In support of school choice–with guilt

An engaging oped in yesterday’s Washington Post Outlook section is entitled “I Just Couldn’t Sacrifice My Son.” It’s about the state of public schooling in a location near the city, and the unacceptability (and, to me, immorality) of being expected to wait for change to occur in time for one’s own child when it gets down to the wire. Most troublesome to me is that anyone even feels compelled to write such an article, to publicly defend or justify such a choice in the first place. There’s an undercurrent of “guilt” that isn’t justified and ought not be there.

We expect and enjoy choice in virtually everything except the most important of all; our own kids’ education and future. The author, David Nicholson, is going into the lion’s den to defend(!) himself in an online chat with the newspaper at noon today (Monday October 22). Check that out, and also watch the Letters page next week for protests and condemnations from people who shop for everything under the sun except education at Costco, WalMart and Target. Grocery and toothpaste choice is unquestioned; not school choice. We should be decades beyound this, with schools as varied and abundant, individualized and customized as the imaginations of educators could offer.