Reply to Public education: competing interests, philosophical divide

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]People want to have it both ways:

Improve the environment of the low-scoring, high poverty schools (like Ballou or Dunbar) and then pretend there is something wrong with families who want to shield their children from the elements at those schools.  Schools aren't just a collection of classes - they're a culture of expectations and interactions.  So you want to improve the one because there are problems, and then name-call people who want to avoid problems.

Makes no sense.[/quote]

Once again -- because I think you or someone else keeps on making this "you can't have it both ways" argument in different DCPS threads: NOBODY is saying you have to send your kid to Dunbar.  Nobody is saying that high-poverty DCPS schools have no problems.  The point is that gentrifiers don't have the right to completely take over schools and railroad everyone else's interests.  If you say things like "I don't care about getting rid of free aftercare, the poor parents can suck it up" then yes, I will name call you.  [/quote]

Who cares if you name call?  I don't.  If people come in and improve a school, they're going to want it to be, you know - [i]improved[/i].  That may mean better aftercare that is subsidized for lower SES families.

You can't want these families to bring resources that improve your school and simultaneously resent them for doing so. [b] At least, not if you intend to make a [i]logical[/i] argument.  [/b][/quote]

OMG.  When will you understand that public policy is not based on some kind of logic puzzle?  you seem to think that because you got a good LSAT score you know all the answers.  It is so much more complex than that.  Negotiating public education in a rapidly gentrifying, highly income-inequal city, against the background of institutional racism, is not a logic puzzle.  It is a class A political, public policy, values issue.  But you seem to think that your claim to "logic" means that you can do whatever you want? [/quote]

[b]When will you stop wanting upper SES families to invest their time, money, energy, intellectual skills, physical abilities, and most of all their most precious treasures - their children - and then not resent them for it? [/b] Sorry, but after a 50 hour work week, volunteer time on the sports-team-of-the-season, fundraising for the PTA, homework help, ferrying children to music or tutoring classes, trying to have a healthy meal or two as a family once a week, there is no time left for a sit-down conversation with the school community en masse about their feelings and resentments.  Sorry - people have to prioritize.  Raising money for the school and chaperoning on field trips and in-class participation isn't enough for some people.  You seem to think you're entitled to a bigger slice of people's lives than there are in the actual pie.

At the end of the day, there are about 10 seconds left for whiners, or just long enough to say this.  "Look, you wanted my help you got.  Now you resent it.  Make up your mind.  I'm busy, I have to tuck a child into bed and maybe run an overdue load of laundry.  Good night."[/quote]

When did I ever say I resented it?  You have as much right to enroll your child in your public school as much as anyone else does.  You have the right to not enroll your child in a public school for whatever reason.  I agree that all parents' primary duty is towards your own children.  I do NOT think that your greater time and money and power gives you some kind of moral (or logical, as you frame it) right to dictate how a school should be run.  For someone so convinced that power justifies all your actions, you seem awfully sensitive to name calling about it. [/quote]

If it's not you personally who resents it, then someone who sounds a lot like you sure does:

"How dare so many of you gentrifiers come in here and introduce high-quality aftercare and subsidize it for poor families!  You are so insensitive for outvoting us and our previous pattern of free but lousy aftercare.  You gentrifiers are so arrogant - even though it we're talking about a fair vote - you're still personally awful for trying improve the school in a way that's different.  It's not that any of us from the old power structure resent our loss of influence - no we genuinely loved the low-quality free stuff.  You're so evil for wanting to make improvements.  Why can't you figure out a way to make everyone else in the world in the happy?  Why haven't you figured out to make a binary vote work both ways?  Why aren't you devoting all your free time to our whines instead of your own child's needs?  You're so selfish!"

[/quote]

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