On JoanneJacobs.com, Joanne reports on a teacher who is upset that KIPP charter schools tries to provide a better education for some children. The teacher wrote a letter claiming that KIPP takes the best teachers and students and leaves public schools with the leftovers.
I thought the fourth comment by Richard Aubrey was insightful:
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The letterwriter presumes to tell us that the school will change if the families want it to.
Who does he think he's talking to? His own students? Who else would be that dumb? Public schools are the most resistant insitutions to outside influences I can imagine.
If the families who were concerned could change the schools, the schools would have been changed and none of this would be necessary.
In addition, he implies that KIPP and the families who choose to go there are somehow being socially selfish not to leave their kids in public schools as a sort of human sacrifice.
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I think this is a key point: "families who choose to go there are somehow being socially selfish not to leave their kids in public schools as a sort of human sacrifice." Many in the public school system seem to feel that they are being betrayed when parents find better options for their children. Public schools are supposed to provide a good education for children. Parents do not have an obligation to send their children to the public schools.
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Technorati tags: education, public school, KIPP, charter schools
2 comments:
It's pretty scary how much of our society leans toward this "sacrifice for the greater good" mentality. It's certainly fine to volunteer, donate, help out when a person *wants* to, but no human being is obligated in any way to take responsibility for another person's plight.
In our early days of homeschooling, I had a parent get physically right in my face and yell at me that I had a duty to keep my child in public school and work with the school to better it.
After I got over the shock of being yelled at, I replied calmly that I felt: 1: that after attempting for many months to work with the school when my child was being screamed at by a burnt-out teacher and told by that teacher that girls can't do math and science; then being told by the school that it would be far too traumatic to change my daughter's classroom mid-year or withdraw her from class and 2: that I felt that "sacrificing" my child for the "greater good" of the public school was not only abusive to my daughter but would also be immoral and irresponsible for me as a parent. He looked at me with contempt and disgust, called me a selfish liberal bitch and walked away (Why does homeschooling make me a liberal? Or a bitch? Aren't I just parenting - which is neither political or religious?). I will admit, I was not only stunned, but hurt as well - that someone I did not know who had heard I was withdrawing my child from school would be ignorant enough to behave the way he did and say the things he did. I got over it though, as I watched my daughter over the next three years recover from her one year in school, and as I watched my other two children blossom over the years, never having been institutionally schooled. So, no, I do not think it is either good or moral to sacrifice your child to make public schools better. I feel so strongly, that when one becomes a parent, they have a duty to put their child first, to do all they can (in a moral and ethical way, of course) to make sure that their child will be able to grow into adulthood, a strong, compassionate, ethical person who will contribute more to the world than they take from it. Tell me - what possible good does it do to sacrifice your child - you've wasted their life and contributed nothing to the greater good.
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