The Obama Children Go To School — Private School!! Is There No Bottom to The Left-Wing’s Well of Hypocrisy?
The Obama Children Go To School — Private School!!
Is There No Bottom to The Left-Wing’s Well of Hypocrisy?
By
Ken Eliasberg
We are constantly informed by our “academics” — particularly our local “authority” — that our public schools are in wonderful shape (an observation almost always accompanied, of course, by a request (a demand?) for more money, I suppose to allegedly make them better). If that is so, why do so many politicians and public school TEACHERS choose to send their children to private school?? Our current president’s decision is to send his children to Sidwell Friends, a well established private school in the District of Columbia that has been an educational home to a good number of the children of our highest ranking public officials. The answer, of course, is obvious — OUR PUBLIC SHOOLS (or most of them) STINK!!!. Are there isolated pockets of quality? Of course! But these are the exceptions, not the rule. And, by the way, once again, I urge you to conduct your own inquiry; the data is readily available and conclusively clear. Our current president’s decision only serves to point up the utter lack of credibility of anyone making a counter argument. Why? Because he is black, the D.C. school system serves a majority of black students; it has for as long as I can remember been one of the worst school systems in the country (despite receiving more money per student than almost all other jurisdictions); and, finally, it has a new, very forward-looking Chancellor of Schools, Michelle Rhee, who is making, or at least trying to make, inroads into the established way of doing educational business, thereby giving D.C.’s children a real opportunity to secure a quality education. Rhee proposes a fundamental restructuring of the current approach to teacher retention, favoring a system that rewards good teachers and offers a mechanism for either punishing or entirely eliminating bad teachers. Teachers Unions have been the principal stumbling block in the pursuit of academic excellence, choosing instead to support a system that favors longevity over one that looks to the quality of teacher performance. This aspect of the problem is succinctly and competently addressed in an excellent article by Linda Chavez in Townhall.com, Nov. 14th entitled Obama’s School Choice. Ms. Chavez observes:
“The idea behind the plan would be to weed out the poor performers from those
who were doing a good job, and reward merit rather than longevity. In other
words, public schools would begin to operate like most other segments of our
society: Those who failed would feel it in their paychecks and those who
succeeded would be rewarded there. But unions don’t cotton to merit-based pay,
insisting that seniority is what really matters.
The unions’ interest is solely in filling their own coffers with dues and
maintaining their political power. An incompetent teacher who pays dues
is just as valuable to the union as an excellent teacher , and the bad teacher may be more beholden to the union to protect his or her job. No wonder, then, the
Washington Teachers Union, an affiliate of the American Federation of
Teachers, is resistingRhee’s plan.”
And make no mistake about it, the teacher’s unions care much less about students or the merits of our educational system; their concern is the continued viability of their union and thus their job. This is the trouble with entrenched bureacies; their main focus is perpetuating their bureaucracy. Thus I am reminded of a statement that Al Shanker made at a union meeting in response to a member’s concern over how a proposal under consideration would affect students — Shanker’s response to the questioner was that he would worry about the student when the student was in possession of a union card. While some may say that the comment is either apocryphal or, if true, said in gest, it imparts a very fundamental truth re the operation of unions in general and teachers unions in particular.
Jonah Goldberg makes the point in an equally interesting column at Townhall.com dated November 26th, entitled The True School Scandal. Downplaying the hypocrisy aspect of this situation, he observes:
“The Obamas will send their two daughters to the expensive private school
Sidwell Friends. Yes, that makes him something of a hypocrite because he is a
vocal opponent of giving poor kids anything like the same option.
But you know what? Who cares? Personally, I would think less of the Obamas if
they sent their kids to bad schools out of some ideological principle. Parents’ first
obligation is to do right by their own kids.”
Goldberg goes on to point out that “[T]he real issue is why the public schools are unacceptable to pretty much anyone, liberal or conservative, who has other options. Maybe in the rich suburbs of New York or Los Angeles, wealthy opponents of school choice run less risk of being labeled hypocrites; they can skip the pricey private schools because their public campuses aren’t hellholes. But most Washington public schools are hellholes. So parents here — including the first family — find hypocrisy a small price to pay for fulfilling their parental obligations.”
Goldberg, after observing that the District ranks third in the country as far as per-student spending (with a disproportionate amount of those dollars going into administration rather than instruction) and that “[T]est scores are abysmal; the campuses unsafe.” goes on to relate an experience in which Ms. Rhee, after observing a bad teacher perform, went to the principal and complained, asking the principal if he would put his grandchild in that class? “If that’s the standard, replied the defensive principal, we don’t have any effective teachers in my school.”
And then Goldberg gets to the bottom line:
“So, if Obama and other politicians don’t want to send their kids to schools where
even the principals have such views, that’s no scandal. The scandal is that these
politicians tolerate such awful schools at all. For anyone.
The main reason politicians adopt a policy of malign neglect: teachers unions,
arguably the single worst mainstream institution in our country today. No group
has a stronger or better-organized stranglehold on a political party than they do.
No group is more committed to putting ideological blather and self-interest
before the public good.”
That’s the real rub here? LEFT-WING OPPOSITION TO VOUCHERS (despite the fact that many minorities, who are educationally disenfranchised— none more than blacks - by the horrible schools which their children have to attend, have shown a real desire to implement a voucher system). The dishonesty about the quality of our public school system is palpable, counterproductive, and regrettable; the hypocrisy of so many on the left, who, while asserting the virtue of the public school system, nonetheless opt to place their own children beyond the reach of these educational cesspools. This is so typical of the left’s approach to almost any problem — do as I say, but don’t do what I do. Why? Because liberals (a real misnomer) are always liberal with other people’s money, or other people’s children, or just about any “other,” but rarely their own. It’s as if you should be the guinea pig in an experiment that 100 years of experience has clearly demonstrated can only fail. No one does a better job of talking the talk about helping the “little guy” than the left-wing of this country; by the same token, no one does a better job of making sure that he remains “little.”
Notwithstanding all of the above, and setting aside for the moment the issue of
security (which is a real issue, but one that can be managed) wouldn’t it have been a real endorsement of, and a shot in the arm to, Rhee’s efforts, in particular, and the cause of improving education in general, if the president — a black man - chose to send his children to one of D.C.’s public schools? Of course it would! Then, why didn’t he?? Because he knows that there is no comparison between the education his children will get at Sidwell Friends and the education they would get in any of D.C.’s public schools! And, in this regard, it should be noted that the difference between D.C.’s public schools and those in most other jurisdictions in the country is one of degree — an inconsequential degree, at that. The bottom line, Obama, like every other Democrat is in the tank for the teachers unions, and our kids be damned!