Yes, you're absolutely right. It's not the same kind of atmosphere as a D.C. public school has.
Why is that?
One of the things I loved about living in Washington State was the unpretentiousness of the people who live there. It didn't matter if you were a Microsoft millionaire or a local mechanic. Most of the people ate at the same restaurants, drank at the same bars, and bought the same fish at Pikes Place Market. How you lived and where you went to school reflected that mindset.
On the East Coast and in areas like D.C. The rich eat somewhere and the middle class eat someplace else. The same with the schools. The middle class go to public schools, and the wealthy go to private ones. This class division wasn't so acute 30 years ago, when many middle class kids went to private Catholic schools, but it's been steadily changing.
I don't think this is a good, nor a healthy trend.
Obama just played into that class based society and said in effect, "I'm helpless to change the status quo in education". The fear I have for my kids not getting a good education is greater than my motivation toward my country and the millions of children destined to live out their lives as lower class citizens, due to having received a lousy inner city government run education.
What ever happened to "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country".
We don't even pretend those words matter anymore. Everyone is expected to look out for number one, even the President.
It's sad so many anticipate it.
Just imagine the kind of excitement Obama would have caused in the D.C. public education establishment by supporting it. Imagine for a minute what kind of excitment he could have caused, simply by visiting a few schools and investigating whether his kids should attend.
You can't put a price on that. And it's a real shame he, nor anyone in his administration considered it.
It's clear to me, his work with Ayers in the Chicago school system meant little or nothing to him, except as a stepping stone to power. |
