A lot of good quotes here in this Megan McArdle post (via AoSHQ) about that infamously stupid Slate article about how bad parents send kids to private schools (nothing quite like Establishment self-guilt and loathing, is there?). Hard to pick my favorite, but here’s a rather dramatic one:
Now, [Slate author Allison] Benedikt could lecture you until the cows came home about your moral obligation to public schooling, but you still wouldn’t leave your kids in a school where the teachers were being set on fire (and neither, I imagine, would Benedikt).
…largely because the ‘being set on fire’ thing was not a metaphor; it was an actual event from the Public School Wars of the late Sixties. One of my major problems with the Beltway Establishment liberal types (and the wannabes/groupies of such people) is their starkly incomprehensible refusal to actually research American history. If it happened before the aforementioned Beltway Establishment liberal turned, say, twelve, then they simply just don’t care. Which is a shame; if Benedikt had done a little research she might have realized why things were the way they are.
Then again, Benedikt might have also noticed that her side’s policies aren’t helping, and need to be changed. And we can’t have that! …No, sorry, I don’t know why we can’t have that. Sunspots, probably.
Moe Lane