OLYMPIA, May 28.–As a man, I have always supported the notion that a woman has the right to her own body, and while I have sympathized with those who chant, “Keep your laws off my body!” I cannot say with a straight face that I shared their fury.  After all, unless you’re the one being targeted by those claiming to know what’s good for you while sitting immune to their own edicts, you really can’t appreciate the urge to kill that this engenders.

Yesterday, I felt that urge to kill.  I was reading comments posted in response to the question, “Should Washington State support charter schools?”  The responses in this posting were violently opposed to the idea.  One of the contributors to the stream of negative responses went so far as to say that we should levy a tax on those able to afford to send their kids to private schools, which would then allow the “people” to raise the standards in public schools to that of private schools.  Allow me to retort.

First, we do levy a tax on those sending their kids to private schools.  Every Washington citizen pays for a public school system that is the “paramount duty” of our state government.  Those who pay for private school tuition do not get a refund, credit, or even an “atta-boy” from the machine that continues to spend our money to provide a product that we’ve determined to be inferior.  Not without value, but inferior.  Even hard core opponents of charter schools, like the commenter referenced above, understand  this – it is embedded in the comment that we could somehow raise the standards of public schools to equal those in private schools.  Those who took Econ 101 know this implicitly.  People pay for things that have greater value to them than the price being asked.  No sane person would pay for a product (education) that was provided in the same quality for no additional charge (I will not say “free”, because we are paying an enormous price for our public education system.)

Second, many parents also tolerate a constant flow of religious propaganda being fed to their children as an additional cost of securing better academic training.  After all, if you’re not paying for a service, then you’re not the customer – you’re the product.  Religiously affiliated schools are less expensive than secular schools because there is an advertising cost that churches are willing to pay to get their message to the target audience, namely school age children.

Parents do not have time to wait around for experiments in public education to demonstrate success.  A first grader has only one shot at getting a quality first grade education.  The evaluation must be made TODAY, and action must be taken TODAY.  The vast majority of parents sending their kids to private schools are not the uber-rich.  They, like me and like my parents before me, sacrifice the ability to purchase a new car, take a family vacation, live in a better house, or save for retirement because the opportunity to educate our children properly is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

To those who do not have children, I offer this advice – do not talk to me about how important it is that my children be part of your social experiment.  To those who are willing to put their children into public schools as a political statement, I say that you are the embodiment of all that is wrong with this country today.  There is only one acceptable reason to put your child in a particular school, and that is because that school provides the greatest educational value available that is within your economic reach.  Doing anything else is the epitome of selfishness.

Here’s a question for you.  A local company manufactures child safety seats.  These are known to be acceptable (they pass basic testing) but inferior to another product that is available for a reasonable price, but manufactured in another country.  Would you purchase the local product as a statement of support for our local economy, or would you choose the best possible option for your child that you can afford?

I have no time for those who use their children to make political statements, much less those who would attempt to use mine for such a purpose.  The only way that we’re going to improve our educational system is by engaging the protective instincts of parents to select that which is best for their children.  Charter schools allow for a much larger harness of this societal force.  Private schools can only be accessed by those with sufficient resources.  Charter schools, as proposed, can at least be accessed by those who win a lottery drawing.

Perhaps today’s fight is just the natural echo of that phenomenon that those of us who were educated in this country experienced during our school years – the misguided notion that it just isn’t cool to excel.  When excellence is punished with taunts and jeers, it makes perfect sense to a high school freshman to try to fit in by “kicking back.”  But I want my children to be in an environment that rewards their hard work and ingenuity.  As we watch this “jobless recovery,” those who gave in to peer pressure and gave less than they were capable of in school may be wishing that they could go back and do things differently.  But as I said, you only get one shot at first grade.

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