SCHOOL CHOICE AND THE FEAR OF “THOSE PEOPLE”
Rigid, compliant behavior is the main focus of many charter schools in poor neighborhoods. Photo Credit: johngirton.me via Compfight cc
“School Choice” is more about the deep fear of “those people” than proponents will admit.
“Those people?” They are The They – the ones who you fear will corrupt your children if they sit in the same class with them.
“Those people” are the ones who just can’t wear the same uniform or school colors as your son or daughter, because, well, if they do, they and your kid may start thinking that they are peers.
Can’t have that.
The fuel
Group songs on a charter bus that got two students and the SAE fraternity kicked off the OU Campus are based on the same fear. That offending well-rehearsed, informal song captured on video was revealing of how we train a certain class of youth to think about “those people”.
The song rehearses the idea that we just can’t allow “niggers” to get into our fraternity, folks. Our children might start thinking that black people have a place in our society when we really don’t want them to.
Fear and private schools
That fear of “those people” is a boon to private schools that may not openly try to segregate our youth, but traffic in segregation under the guise of “high standards” or “rigor”.
And having known private school principals and teachers during my career, I can say that they are earnest in their desire for high academic excellence. But, this is not about that.
The urge toward private schooling for the consumer parent is driven by the desire to segregate their children from what they consider to be lesser classes, or corrupt people.
It may not be sinister in a direct kind of way. But more often than not, it really is. It’s based on a deeply dark view that certain classes of people have problems written into their DNA and will never improve, no matter what.
Giving up on whole classes of people
School Choice gives up on the idea that the whole of a public can receive a good education that prepares all of our youth to enter a democracy as thinking, creative participants.
Instead, it relegates the poor to attending rigid training academies School Choice and the Fear of "Those People":