class hours, the Supreme Court has ruled it cannot exclude religious clubs (protected speech). If the National Honor Society and the Students Against Drunk Driving can meet, so can the Fellowship of Christian Athletes or the Young Atheists’ League, but that does not mean the school endorses them.
Regarding Christmas songs — Christmas began as a religious holiday, but now it’s a secular holiday also, like Zoroastrian Now Roz. Are we talking “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” or “O Holy Night”? If the latter, is there any effort to include winter holidays of other faiths?
Graham, when I speak of half my heritage I’m not talking about Franco-American Pride parades. I have both American and French citizenship; I did my military service in the French army. My education was all in French except for English and American History classes; I graduated a French baccalaureate, and went on to study at the Sorbonne. It’s more than just connecting with your ancestors on one side.
@ Noah Berlatsky
Well, what if you’re a worker in the middle of a strike? Or living under an authoritarian (really authoritarian) government? Is it problematic to insist that there’s a moral duty to your fellow workers, or to freedom, above the interest of your child? Answer: Yes, of course it’s problematic. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. At least, if everybody decides it’s wrong, the bosses and the dictators win. The examples are more extreme than public primary and secondary education, but the principle is the same.
As for self interest versus the child’s interest, I’ll repeat what I said before: Assuming you’re determined to keep your child at a certain academic level, and assuming the public school isn’t as good as the private, then it is not your child’s interests that are in question. The question is whether YOU are willing to sacrifice the time and effort necessary to keep your child up to par at the public school, or not. (And it is these cases that Yoffe seems to be primarily addressing.)
@ John Hennings
Whatever our positions on this, let’s not pretend that programs paid for by everybody but only used by the less affluent succeed as well as programs used by everybody. “Programs for the poor are poor programs.”
@ Alex Buchet
Well, I have both American and Austrian citizenship, and would have done civil service in lieu of military service in Austria, only the Austrian army’s physical examiners decided they didn’t like my eyes.
That said, if you are saying that maintaining your dual citizenship and studying at the Sorbonne is a more essential need than is participating in “Franco-American-Pride parades” – because you worked harder at it? – I submit that this is not self evident.
” Assuming you’re determined to keep your child at a certain academic level, and assuming the public school isn’t as good as the private, then it is not your child’s interests that are in question. The question is whether YOU are willing to sacrifice the time and effort necessary to keep your child up to par at the public school, or not.”
Why do you assume that the only issue is academic attainment? And why the assumption that there’s some level of commitment or involvement which would (for example) stop bullying, or make one’s child’s experience a happy one, or that would radically alter the testing regime in Chicago? Neither of those things is either true or self-evident.
Fantasies of overthrowing the government seem like they’re a kind of self-interest too. At least, people’s investment in a vision of radicalism seems like a poor reason to sacrifice one’s child, to me.
I agreed in my first comment that the issue isn’t always merely academic attainment. I’m asking – what about when it is? If your point is merely that Yoffe’s argument doesn’t apply when bullying is a factor, well and good. But I don’t think your point is merely that, and if it is, you haven’t made that explicitly clear.
As for “fantasies of overthrowing the government,” that seems to me a surprisingly callous way to talk about contemporary dissidents in, to repeat the aforementioned example, the states of the Arabian peninsula, North Korea, Myanmar, much of Latin America, Africa, and Central Asia, or even China – not to whitewash the west; half of those examples are, of course, our clients – not to mention those of the past (such as, say, those who made America the United States of America, as opposed to Ulster-West-of-the-Atlantic).
I’ll also point out:
1. “[M]oral duty to society over moral duty the person in front of you” is a pejorative way of phrasing the issue. Another way of saying the same thing would be: Duty to give the person in front of you a better world over duty to the person in front of you’s more immediate interests. This does not make choosing the former any less “problematic,” of course; but to reiterate, problematic is not the same thing as wrong.
2. Essentially the argument you are making has been used in many contexts, one of which is in defense of the oppressor against the oppressed, on the grounds that by continuing to oppress, the oppressor is able to make a good life for his family: see Camus’ choice of his mother over justice during the Algerian revolution.
I don’t think I was talking about folks in Burma. But inspiring as revolutions are, people sometimes do horrible things in the name of revolution too. I won’t throw around any names or anything; suffice to say that naming various revolutions around the world is not actually an indication that you share the moral high ground with them.
And, you know, the argument you’re using has been used in some unpleasant contexts as well. “The family must be put second to the needs of the state!” has a fairly unpleasant history as a marching cry, all things considered. China’s One-Child policy isn’t the worst example, but it seems to encapsulate the problem well enough.
I don’t think your choice is wrong, Noah, by any means– it is your choice to make, after all, both legally and ethically, and your son is apparently flourishing.
The only issue that remains tricky here for me is that of the embattled privileged consumer. John really makes the crucial point here. “My duty is to my family first.” I wonder if you agree with that, 100%, in all contexts. While I appreciate John’s clarity and sincerity, I disagree with that outlook, and find it ethically problematic. Of course you (Noah) are not evil for sending your son to private school, but are you a hero? I think it’s neither.
No, I don’t agree that duty to family always has to come first. And I certainly don’t think it’s heroic to send my son to private school. I’d much rather have a Chicago school system that was reasonable and that everyone could use.
@ Noah Berlatsky
“And, you know, the argument you’re using has been used in some unpleasant contexts as welll.” Sure, but if you’d been using phrases like ‘as well’ in the above article, I wouldn’t have written my original comment.
My piece is a lot less incendiary than Benedikt’s. I’m responding to her claim that anyone who doesn’t send their kid to public school is evil. I’m not claiming that public schools are bad, or that sending your child to one is the wrong thing to do.
@ Bert Stabler
Alright, we all agree that neither course of action is heroic or evil. But that doesn’t mean one – or the other – isn’t better overall.
I kind of think that the issue is largely irrelevant for dealing with what’s wrong with schools in the U.S., actually. The problems are mostly about housing segregation and lack of institutional power for teachers, I think. Neither of those has much to do with individual decisions about sending kids to public schools, I don’t think.
I would point out that many Chicago parents (not necessarily in Noah’s neighborhood) have fought very public battles against testing, waging huge boycotts, and against school closings.
Parents in the Pilsen neighborhood did a historic sit-in in a library (the Whittier Elementary field house) in 2010, and they faced down the bulldozers at Whittier again last fall. The neighborhood has in general been a hotbed of citizen involvement in public schools.
I am a white college-educated guy who is strongly in favor of public schools, and worked with Chicago Pubic Schools students for 16 years, 10 of them as a full-time art teacher. But I never lived in the neighborhoods where I taught, which could be construed as a form of “white flight.”
I think it is not at all evil that Noah loves his son and he offers him the best education possible. But I also don’t find it entirely hyperbolic (somewhat, but not entirely) to say that turning to private schools can be construed as turning your back on a problem– a turn that is only possible if you can afford to turn your back on it.
Noah has the right to feel offended at being called evil for looking after his son’s emotional and academic interests, It’s like 9and unlike)what the Pilsen parents are doing, in a way– but it’s also a bit like (and unlike) what parents fleeing desegregation in the South did as well. He’s neither one nor the other. I just hope he might also acknowledge engaging in what amounts to a micro-scale form of “white flight.”
That’s possible. It’s somewhat tricky, since black parents are often quite interested in getting their kids into private schools as well. But it’s certainly true that my son would be in a more fully integrated school if he went to the local magnet (though the school he’s in is certainly more diverse than the public school I attended.)
Black parents (as well as white and Latino and Asian, and etc.) parents also get involved in their local schools when they can, and often move their students from one public schools to another.
The issue of class diversity is pretty relevant to this discussion as well, and I think you may have had some of that at your school, right? I sure couldn’t speak for you on that.
Some. We do have student aid, and we’re substantially cheaper than many other private schools to begin with, but obviously the money can still be a real barrier.
Sorry– I meant your public school where you grew up. Economically diverse?
Oh…yes, my elementary school certainly had people who weren’t upper class. Very white though.
Bert, et al, I didn’t mean that primacy of duty to family is a universal rule, although looking back, I see that it reads that way. I just think it is in this situation. Even in situations more mundane than fighting oppression, people make such decisions at their family’s expense all the time — the social worker or statesman who skips dinner with the family to finish her work, for example. In the short term, this costs the family, and if becomes the rule, it may cost them dearly in the long term. However, if such decisions are made judiciously, they allow your family to live in a better society, so the two interests are not entirely separate. One is a component of the other. Noah’s child could even participate in and benefit from the struggle to improve his public school, but that’s really a lot to ask of a pre-teen. So, as we all agree, it’s the Berlatsky family’s decision.
Graham, maybe this makes your point for you, but I think American public schools are never for those who are truly wealthy by American standards. In the best school districts, they are not for the poor, either. They are for the middle class and below, and the middle class is still a strong enough lobby to make a difference.
Since I’m totally ignorant of the Chicago school system, can I ask whether there are a sizable number of good public schools in the city area? Or is it just impossible to get into them?
There are some articles out there which have made calculations suggesting that only the top 20% of earners in America can afford a “middle class” lifestyle as defined by:
1. Meaningful healthcare insurance
2. Significant equity (25%-50%) in a home or other real estate
3. Income/expenses that enable the household to save at least 6% of its income
4. Significant retirement funds: 401Ks, IRAs, etc.
5. The ability to service all debt and expenses over the medium-term if one of the primary household wage-earners lose their job
(+/-) 6. Reliable vehicle(s) for each wage-earner
There are good schools; it’s all organized around magnet and charter schools and applying and so forth. It’s kind of nightmarish.
Of course wealthy people don’t attend NON-magnet public schools. But the best schools in Illinois, in terms of test scores, are (I think), magnet public schools and public schools in wealthy areas, where even teachers make six figures. But, if average neighborhood public schools (for people not meeting Suat’s “middle-class” criteria– great list!) were not “meant” for the wealthy, then America would be in touch with its class system, and would be able to acknowledge that no amount of standardized testing can overcome the impact of poverty.
I find the hypocrisy of unfunded education mandates to be at least as infuriating as the idea that the primacy of one’s tribal duty should be accepted as moral simply because it’s assumed to be a universal fact.
That’s why I want Noah to own his decision, not reactively but autonomously, not forced but deliberate and conscious. Which may also be his son’s decision, but it’s not entirely clear, in regard to whether his son has the information and the option to choose otherwise.
My point in the article wasn’t the tribalism was primary, but that working to help all children by insisting that individual children who happen to be your direct responsibility don’t matter that much doesn’t seem like it’s going to work. I’ll stick by that.
But sure, it’s a deliberate decision. I didn’t want to send my son to a local school that isn’t very good and futilely spend years attempting probably unsuccessfully to transform it while he got tested and possibly acquired a hatred of education. I wouldn’t want him to have gone to my elementary school either, honestly; it was not a happy place, and while I got through okay, I don’t have any desire to expose him to either the bullying or the stupid teachers.
Nor did I have any particular desire to negotiate the awful magnet or charter school barriers so he could go somewhere supposedly better where they’d test him all the time anyway.
It’s certainly possible that my son would bump through one way or the other; he’s an easy-going, happy kid. But my public school experience was not ideal, and my wife’s was outright terrible. Finding a school that makes him happy rather than one that he can hope to survive unscathed is a pretty big deal, and one that I don’t feel especially morally corrupt for taking.
@ John Hennings
Entirely correct as regards the best districts. But then there are the worst districts. To simplify, the American public school system, with funding coming largely from property taxes, works on the principle of middle class students in middle class suburbs, poor students in poor suburbs, and poor students in cities, with the urban middle class, such as it is, using private schools.
And lots and lots of magnet schools. And charters, at least in Chicago.
On the note of Noah’s non-corrupt-ness, which I endorse, Waldorf schools really are pretty cool, even if psycho-hippie in details. I stand by the moral ambiguity of the situation, bur that’s definitely points in Noah’s favor.
And in regard to the moral defense of tribalism, I should have pointed out that that was primarily directed at John.
“psycho-hippie” Beautiful phrase.
Suat, I would accept those criteria for “upper middle class,” but they seem a little lofty for just, plain “middle.”
Graham, you may be the first person I know to call me tribal, but now that I think about it, that explains so much in my life…
Also, class distinctions are socioeconomic, not economic alone, so I might add education level or some other social criteria for a more complete picture. That list would still be a good starting point for discussion, though.
I’m sure the mathematicians-economists who came up with that list have received similar complaints. But it’s a sad comment on the U.S. economy that the broad middle class can’t even attain points 1 to 5. It is supposed to be the American century after all.
Maybe. It’s difficult for me to think about this objectively, without comparing it to either global per capita economics or my own family’s economic arc. For America, do you know how that current twenty percent compares to other times in our history? Were there more or less than twenty percent who met those standards in 1960?
I’m fortunate enough to have the resources to live in an affluent Indianapolis suburb with better public schools than almost any private, magnate or charter schools in the state, so Noah’s choice isn’t one I have to face. If I lived in Indianapolis proper, I think I’d make the same choice Noah has.
I don’t think I’d have a clean conscience about it. I think involved parents pulling their kids out of public schools has an impact, at least in red states like Indiana, has an influence beyond removing the influence of involved parents: the voucher movement.
The right, who seems to bemoan recognizing that class warfare, or even classes exist in most contexts, has no problem with that here. If private schools are better than public schools (and generally they are)then, people of all classes should have the chance to attend those schools. Since they can’t afford to do that on their own, vouchers will redirect the tax money into private/charger schools.
I think this will tend to pull an additional number brightest kids, and those with the most involved parents out of public schools. The public schools become even worse off, drained of resources – financial and otherwise (best teachers, etc).
Public schools fall farther behind, and ultimately the right can point to them as yet another “failure” of government. I think that for at least some on the right, the ultimate goal is the end of public education. And, while it’s becoming clear (Piketty and others) that education is not as much of a reason for income and wealth disparities as it was in the past, it certainly can offer a way to a better life, even if that just means the desire to use a library card.