Sunday, July 19, 2009

Won't Someone Please Think of the Children!

I used to be a high school administrator. Such an occupation is an easy way to become completely disillusioned with the government school system. Further, as you may have guessed, I have never been a huge fan of government schools.

Thankfully, through the course of my marriage, the wife's political leanings have drifted to the right - or at least, they have drifted in a libertarian direction (the two dimensional political spectrum can be quite annoying). So, she no longer feels a civic obligation to stuff our child into a government school.

Unfortunately, we do not make enough money right now to consider private school (and certainly not for 14 years of education per child). As such, we have thought a lot about homeschooling. So, stumbling upon this post at The American Scene was interesting and encouraging.

A lot of emotion was spilled in the comments, and it's really not surprising. People have so much invested in the way they bring up their children (and the way their parents brought them up), that an intelligent discussion can be difficult. Further, regardless of whatever is best on aggregate, that says nothing as to what is best for your child.

My daughter is only 14 months old (in about 12 hours or so, to be almost precise), but, still, this weighs on me. It may be the default to send your kids to public school, but I have no plan to ever raise my child by default. I need to make thoughtful choices, and such choices might lead me away from government schools. I'd like to think I have the right to make choices regarding my child's education. Others agree with me.

Sadly, people like Ernie Eeves, John Tory and Dalton McGuinty don't seem to care one bit. They prefer to feed our children to the leviathan.

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