Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

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First let me say that by moving my family with two young kids to Oak Park, I was almost definitionally participating in the phenomenon that turn suburban public schools into de facto private schools. People move to Oak Park because it's on the Green and Blue CTA lines; it's a suburb that feels like living in a particularly nice residential part of Chicago. You move to Oak Park because you want all the perks of Chicago without exposure to its school system.

So with that having been said, and recognizing my own role:

Why exactly should we sympathize with parents who react to problems in their school systems by using their economic leverage both to exempt their own kids from those problems and also, by altering the tax base for their original school system, making those problems worse? Why is that praiseworthy? It doesn't seem praiseworthy to me. It seems to me like just another of those little pragmatic immoralities we all undertake regularly.

We have few problems seeing the problem when it takes the form of kids going to Choate and Bowdoin. But at the smaller scale we all deal with, we seem unable to recognize the same thing happening. We seem to believe can't possibly be a part of the problem. But, of course, we are.

I don't mean to crucify anyone for doing it. After all, I did it too. But I think we can reasonably draw the line at rationalizing or valorizing the de facto privatization of good public education in our country.

I don't know if I'd call it praiseworthy. I do think it's the sort of pragmatic immorality that a great many parents are happy to take on for the perceived benefits gained. As a result, it's easy to oppose for the large-scale effects but difficult to oppose as individual choices.

I think we should be careful about the difference between rationalizing and understanding the decisions parents make. The two are readily confused on the best of days, and political discussions about school quality generally don't happen on the best of days.

We all seem to have an enormous moral blind spot when it comes to our children competing with other children.

This is a tricky topic, but I wouldn't call it a moral blind spot per se. I think that we would have a problem with certain forms of unfair competition. You can't hire a smarter kid to take the SAT for your kid and expect others to feel ok about it. On the other hand, you are welcome to hire a tutor to help your kid score better on his own(1).

I think that most people tend to think that parents have a responsibility to help their kids as much as they can within fairly wide constraints. Parent's loyalty to their children above the children of others is one of the fundamental building blocks of our society like it or not.

1. Though some studies seem to indicate this won't really help.

It's hard to see a bright line where competition becomes unfair, but straightforwardly buying your own children into a better life than will be made available to children without means is problematic.

This is a mountain range of slippery slopes, of course, but the fundamental moral point here seems pretty obvious.

I agree that there is no bright line here. Nor are there bright lines in many other areas of life where inequality rears its head.

Is it fair that I can straightforwardly buy myself a better life than is available to others without means?

Is this more or less unfair than than what I can buy for my child? If anything I would say that the personal luxuries I buy for myself are more unfair than the educational opportunities I can buy for my kid. At least the latter is in pursuit of human capital formation and not just luxury spending.

I think there's a moral difference between what you do with the product of your achievements for yourself and what you do to impact the opportunity of the next generation.

Which is essentially just a long way of saying that the moral weights on inequality and mobility/opportunity aren't the same.

I dunno. I hear what you are saying and I agree that lack of opportunity is a problem. I just have a hard time convincing myself that making sure my kid goes to a good school and gets a good education is morally fraught. Tough subject for sure.

Like I said: I made sure my kids went to a decent school too (I drew the line at private school, but, like I said, my kids go to what is essential a de facto private school based on the neighborhood they live in).

I'm not prepared to crucify people for making these kinds of moral compromises, but I think it's important not to go the other direction and valorize them.

Uh, yes? It is entirely reasonable to prioritize one's own children over the children of others. You're not required to be philanthropic all the time, especially not at the expense of your family.

People tend to be very short-sighted about their children versus everyone else's. Tragedy of the commons readily results.

the fundamental problem seems to be tying public school funding to taxes at a very local level. i was surprised when i found out that was the system in america; it seems like a very blatant rich-get-richer measure.

You're assuming that this results in upscale cities and towns having better outcomes by spending more per pupil. In fact, yes, the outcomes tend to be better; the schools are often better by both objective and subjective measures. But the correlation with spending is very murky.

"Bad" urban schools with often poor student outcomes often have significantly higher spending per pupil than the tony suburban schools. There are lots of reasons why this would be the case of course. But it's not exclusively, or even primarily, a matter of relative spending levels.

Not only that but you will find some people in the US go though ridiculous mental gymnastics to claim that money makes no difference to education. While at the same to they put huge effort into moving into a neighbor with high spending on schools.

It is not enough to defend privileged with taxation, institutions and laws but they must use astounding double-think to convince themselves that the result is somehow fair. Part of that self-indoctrination is putting huge effort into convincing everyone around them of these absurd views.

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