In what could alternately be seen as a provocative argument or a master class in trolling, Allison Benedikt at Slate says you are a bad person if you send your kid to private school. If people who can afford private school just held their noses for a few generations and deigned to send their kids to crappy public schools, one of our nation’s most important institutions will improve, she says.
So, how would this work exactly? It’s simple! Everyone needs to be invested in our public schools in order for them to get better. Not just lip-service investment, or property tax investment, but real flesh-and-blood-offspring investment. Your local school stinks but you don’t send your child there? Then its badness is just something you deplore in the abstract. Your local school stinks and you do send your child there? I bet you are going to do everything within your power to make it better.
The story was a hit, in internet terms — it has racked up over 5,000 comments, 19,000