In the Mommy Wars, a New Front

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schoolHas anybody else had it up to here with people who tell parents how to raise their children? If you haven’t yet, you might reach the tipping point with this article from Slate’s Allison Benedikt. The title, “If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person,” might strike you as a hyperbolic attention-grabber, but it actually is the thesis of her argument. She posits that if every parent in America enrolled their children in public schools, they would improve. Hypothetically, she may be onto something there. Parents who want a better education for their children would have to demand it from the schools, improving education for all. From here, however, she takes the enormous leap to deriding the morals of those who choose private school for their children:

“There are a lot of reasons why bad people send their kids to private school. Yes, some do it for prestige or out of loyalty to a long-standing family tradition or because they want their children to eventually work at Slate. But many others go private for religious reasons, or because their kids have behavioral or learning issues, or simply because the public school in their district is not so hot. None of these are compelling reasons. Or, rather, the compelling ones (behavioral or learning issues, wanting a not-subpar school for your child) are exactly why we should all opt in, not out.”
Benedikt is extremely quick to dismiss the reasons of private school parents as not “compelling,” but I would argue that it is hard to think of a more compelling reason than preserving parents’ rights to raise their children as they see fit. That is not to say that Americans cannot be morally prevailed upon to make sacrifices for the good of the community. But it is far from immoral for a parent to want his or her children to attend an institution that will instill them with a set of values and skills that they cannot obtain at their local public school. Nor is it immoral for parents to want their kids to attend a public school, whether because it can provide a quality education or because they want their kids to have a traditional public school experience.
This name-calling over certain educational choices is no different from mothers and doctors who call baby formula “poison” to promote breastfeeding and disparage mothers who do not. The feminists at Slate’s Double X section should know better. That Benedikt calls out only private school parents, and not public school parents who do not do anything to improve their kids’ schools, makes it clear that she cares less about actually improving education and more about pushing her views on child-rearing onto everyone else. Feminism and parenting are both about choices, and this article seeks to shame those who choose one option over another.
The choices parents make when raising their children are specific to the challenges of each family and ought to be respected. Being judgmental is not the way to solve any of the many glaring problems with American public education. Benedikt is wrong to presume that the only way to fix public schools is by dishonoring the autonomy of parents.
 
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons