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Writer's pictureJoanne Jacobs

Only the education-rich can afford laissez-faire schools

Monogamy is "outdated," Troubled author Rob Henderson's Yale classmate told him. She's been raised in a stable, two-parent family and planned to marry before having children. Henderson who'd survived a drug-addicted single mother, multiple foster homes and post-divorce rejection by his adoptive father, coined the phrase "luxury beliefs." These are ideas that may confer status on the upper class, while inflicting "real costs on the lower classes," he writes.


There are "luxury beliefs" in education, writes Natalie Wexler on Minding the Gap.


Rejecting the teacher's authority -- an "anti-racist" stance advocated by progressives -- is an example. “The students who are harmed most by the idea that schools should not set and enforce clear rules for young people are the young people themselves, especially those who as a result do not learn how to control their impulses, delay gratification, and exert self-discipline," write Doug Lemov and his co-authors in Reconnect: Building School Culture for Meaning, Purpose, and Belonging.


Lemov's best-selling Teach Like a Champion came under attack for stressing the importance of students' paying attention to the teacher, which was said to be oppressive to "black and brown bodies," writes Rebecca Birch, an Australian educator. If teachers set lower classroom expectations to signal their virtue, students will learn less.


Progressive educators believe that "learning to read and write are essentially natural processes and therefore don’t need to be taught explicitly," she writes.


It may seem to work for students with educated parents, who will teach them at home and immerse them in the knowledge and vocabulary that enable reading comprehension.  If necessary, affluent parents will pay for tutoring, demand special services or pay for a private school that provides the support they need.


"In lower-income communities, the lack of effective instruction is often a disaster," writes Wexler.


"Decolonizing" the curriculum is another luxury belief, she writes. Students who "see themselves" in the curriculum, but don't build knowledge of mainstream Western culture, aren't well-prepared for success outside their own communities.


Told that the poor had no bread, Marie Antoinette allegedly said, "Let them eat cake." It didn't end well.

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9 Comments


Malcolm Kirkpatrick
Malcolm Kirkpatrick
Aug 03

Between the Sudbury Valley school and the Michaela school there's a school for everyone. "What works?" is an empirical question, to which an experiment will deliver more valid and reliable information than will Divine (bureaucratic) Inspiration. In public policy, "experiment" means competitive markets and/or federalism (subsidiarity, many local policy regimes).

Students, parents, real classroom teachers, and taxpayers would benefit from a move toward policies which give to individual parents the power to determine for their own children the choice of curriculum and the pace and method of instruction.

Why not mandate that all school districts in your State must hire parents on personal service contracts to provide for their children's education if (a) the parents apply for the contract and…

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superdestroyer
Aug 06
Replying to

If parents feel lucky to have gotten a spot in a coveted school, the parents will tolerate all of the demands of the schools along with tolerating all of the cirriculum. See Gov. Glenn Youngkin or most of the other affluent Republicans living in the DC area.


And considering that virtually all private schools are non-profit, the idea that a profit motive will improve education is laughable. See where the profit motive lead in higher education, failed schools such as the University of Phoenix where the profit was made by lying to students.

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JK Brown
JK Brown
Aug 02
“The students who are harmed most by the idea that schools should not set and enforce clear rules for young people are the young people themselves, especially those who as a result do not learn how to control their impulses, delay gratification, and exert self-discipline,"

Well, if students learn to discipline their intellects, regulate their emotions and establish principles, that cut down on their need for "educators". It students are not inculcated with "school helplessness, that is less initiative with school subjects than in other aspects of life, they won't be a profit center for the education cartels

Usage: Education, properly a drawing forth, implies not so much the communication of knowledge as the discipline of the intellect, the establishment of…

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Malcolm Kirkpatrick
Malcolm Kirkpatrick
Aug 06
Replying to

Washington would have agreed with Alfred Whitehead: "Education must be narrow if it is to penetrate."

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m_t_anderson
Aug 01

An uncharitable view is that promoting "luxury beliefs" (whether lack of discipline, drug culture, or just ripped jeans) among the young is just another way the Man Keeps You Down. Color me Uncharitable.

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