In Slate, Alison Benedikt writes:
If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person
I went K–12 to a terrible public school. My high school didn’t offer AP classes, and in four years, I only had to read one book. There wasn’t even soccer. This is not a humblebrag! I left home woefully unprepared for college, and without that preparation, I left college without having learned much there either. You know all those important novels that everyone’s read? I haven’t. I know nothing about poetry, very little about art, and please don’t quiz me on the dates of the Civil War. I’m not proud of my ignorance. But guess what the horrible result is? I’m doing fine. I’m not saying it’s a good thing that I got a lame education. I’m saying that I survived it, and so will your child, who must endure having no AP calculus so that in 25 years there will be AP calculus for all.
By the way: My parents didn’t send me to this shoddy school because they believed in public ed. They sent me there because that’s where we lived, and they weren’t too worried about it. (Can you imagine?) Take two things from this on your quest to become a better person: 1) Your child will probably do just fine without “the best,” so don’t freak out too much, but 2) do freak out a little more than my parents did—enough to get involved.
Also remember that there’s more to education than what’s taught. As rotten as my school’s English, history, science, social studies, math, art, music, and language programs were, going to school with poor kids and rich kids, black kids and brown kids, smart kids and not-so-smart ones, kids with superconservative Christian parents and other upper-middle-class Jews like me was its own education and life preparation. Reading Walt Whitman in ninth grade changed the way you see the world? Well, getting drunk before basketball games with kids who lived at the trailer park near my house did the same for me. In fact it’s part of the reason I feel so strongly about public schools.
While in 2013 this just sounds like Slate clickbait, this ideology was, I recall, the common view among middle and upper-middle Jewish parents in the San Fernando Valley in 1968. And this wasn't hypocrisy. As a parochial school student, my Jewish friends made clear that their parents considered Catholics attending Catholic school to be slightly un-American.
And guess what? Public school worked fine for them. The public schools in the Valley then were full of smart Jewish kids.
I was talking to my dentist about his upbringing. He's nice Jewish guy the same age as me from Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley, and I realized that his parents never paid a dime of tuition for his education: Millikan Junior High, Grant H.S., Valley J.C., Cal State Northridge, and UCLA Dental School.
This pro-public school ideology worked well until busing from South-Central to the Valley was imposed in the late 1970s. The political resistance to busing in the Valley was led by Jewish moms like Bobbie Fiedler and Roberta Weintraub, and Jewish dads like Alan Robbins. They eventually had some success, but the tradition that Jews send their children to public schools was broken, and then the Hispanic influx overwhelmed LAUSD.
Nowadays in contrast, Jewish parents in Sherman Oaks almost always send their kids to private schools (there are vastly more private Jewish schools in the Valley today than when I was a kid) at least from sixth grade onward, move to the Las Virgenes school district, or figure out a way to get their children into magnet programs.
But, does it have to be this way? What if all upper middle class parents sweet-talked or badgered each other into sending their children to public school?
It's starting to happen in Lower Manhattan. Brooklyn is following.
The nirvana of gentrification is Good Public Schools.
Benedikt repeats the usual talking points about how public schools will be great if parents just demanded More Resources. Of course, the most valuable resource is Good Students. And, indeed, parents can play a big role in that. For example, when my wife finally figured out how to get our son into Millikan Middle School's fine elite programs, she talked the parents of my son's two best friends into transferring with him from the Lutheran school they were attending. (One of the pair is now at the U. of Chicago.)
Posts
114 comments:
The problem is that few middle class parents want their kids getting drunk or worse. Much less beat up. And it is not 1973. Failure to be the best in school means permanent underclass status against smarter Asians and connected elites and AA NAMs.
We are now witnessing the great roaring withdrawal of Whites from public life predicted by Putnam. With lifetime success so critical to the best schools few White middle class parents will sentence their kids to permanent loserville so Juan and Deshawn can get AP calculus 25 years from now.
I say no to "public education". This doo hickey called the intertubes gives you more than the union goons could ever do.
Public education? Who is the "public" and what are they "educating"?
First few paragraphs I thought it was a quasi-Onion parody from something written circa 1990 or so.
I didn't know people actually talked like that (or rather so naively stated it) so publicly.
Wonder where she lives now? Actually being "proud" that your school has no AP classes or the best that education can offer.
Funny, I just don't see the common stereotype of Jews thinking that way "Gosh darn, by golly, I'm so proud that our school sucks academically! And that we get to mingle with allll those born again Elmer Gantries! We're soooo glad that sending our kids to an urban gangbang school is goinna reduce his chances at a blue chip. Yaaayy for Diversity!" Just don't see that way of thinking among Jews, east or west coast, but certainly not east coast. Most would rather die than send their kids to the equivalent to Compton, Bakersfield, El Segundo, etc. which via Waiting for Superman doc showed, is how many public schools in LA appear to be.
Ain't gonna get to Stanford by way of Compton.
That's certainly NOT how the vast majority of East Coast Jews think regarding their own kids' education.
What is it, "things were going well until the stupid began to think." That's what her article sounds like. Wonder who her famous grandfather/father/well connnected family tree is?
Of course, she is Jewish, which tends to suggest an inherent IQ level anyway. But this brazen bald idiocy.
Looking at the situation out in LA and then remembering my friend who desperately wanted to get his kids into Campbell Hall I'm reminded of the quote usually attributed to Ben Franklin, which appears to be apt in this situation, specially when such naive folks state such brazen idiocy:
YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.
What's even more insulting reading this junk is that most of her lineage doesnt believe it either. Can't you get all those life affirming yada yadas via a nice private school?
Brazenness. Very unappealing.
per Manhattan, given the average home costs $1MM, it's not surprising public schools are pretty good. Plus, they don't have 'open enrollment', ie, poor kids can't go to rich neighborhood schools (unlike here in Minnesota).
I'm about your age, Steve, and I remember the only kids that went to private school were the rich, usually not too bright, kids and the Catholics. Virtually all the National Merit kids came from public schools. Times they are a changin'.
Seriously, who is this woman? Is she related to someone to someone to someone who's uncle is...Paul Krugman or something? Or Naomi Wolf? Naomi used to utter absurdities like this, back in the day.
Wonder where she is now? Probably married well and sent her offspring to private school, no doubt.
It's that whole bourgeois "Oh, YOU don't want that mean old private school, now do you? Doncha just lovvvve the ol' PS 44? Doncha? Some of the best construction workers and janitors and plumbers, yes, the backbone of America come from good ol' public schools!"
Well, this is fine and wonderful for a white woman who lived in a white area where the worst people to be around happened to be a few rednecks in a trailer park who coaxed her into having a few beers.
What about us who live in modern urban cities who would have to send our kids to schools where large portions of the population are black or hispanic? I guess these trillions of videos of black kids ganging up on a lone white kid and beating the hell out of him are all just random acts of boredom. I guess we can count on miss Public School to intentionally put her kids through these vibrant schools to show us how safe they are, and how great the learning experience is when their kids are blessed with diversity. Then again, these types usually consider having kids to be submitting to the exploitative Patriarchy, so its usually the typical liberal behavior of 'diversity for thee, not for me'.
Exactly the same as my father. Jewish child of immigrants, was educated his whole life in truly excellent public schools and thought they were the essence of Americanism. Although somewhat religious, he would not send his kids to Jewish parochial school. He said he "believed" in the public school system .... until they integrated the schools in our area. Then he no longer believed. And then he took the remaining children and sent them to private schools. The issue was never about resources, he never complained the schools were underfunded - It was simply that he did not want to send his children to learn in a dangerous environment. The formerly superb, relatively heavily Jewish, public high school in our area was eventually closed. One teacher who fled to the private school system said to me that when the "students" were roaming the halls with razor blades, he knew he had to leave.
If the good people who read the above article follow Allison Benedikt's prescription then we will end up with a society in which their children are poorly schooled in the name of egalitarianism, and only the children of bad people receive the quality education and critical thinking skills that the author so obviously lacks, thereby making society even less fair than it already is. Talk about evil genius. Was it Lex Luthor who put her up to writing this, or was it Senator Palpatine?
If you send your kid to a school with lots of blacks, you are a child abuser.
Two l's in Allison.
Alison Benedikt is 35/36 years old.
Public school ain't now what it was then.
For the most part Lower Manhattan has sent all it's undesirable poor elsewhere. The crummiest part is Chinatown. There is some subsidized housing but that is mostly filled with the lower paid 'civil servants' that always seem to get in on the government subsidized anything. Most of the lower everything in Manhattan has been gentrified, often decades and even a century ago. So there are some poor vestiges of the Puerto Rican immigration but that's about it.
I remember as a kid there were Chinese gangs shooting the place up. Seems like the Ghost Shadows have followed the Cosa Nostra into irrelevance. Maybe a clever person will do a remake of the Sopranos only for an audience of Chinese middle aged wannabees instead of Italians.
BTW it isn't private school anymore that is the threat to Public School in NYC. It is homeschooling. And tutoring services like Kumon. If your kid can get their math at Kumon who cares what happens the rest of the day, it is just baby sitting anyway. But once you think of it as baby sitting, that knocks the pay scale down alot.
Does Allison Benedikt think that Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are bad people?
Yep, the flight from public schools in urban areas is simply another form of white flight. The liberal goal for the US seems to be to have statistically exact diversity everywhere in all aspects of life; then, true equality among the races will arrive. Left wing thinking is a religion.
What if all upper middle class parents sweet-talked or badgered each other into sending their children to public school?It's starting to happen in Lower Manhattan.
My cousin and her husband in Lower Manhattan [SoHo] sent their now twenty-something daughter to private schools. When they couldn't get their daughter into the top/better public school[s]- some of which had lotteries for admission- private school was the alternative to PS Bad.
A similar argument goes for elite public high schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.
If my cousin and her husband were enrolling a child in elementary school these days in Lower Manhattan, it would appear that they would have more acceptable public school choices than were available back in the '90s.
Privatize everything. Problem solved. You're welcome.
Privatize everything. You're welcome.
You know all those important novels that everyone’s read? I haven’t. I know nothing about poetry, very little about art, and please don’t quiz me on the dates of the Civil War. I’m not proud of my ignorance. But guess what the horrible result is? I’m doing fine.
That is not a happy ending.
I think the bigger issue here is the rot in public education (and, indeed, in most private education). Robin at www.invisibleserfscollar.com does a great job highlighting the problems with the ideology behind education. In short, there appears to be a movement away from using schools to educate, but rather towards using schools to change behavior, emotions, and even the way people think. The effects of this framework far outweigh the harm from integration.
As a parochial school student, my Jewish friends made clear that their parents considered Catholics attending Catholic school to be un-American
Kids can be so mean, eh? As Sun Tzu put it (somewhere or another) keep yer friends close, and your SAT analogy questions closer
"Israel said planning to deport African migrants to Uganda"
http://news.yahoo.com/israel-said-planning-deport-african-migrants-uganda-222426827.html
"Israel plans to soon begin deporting migrants from Eritrea and Sudan, who number more than 50,000, back to the African continent via Uganda, officials said.
Israel regards most of these Africans as illegal visitors crowding impoverished areas in search of jobs, and largely rejects the position of human rights groups that many fled their countries in search of political asylum.
A statement late on Thursday from Interior Minister Gideon Sa'ar said Israel would soon begin a staged process of deporting the migrants, most of whom crossed the border with neighboring Egypt - Israel's frontier with Africa - since 2006.
Sa'ar said an agreement had been reached with an African country other than Eritrea and Sudan to absorb these migrants who would soon be urged "to leave of their own free will.""
Kids can be so mean, eh? As Sun Tzu put it (somewhere or another) keep yer friends close, and your SAT analogy questions closer
They got rid of the analogy section on the SAT a few years ago. I believe the analogy section was the section that most highly correlated with IQ on the SAT.
Mean while fast food workers are striking over wages
How long before the industry automates and puts them all out of work?
In addition to demographic changes and bussing, generational turnover likely played a role in the Jewish community's shift away from public schooling. The older cohort of ostjuden that were gung ho about public education were often 1st or 2nd generation Americans raised on the pro-establishment, patriotic liberalism of the new deal,WWII, and the immediate post war period. In a world now dominated by boomers, it's easy to forget that public schools were once widely viewed as fonts of civic virtue.
The idea that the parochial school provides an un-American education also has its roots in the first half of the 20th century. In many cases, the ethnic parochial schools of the 20's and 30's were nothing like today's all-American, middle-class catholic prep school. In some eastern cities, it wasn't uncommon to staff classrooms with elderly, semi-educated nuns from the old country. Some of the Catholic schools on Pittsburgh's south side offered an atmosphere that was frankly reminiscent of rural 19th century Hungary or Slovakia. Steel working families that were eager to live fully American lives opted instead for Pittsburgh's excellent public schools.
-The Judean People's Front
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/08/29/216150644/how-california-is-turning-the-rest-of-the-west-blue?utm
If the blue model is so great, why are they leaving? And why are they spreading the very thing thy're fleeing from?
It's like Muslims fleeing Muslim lands but taking and spreading their culture with them.
Or blacks fleeing from blacks but spreading black pathologies themselves.
If you're paying more than your share in taxes, you'll eventually demand your fair share of services, or something like that.
This pro-public school ideology worked well until busing from South-Central to the Valley was imposed in the late 1970s.
It wasn't just one-way. I remember my mother having tears in her eyes when one of my sisters had to be bussed away from our neighborhood school (Erwin St Elementary) to a Hispanic school in or near Atwater Village. At the time (1979), I didn't really comprehend what was going on. As an adult, I now wonder how surreal busing must've been for the millions of parents across the country. It's worse than mass immigration, yet Whites nor Jews didn't suddenly become social conservatives. Weird. It's one thing to bus in kids to a nearby school, but force busing kids to ghetto school? Unbelievable. Fortunately, the following year all of my siblings and I started attending a nearby magnet school.
This is great. I am sure Ms. Benedikt would then agree that since quality of teaching doesn't matter (after all, she had a terrible education but came out fine), then we can double class sizes, which would allow us to fire half of all public school teachers, and then cut the salaries of the rest, since they would no longer be responsible for making students read a book. And who needs $500 million dollar high school campuses? Sell them and put the public school kids in an abandoned warehouse and sneak them some booze on occasion, so that they can make memories.
That would save taxpayers billions.
Her parents must be so proud.
BTW, I am about her age and went to a fantastic public school. In our class of 200, 4 went to Berkeley, 4 to Stanford and we had 5 National Merit finalists, and we were considered more of the Arts school in the school district. If course, it helped that it was in southern Marin County, where the average property value and income level were stratospheric. It was a perfect liberal place, because the school was about 10% black and maybe 10% other minorities and 80% white, so families could feel good that they were sending their kids to a diverse school (and we had a pretty good basketball and football team), but not *too* diverse.
In fact, my middle school is the poster child of why good liberals sent their children to private schools (from Wikipedia):
"During much of the district's history, the demographics were evenly split between White students and African-American students. Most of the military families from nearby bases, who were mostly White, sent their children to Sausalito public schools. After the Cold War ended, the United States Department of Defense closed Fort Baker, Fort Berry, and the Presidio of San Francisco. Over 100 students left the school in one period after the military transfers. By then, many families in Sausalito were sending children to private schools instead of public schools. By 1996 80% of the students were African American, and most of the district's students were poor. Despite the district's high student spending and small class sizes, test scores were low"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sausalito_Marin_City_School_District
The school was spending $23,000 per student and getting nothing for it. Today, there is one Asian, and four whites in a school with 50 students.
God, I really can't stand Slate. Nevermind it's ideology, a lot of the stuff they post is just so darn stupid. Full of factually-inaccurate, semi-rumor-mongering garbage. It only even exists because the Washington Post Company needs a "hip" outlet to counterbalance it's stodgy, stuffy other publications.
And this year's Sontag-Dylan-Alinsky Frankfurt School Leftist Blowhard Prize, for parroting Marxist thumb-your-nose claptrap against the contemptible bourgeoisie, goes to Alison Benedikt.
"You know all those important novels that everyone’s read? I haven’t. I know nothing about poetry, very little about art, and please don’t quiz me on the dates of the Civil War. I’m not proud of my ignorance. But guess what the horrible result is? I’m doing fine."
Her lack of education has little do with her school - and a lot to do with herself and her parents. I went to a small public high school in rural NH - we had AP English, AP History, AP Chemistry, 3 foreign languages, etc. I was reading Hermann Hesse in the original German in 11th grade. Our school newspaper was as good or better as anything kids did at St. Paul or Exeter. The quality of education offered by any school has everything to do with the quality of the student body, and very little to do with anything else.
I'm sure the public vs. private school debate is different in areas with large NAM populations, but for the most part in New England the real motivation for people to send their kids to private schools is for the status and the networking, not because the education is superior (and it often isn't). In New England people actually send their kids to private schools so they won't associate with the "wrong" sort of white people, i.e. working class, socially conservative, etc. That's probably why I personally dislike private schools intensely.
This is written entirely from a British Isles perspective:
There, this attitude comes from the left, and there seems to be an idea that being disengaged from state services = being disengaged from the nation/society. It's like they've given up on any binding element to society, and simply decided that the govt, and using govt services, is what binds us.
And there is also a tacit suggestion that well off whites need to be there to rescue public education with the magical power of their well off whiteness. That's not so unusual for race/class/IQ realist, but it's an intriguing dog whistle from self styled lefties. I keep seeing them talking about how "middle class" parents need to be there to fight for better schools, which acknowledges that poor people, well, don't care as much. And apparently, their children will not only drag up the average scores, they'll magically make those lower down the feeding chain better as well.
It's just one long series of god whistles.
She mentions her ethnic identity as a way to communicate to any fellow tribespeople reading the article the following message: "this is strictly for white gentile consumption only. You are not, repeat NOT to follow my advice but to do the opposite."
So which things are now verboten for American-Americans? Private schooling, home schooling, gun ownership, self-defence, suburbs, low-density living, holidaying or weekending in rural America, public displays of Christian faith, effective policing. World War J has many fronts.
"there are vastly more private Jewish schools in the Valley today than when I was a kid"
There are vastly more private schools...period... than in the 60s. Back in the day, private schools were for the Bush Family or the Catholics. Kinda like beer, there used to be a couple of flavors. Now the choice is overwhelming.
Richard Montgomery High School near Rockville, MD illustrates your principle of "the most valuable resource is Good Students".
It is in an erstwhile "red, white, and blue" portion of Montgomery County (red neck, white skin, and blue collar) that went heavily Asian, and RM was rapidly propelled from laughgingstock to regularly making 'top high school in the nation' lists
> This is not a humblebrag!
That's precious.
By the way, Ms. Benedikt and husband John Cook live in the nice part of Brooklyn. Her Zip Code is ZZZZZ, which comes in at #1553 in Charles Murray's ranking of Zip Codes--not a SuperZip (data here). Median family income is $86,000; people there rank above 90% of their fellow Americans by Murray's centile score (though cost-of-living isn't taken into account).
My brother-in-law went to a rust belt city's public schools during the era of blockbusting and white flight. A sweet-natured, gangly kid, he was invited to contribute his lunch money to the neighborhood's newcomers. His life didn't end up nearly as swell as Ms. Benedikt's. But, like her, I say we focus on rooting out the private-school saboteurs and wreckers. It's the only path to a better tomorrow.
The funniest/saddest part is that she thinks reading important novels is one of the stigmata of a good education.
"You know all those important novels that everyone’s read? I haven’t. I know nothing about poetry, very little about art, and please don’t quiz me on the dates of the Civil War. I’m not proud of my ignorance. But guess what the horrible result is? I’m doing fine."
She puts in little tidbits like this in her essay abut how public schools suck and how despite it all, she's doing okay (but apparently suffering lifelong intellectual deficits), and we're supposed to now think that public schools are wonderful? Basically, despite my education in a public school, I still managed (possibly because of connections?) to get a decent job. It's like someone saying,'well, despite being abused by the next door neighbor, other than the occasional bout of depression, I turned out okay'. It doesn't exactly convince parents that they should let their kids be abused by the neighbor.
Left and Right Agree!
It what seems like the only story on NPR this week that wasn't about The March, they interview a WSJ editor about stagnant wages, and unsurprisingly "Immigration" is never mentioned.
http://www.npr.org/2013/08/27/216006343/why-arent-wages-outstripping-inflation
What the author misses is that most parents don't choose the private school option when faced with poor schools. They move.
So the past 50 years have seen a massive regional segregation in which whites have fled bad school systems. The societal cost is enormous. The housing markets wouldn't get overheated if there wasn't such a demand to be in a decent school system.
If the author really wants to see the quality of public schools increase, do it by putting the parents of the highest-performing students in charge of setting policy. As a general rule, parents who move or send their kids to private school tend to choose schools that have policies of which they approve.
"God, I really can't stand Slate. Nevermind it's ideology, a lot of the stuff they post is just so darn stupid. Full of factually-inaccurate, semi-rumor-mongering garbage. It only even exists because the Washington Post Company needs a "hip" outlet to counterbalance it's stodgy, stuffy other publications."
I had three close college buddies at my lakehouse last weekend (we attended an elite liberal arts school in New England). They're all liberal except for me. While most of the conversation evolved around the glory days and what not, there were times when they had to parrot their liberal lines, like: "I can't wait until the healthcare exchanges go into effect", and "in my industry (insurance) the entire thing is a market failure, thus you need massive regulation". The worst was when they discussed Slate: all three confessed a love for the online magazine and go to it daily. I can't recall the last time I read an article from Slate. It makes my skin crawl.
Of course, I'm the odd man out, so I couldn't spout too much stuff. Definitely got weird looks when I said I read the WSJ.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/28/Mexican-Newspaper-Says-Asylum-Claims-Have-Shot-Up-260-Since-2012
To which do you think Allison "jews like me" Benedikt is more committed...a) The health of schools administered by a local municipality, or b) The health of an industrial propaganda vector producing salutary effects for her tribe?
If public schools pivoted to a curriculum favorable to and complimentary of traditional white culture, would her support wax or wane? Oh here's her answer now...
If you send your kids to public school you are a bad person.
"You know all those important novels that everyone’s read? I haven’t. I know nothing about poetry, very little about art, and please don’t quiz me on the dates of the Civil War."
Getting a job at Slate doesn't require you to know anything. Unfortunately, there are not enough jobs at Slate for all the ignorant people turned out by the public schools.
I feel this needs unpacking. When exactly did she attend school? I'm guessing that, given her senior position, it was quite a while ago, so maybe she falls under the pre-busing category. She gives the impression that, even in those days, public education was mediocre, but her point is that a bad education didn't set her up badly for life. So what's really going on? If she's done so well, maybe her education was better than she lets on. Or else, in her generation a poor education was less of a barrier to success: perhaps her community and family connections helped out. It does appear that, however poor her actual classroom instruction was, she was well-integrated socially, i.e. she wasn't bullied and ostracized for being white. The busing problem seems to be at least as much about social disintegration and ethnic rivalry as about the quality of learning.
So... I'm supposed to take parenting advice from someone who thinks that getting drunk in a trailer park is a more important educational experience than reading the classics of western literature or doing AP calculus?
No thanks.
Also, the left seems to love broad, simplistic name-calling. Oh no! Some anonymous stranger who writes for an effete online magazine thinks I'm a "bad person"! Whatever shall I do?!
Unfortunately, as John Derbyshire has noted, they do this because it works. "Better dead than mean", as Derb put it - we're a nation of alleged adults, possessant of an empire and trillions of dollars and armed with nuclear weapons, who are for some reason terrified of playground taunts like "racist", "hatemonger", and "bad person". We are a weak-minded and emotionally brittle people.
Which doesn't peak well for our educational system, does it?
Most of those leaving comments at that site just trash the article. One calls it a "totalitarian narrative". Another points out that the author must then consider the Clintons and Obamas to be bad people. A lot of people out there don't seem to be convinced.
http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Uganda-named-as-country-to-absorb-African-migrants-from-Israel-324758
It's that whole bourgeois "Oh, YOU don't want that mean old private school, now do you? Doncha just lovvvve the ol' PS 44? Doncha? Some of the best construction workers and janitors and plumbers, yes, the backbone of America come from good ol' public schools!"
Yeah, those loser construction workers and plumbers who are earning good money in their 20's, buying nice houses and cars and boats, while your kids are drowning in student loan debt as they "work" in their unpaid internships.
Peter
What percentage of kids go to public schools? 85? 90? Even that isn't enough for some liberal?
Why would any conservative or Christian parent send their kids there? Cultural inertia, denial and because its "free" I suppose. They might as well be this leftie hack.
When I lived in Nashville (an off-the-charts crazy-liberal town), the local evil rag ran an editorial stating that white flight - especially in school matters - was "desertion under fire." The writer stated that "your "duty" as citizens is to "sacrifice your children" for "the greater good" of race relations. It specifically likened children to soldiers fighting in a glorious war and deemed resistance as "treason." The tone was accusatory and hectoring. It was not a sarcastic piece; it smacked of the "brazen bald idiocy" that Anon. 8/29 7:16 mentioned. I don't remember the byline. But such ideological Stalinism was typical of Trashville at that time (early '90s).
Political realists on both right and left say that while democracy and free elections are a great idea in principle, it is justifiable to support military dictators(allied with us) if democracy and free elections bring to power people like Islamists and others we deem to be dangerous. So, security and stability trump freedom and democracy, and reality has precedence over starry-eyed idealism.
And such views are seen as legit even if it means US should support regimes that quash political principles we preach to the world.
But, couldn't a similar argument be made about blacks? Yes, 'civil rights' sound good in principle, but the inconvenient reality is that racial differences do exist, and blacks are stronger, more aggressive, and more psychpathic than other races, so when blacks are given total social equality, they tend to Detroitize society.
Whatever the principle, even Liberal Jews have voted with their feet in the real world that blacks are not the best folks to integrate with.
As an adult, I now wonder how surreal busing must've been for the millions of parents across the country. It's worse than mass immigration, yet Whites nor Jews didn't suddenly become social conservatives.
There was that election thingie in 1980. After which the lefties suddenly and permanently lost their taste for busing. The fact that MSM never mentions these things in the same breath pretty much proves that the one caused the other caused the third.
Anonymous said...
Alison Benedikt is 35/36 years old.
Public school ain't now what it was then.
It wasn't all that then either. Early 90s for her HS yrs meant rest of urban cities were dealing with the crack epidemic, crips/bloods, higher crime rates, etc. from all those wonderful vibrant diversity areas.
Who does she think she's fooling? Answer: herself.
10-1 She sends her own children to private school.
spofirI sent all my children to private schools, even though it cost me a boatload of money, to escape the idiocy of the public school curriculum. it wasn't just the poor English, math, and science teaching that mattered, it was also the lunatic social engineering that occurred on a daily basis.
At least at a private school, the parents can exercise greater control of the curriculum through the Board of Directors. In the public school, the bureaucrats and politicians are firmly in control.
You know all those important novels that everyone’s read? I haven’t. I know nothing about poetry, very little about art, and please don’t quiz me on the dates of the Civil War. I’m not proud of my ignorance. But guess what the horrible result is? I’m doing fine.
Right. Ask her relevant questions that she knows the answers to: How is Lamar and Khloe's marriage doing? Will Kim and Kanye eventually tie the knot? In ten words or less, explain how come Scott and mama Kris dont always appear to get along, does she hate him?
Also: At the VMA awards Miley Cyrus seemed to have a fondness for twerking. Is this a new trend in society among millennials or is it overblown among older fogies per usual?
And: Discuss, compare and contrast the apparent lack of homophobia between Mad Men vs Modern Family. Was it merely a generational thing or have times really changed?
What do you, as a woman, personally think of the show girls? Do the main characters' hairstyles truly reflect a modern stylish "cool" look coming from grass roots ordinary roots or is it a hollywood ruse, per usual? Historical significance could be to contrast the "earthshaking" "new" doo first worn by Anniston back in '94 on the show Friends.
Have YOU or anyone that you personally known ever "twerked" before? If no, does that mean you are a judgmental homophobic bigot?
Doesnt know anything? See, she DOES know important, relevant things that deal with her part of the world. Who says PSs don't work anymore.?
Steve, as a southern San Fernando Valley parent with young kids, we're already sweating the transition from the excellent local public elementary school to the mediocre to awful district middle and high schools. What was your experience of Millikan? We're considering it for our kids.
http://jewschool.com/2011/06/17/26374/why-allison-benedikt-is-right/
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2013/08/toughest-job-in-washington-explaining-u-s-policy-toward-israel/#more-20373
Zionist imperialists continue to crush Palestinians. No problem.
Russia bans homo-globalist victory procession. World War III!!!!!!
Abolish private skrewls, and put the kids with the wealthiest parents at the top of the list to be bused to ghetto/barrio schools, so that they may truly experience to wonders of diversity their parents impose on the rest of us. Make it on a sliding economic scale. Religion no exemption. Do the same thing for section 8s. Who the hell do these private schoolers and gated community types think they are?
This is modern liberalism in a nutshell: if they disagree with you they call you names: bad person, homophobe, racist, hateful, etc. Unless I missed it, this shrew never mentions having children of her own. Which makes her silly article nothing more SWPL status-monger posturing. “See I’m so non-racist that I would eagerly send my kids to horrible schools filled with misbehaving NAM’s…but don’t have any kids so the cost to me of this absurd position is zero…score one point for me fellow SWPL”. If she had kids she’d send them to private schools and say it’s because the local schools were “underfunded” or otherwise bad but that it has nothing to do with NAM’s of course.
Otherwise I agree with numerous other posters. I was a public school kid K-12 (and state university to boot) but send my kids to private schools. What has changed? When I was in school we weren’t taught about the critical contributions to American history of the LGBT (as in California); “minorities” made up 10% at most and were American blacks; not the flotsam and jetsam of every ethnic dispute and civil war in the world; those American blacks mostly were underperforming and somewhat disruptive but not mindlessly violent nor in gangs and anyway the administration had the power to suspend or expel the overly disruptive. I don’t send my kids to public schools and I don’t care what happens to the public schools or the people in them. This atomized view of my “fellow Americans” is a natural and healthy response to the unending intrusions and attacks of the left.
The left continuously pushes their vile agenda on the rest of us yet pretends to be surprised when we push back or opt out. We’ll ruin the public schools with ceaseless 3rd world immigration and cultural Marxist nonsense and then accuse you of being a bad person for not wanting your kids marinating in the fetid stew we’ve created. I hope hell has a special circle reserved for these awful people.
A movie about public school life. THIRTEEN. Absolutely disgusting. And look at parents who are as immature as their kids.
Funny, I just don't see the common stereotype of Jews thinking that way "Gosh darn, by golly, I'm so proud that our school sucks academically! And that we get to mingle with allll those born again Elmer Gantries! We're soooo glad that sending our kids to an urban gangbang school is goinna reduce his chances at a blue chip. Yaaayy for Diversity!"
--------------
You're missing the point. Jews like to talk that way and SEEM as if to think that way.
But they don't REALLY think that way and really don't wanna live that way, at least not forever.
It's like some Jews really took pride in bashing capitalism and sticking to communist politicizing.. but in the long run, they chose money and power than equality.
PS. Slate is certainly NOT filled with Jews who think that way. But it wants the ideological cred as being for equality and diversity, and so, it promotes this tripe as smoke-and-mirrors to cover up the fact that most Slate folks are actually 'bad people'. Use the 'good person' as front for 'bad people' who prefer privilege and riches over equality.
Steve, you are dated, most folks now home school there kids or send them to charters which are cheaper than private schools even rich people are switching to home school or charters more than private schools. In La County where you live private schools that are not religious don't get as much folks wanting to go them, its a lot of charters or more go to home school or online high school.
Few Slate personnel or readers will take this advice but they feel moral pride in being associated with such a view. That's what this is about. Not assenting to a view but being associated with it.
It's like most white libs would rather hire or live with neighbors like Zimmerman than Trayvon, but they sure love being ASSOCIATED with views that are pro-Trayvon.
How many European aristocrats were really Christian in morality? Almost none, but they just being associated with the virtues preached by the Son of God.
How many blacks are really into the pacifism of MLK? None, as blacks really love using threats and violence to get things their way. (Indeed, even MLK didn't really mean what he said and really used 'peace' and 'nonviolence' as a threat, i.e. gimme what I demand when I aks nicely cuz if you don't, my people might whup your ass and burn down cities.)
So, blacks just like to be ASSOCIATED with MLK's message without really caring about it.
Associology.
In addition to being obvious clickbait (maybe 90% of the comments are strongly against) she glosses over the whole racial and ethnic angle. There are public schools in Brooklyn, NY whose students in the 1930's became Nobel Prize winners, etc. Nowadays these same schools produce drug dealers, thugs, etc. Are they spending less money on these schools? Hell no, the teacher's salaries (even adjusted for inflation) are many times higher. The difference is that in those days the students were 1st generation Jewish immigrants and now they are black and brown (and no white person in his right mind would subject their child to such a school, where his life would literally be in danger).
BTW, how much do you want to bet that the author does not have any actual children in public school, especially not in one that is mostly black/brown? It's easy to status whore when nothing real is at stake.
A lot of the rich in the south tend to be evangelical Christians, so they home school the kids rather than go to private school like they did 20 years ago.
Whitney is the best in La County, and its a public magnet school but most of the kids are Asian, its in Cerritos. In fact Lake Forest Ca in Orange County which is neat Saddleback Community Church a high percentage Homeschools rather than the kid going to El Toro High which is about 35 percent Hispanic.
What's ironic is that the elites and wannabe elites have always sent their kids off to private boarding schools..always. It was a handy way to get them out of the house, head eoff family friction, and leave the parents free to jet hop, party and carry on affairs in privacy.
I wonder as well how much private school is designed to shelter the little beta scions from bullying and academic embarrassment.
They get to do all kinds of things we mustn't.
I went to a fairly decent public school. It was notably lacking in vibrancy though. A coincidence, I'm sure.
Many public schools have become increasingly multicultural and therefore dangerous.
Darla doesn't mind being the BAD one.
"Sontag-Dylan-Alinsky Frankfurt School Leftist Blowhard Prize"
What?
Keep in mind... lots of Christian schools in the South still teach Creationism.
if you want other peoples children turned over to you that kinda makes you the bad person.
"How long before the industry automates and puts them all out of work?" - going to be a while, they want to bring in more cheap labor. Not innovate in response to scarce and expensive labor.
What I wrote on Art Caden's blog post on the same article:
Everyone's talking about power of exit and communalism, but for me the article is mostly about whether sheltering your kids is good for them.
My experience is that not being sheltered was very good. Of course, I come from a family of high-IQ intellectuals, so it was never really a question of whether I was going to develop a love of learning and have the drive to pursue it. This remained true despite that I went to a gang-ridden public school, many of my classmates were criminals, and I spent more time doing drugs and playing rock music than doing homework and playing sports.
When I got to college (I graduated high school by the skin of my teeth) I was ready to apply myself and I became a top student. Meanwhile my college classmates were discovering freedom for the first time and many of them became alcoholics and flunked out.
My life has turned out a lot better than many of the kids I knew who went to private school and studied hard.
Where will I send my daughter? I don't know yet for sure, but I'm biased in favor of sending her to public school, even to a rough public school. She has the genetics and the home environment to succeed regardless. I guess it mainly depends on whether there are enough other decent families in the area who are banding together and also sending their kids to public school. There use to be a kind of patriotic sensibility about doing that, but I don't know if it has persisted.
"Sontag-Dylan-Alinsky Frankfurt School Leftist Blowhard Prize"
What?
Keep in mind... lots of Christian schools in the South still teach Creationism.
What's the connection between the quote and your response? I'm genuinely curious.
"How long before the industry automates and puts them all out of work?"
I'd guess a decade or so.
http://news.cnet.com/mcdonalds-hires-7000-touch-screen-cashiers/8301-17938_105-20063732-1.html
"My experience is that not being sheltered was very good."
Well by that logic, making your adolescent daughter walk through a slum alone and sleep in a crack house every day should be great for her! She won't be very "sheltered" after that - it'll be the perfect preparation for Yale.
"The way I read it, her article was a dog-whistle to the Jewish middle class about losing touch with white America."
Yeah, I read this as invocation to her peers, not to the blue-collar set. Read this very HBDish article she penned and notice that, though her and her husbands' careers may be prestigious, they probably aren't as profitable as those of their social set. They are asking the Jonses to slow down and send their kids to public school, because they can't keep up without putting a terrible strain on their finances. She sees an impending status collapse for herself and her children where they will not land in a rowdy, but civilized environment like the one of her youth, but one where she will be dealing with semi-literacy, conflicts-not with fists but with weapons, and teenage STDs and teenage pregnancy. Oh why, oh why can't some white people water down all these blacks and browns?!
@Anti-Democracy Activist:
Not sheltering your kids doesn't mean going out of your way to subject them to danger.
My logic is that kids (especially those from high IQ/good cultural backgrounds) are resilient, and exposure to a few of the rougher elements often doesn't do lasting harm and may do lasting good.
It's good to be able to reject one idea without assuming the opposite extreme is the only alternative. Like so many concepts, Soundgarden put it well.
When deciphering any article petitioning me to do anything, I assume the writers interests are in this order: self, family, race, country, religion.
Steve has mentioned, IIRC, that he wants a country where most of the people his kids grow up with, will look similar to their kin. I wager almost every person, of whatever ethnicity, feels this way; to say it out load is anathema.
I think Allison is on the cusp of saying it. "Those kids at the trailer park" were white - she never mentioned hanging out with the basketball team.
She has a pro-HBD point, in a roundabout way. Private schools allow the upper class to insulate themselves from the consequences of diversity and foist the problem onto lower class whites. They also help propagate the myth that institutions shape people rather than the other way around.
Some people with no strong religious beliefs still send their kids to private schools even if they are in a decent district. My old high school was about 30 % NAM even though my actual hometown was only around 10-15 % NAM. Private schools were the only reason. Some people (helicopter parent types, for one) do have an irrational fear of public schools. A school has to be at least 2/3 "diverse" to be unbearable.
"A lot of the rich in the south tend to be evangelical Christians, so they home school the kids rather than go to private school like they did 20 years ago."
Most Southern rich people are mainline Protestants of some sort (Episcopalian, Methodist, Baptist, etc). They still send their kids to private schools too. Some even send their kids to private schools even when they live in majority white districts.
Evangelicals are more common among the lower middle class. As is homeschooling. Never met a rich homeschooled person in my life.
here will I send my daughter? I don't know yet for sure, but I'm biased in favor of sending her to public school, even to a rough public school. She has the genetics and the home environment to succeed regardless. I guess it mainly depends on whether there are enough other decent families in the area who are banding together and also sending their kids to public school. There use to be a kind of patriotic sensibility about doing that, but I don't know if it has persisted.
You probably don't realize it, but it costs money to for private school. Perhaps you can't afford it either. Better to be a schlub in private school (with connections and a better future) than to go to a gangbang urban school and not make it .
One thing that the Slate article so blithely ignores is that private schools give the 1% something that the other 99centers will never get. Access. Access into the 1% clique, which in turn leads to other social, economic benefits.
Example: Nearly ever single US President and/or Presidential Candidate of last 35yrs or so has attended private schools at sometime in their lives.....wonder why that is? What does the class (1%) that they represent know that the others do not?
The other thing private schools give you is access to a better quality standard of academics. Urban schools? Where the majority of grads can't barely read their own name on the diploma that they definitely can't understand the meaning to the words? Yeah, alllll PS schools are equal. Yup yup yup yup yup..
Everything was going along fine until the stupid began to think.
Remember in life: YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR
My logic is that kids (especially those from high IQ/good cultural backgrounds) are resilient, and exposure to a few of the rougher elements often doesn't do lasting harm and may do lasting good.
"Exposure to a few of the rougher elements," perhaps. Thirteen years of academic boredom, leftist indoctrination, and learning to sit and stand on command and mind your place in the pecking order, not so much. There are better ways to teach kids about the hard knocks.
The political resistance to busing in the Valley was led by Jewish moms like Bobbie Fiedler and Roberta Weintraub, and Jewish dads like Alan Robbins.
Interesting that when people in the media like to discuss non-blacks being opposed to busing, they generally only want to talk about Irish Catholics in Boston being opposed to it.
As a parochial school student, my Jewish friends made clear that their parents considered Catholics attending Catholic school to be un-American
And did they consider being unAmerican a good thing or a bad thing?
I am copying my comment from the Slate discussion:
I'm sorry, but the author is an idiot, and a weak-willed one at that. At some point you have to look past all the poor teachers and lack of computers and after school programs and remember that students, regardless of background, have these two things: free time and the choice of how to spend it.
My high school had AP Calculus and many other luxuries, but that didnt matter, because I had already taught myself calculus from a crappy textbook the summer after my freshman year. Because it was fun and it felt badass.
By the mid 80s most urban school districts had become either plurality black or majority black (or in the case of LA, Hispanic) so busing ceased to make any sense from a racial perspective. Which is why the issue disappeared around that time.
Busing was a huge issue that helped the GOP with northern working-class whites, but by the mid 90s the neocons had wormed their way almost to the very top of the party and no longer wanted to be associated with such vulgar ideas as helping poor whites.
http://www.redstate.com/2013/08/30/does-allison-benedikt-think-this-only-because-her-husband-does/
-The Judean People's Front
"Well, this is fine and wonderful for a white woman who lived in a white area where the worst people to be around happened to be a few rednecks in a trailer park who coaxed her into having a few beers..."
Where does the article state where she's from?
"I am sure Ms. Benedikt would then agree that since quality of teaching doesn't matter...then we can double class sizes, which would allow us to fire half of all public school teachers, and then cut the salaries of the rest..."
Oh yeah, I'm "sure" she'd agree the same, as a matter of fact she said pretty much those exact words in her article.
"Privatize everything. Problem solved. You're welcome."
It's clear a lot of thought went into this comment.
Thank you. Thank you.
What if one chooses white public school over integrated private school.
We have the surreal situation in San Francisco where we live on a street of $1100/sq ft homes yet the school across the street is 95% Hispanic and Black
The public schools are mostly abandoned by whites here. The schools with high test scores are completely dominated by Chinese who have made the system here work for them (in some cases by means of lawsuits)
There is a lottery system that is totally opaque and corrupt and punishes middle class whites
Anon 12:20, a lot of public schools still teach that we're all equal.
I unsheltered myself, quitting public school in 10th grade, joining the USMC a week after 17th birthday.
I hung out there in the infantry with badass Ricans, Rednecks, blacks, and whateverhaveyou, made getting drunk at the trailer park look like tea w/the queen.
Eventually, I ended up w/undergraduate and graduate degrees in physics, engineering and lotta dough writing software.
So I'm with alison, some leavening is good, but ya gotta have backbone for this sort of thing. But if it does work out, it makes you stronger, and I know that there is better than a 50% chance for any SWPL dude I meet, I could screw his wife/girlfriend if I put my mind to it.
Here's another idea that apparently (surprisingly?) will ruffle feathers among iSteve commenters:
I plan to encourage my kids to join the military. One thing that would definitely make me happy is seeing my kids graduate from West Point or the Naval Academy, for example.
Why would I support my kids being subjected to the dangers and stresses of military service? The two biggest reasons are: patriotism (on my part) and character building (on theirs).
Hmmm....seeing some parallels here...
It is very clear that Allison thinks that for public school to be okay, white people need to participate in it, or she wouldn't be trying to shame them into it; she would just send her kids there without a qualm.
"Truth said...
Oh yeah, I'm "sure" she'd agree the same, as a matter of fact she said pretty much those exact words in her article."
It's funny how snark-meisters such as yourself can't even recognize sarcasm from others.
Ex Submarine Officer said: I know that there is better than a 50% chance for any SWPL dude I meet, I could screw his wife/girlfriend if I put my mind to it.
..............................................................................
That's exactly why a middle-class father shouldn't let his daughter run with a rough crowd.
Allison Benedikt wasn't partying with genuine bad boys that might have seriously derailed her life. Her idyllic, milquetoast walk on the wild side entailed little more than smoking pot and listening to Tom Petty with harmless blue-collar slackers out in the midwest.
http://www.theawl.com/2011/06/life-after-zionist-summer-camp
............................................................................
Ex Submarine Officer said: I hung out there in the infantry with badass Ricans, Rednecks, blacks, and whateverhaveyou, made getting drunk at the trailer park look like tea w/the queen.
..............................................................................
On the other hand, if you don't want your son to join the bloodless SWPL coward brigade, including a few "badass Ricans, Rednecks, blacks, and whateverhaveyou" in his peer group might be a good idea.
-The Judean People's Front
Anonymous said...
Two l's in Allison."
For a double-dose of liberalizin'.
"I hung out there in the infantry with badass Ricans, Rednecks, blacks, and whateverhaveyou, made getting drunk at the trailer park look like tea w/the queen."
I imagine many of these guys were on journeys of self discovery like yourself. In any voluntary organization, the rottennest eggs are screened out. In a mandatory institution they have to be endured.
A guy like this is unlikely to ever join (qualify for) the Marines for an existential journey, but there is a chance he would sit next to, maybe date, your daughter in a Bronx public school.
Better bad than dead.
"It's funny how snark-meisters such as yourself can't even recognize sarcasm from others."
Are you sure that was sarcasm, grasshopper?
"Truth said...
Are you sure that was sarcasm, grasshopper?"
Yes, dung beetle.
"When I lived in Nashville (an off-the-charts crazy-liberal town), the local evil rag ran an editorial stating that white flight - especially in school matters - was "desertion under fire." The writer stated that "your "duty" as citizens is to "sacrifice your children" for "the greater good" of race relations. It specifically likened children to soldiers fighting in a glorious war and deemed resistance as "treason." The tone was accusatory and hectoring. It was not a sarcastic piece; it smacked of the "brazen bald idiocy" that Anon. 8/29 7:16 mentioned. I don't remember the byline. But such ideological Stalinism was typical of Trashville at that time (early '90s)."
I once had a class under a far left white prof from Nashville, and I wondered how someone growing up in such a stereotypically Southern place could ever spout off such blatantly anti-white, pro-black communist drivel. Now I know.
The silver lining is that even the brain dead in zombieland no longer are eating this crap up now with all the alternatives that the internet and radio bring. MSM profits have been plummeting like a stone.
The things Walter Mitty could have "accomplished" with the Internet. I bet he could screw 85 percent of SWPL wives. Honestly give me whiskey's real beta act over this fake alpha act any day.
Gotta love when leftists blame the failures of government institutions on the "selfishness" of the private sector.
As predictable as it is irrational.
Ur so full of it...I started in public school, went to a decent private uni, couldn't find work in my field..took a job as a "scum on the bottom of your shoe" CONSTRUCTION WORKER..and 10 years later am a self made millionaire...about 15x over...more if I liquidated. What you are holding on to WAY too tight is the notion that "the best construction workers or janitors" are somehow beneath you. What are u, a doctor, lawyer, or accountant? Maybe I can pay you to do my books. Its not the education you get, its what you do with it.
Post a Comment