The White Buffalo comments: I don’t want you to send your kids to PS, I want you all to stop telling me what to do with my kids.
WB, I don’t think I’ve ever told you what to do with your kids. Nor do I doubt your affection or willingness to shoulder your paternal responsibility for them. The way I see it, there are four kinds of parents who send their children to public school.
1. The stupid – this covers most parents, who have no idea what public education is nor has the notion of any other educational option ever entered their minds.
2. The stuck – those who have no choice. I have nothing but sympathy for them.
3. The selfish – those who value their free time more than their children’s education. These are the people I was condemning in today’s column. If it wasn’t appropriately and perfectly nuanced in your opinion, then, well, tough. What do you expect from a freaking poem?
4. The strange – those, like WB, who seriously believe they are performing some form of vicarious mission work through their children. I disagree, of course, and I neither condemn nor understand them. Perhaps there is a genuine calling of this sort. It’s just not one I hear.
I quite liked Space Bunny’s point: I fully support anyones right to do what they will with their own children. Too bad the government doesn’t feel the same. And speaking of which, MM writes: Just read your column entitled “The Yellow Bus.” Thank you for putting into print the feelings of many parents. I have a kindergarten-age child in public school now, and am pulling him out at the end of the school year. Our school district and the DA’s office have threatened my wife and I with one year in county jail and removing our child from our custody, citing excused medical absences as justification. To top it off, their aggressive actions break a contract agreement signed by the school and myself.
Never trust the bureacracy. Never. I did mention the bit about packing all the educationists off to Cuba, didn’t I?