Feminists Against Choice

IN MICHIGAN the state legislature recently passed a bill to permit single-sex programs in the public schools. “No child would be required to attend a single-sex classroom,” writes Carrie Lukas, but parents would be allowed to choose. Those parents who believe that children learn better without the distraction of the other sex in the classroom could have their way. And those parents who believe that co-education “breeds healthy social interaction” could have their way too.

It is a radical concept, of course. The very idea that parents ought to direct their children’s education!

But the feminists object. Kim Gandy of the National Organization for Women:

We strongly oppose these bills because the separation of boys and girls, and the underlying (and false) assumption that girls and boys are so different that they shouldn't even be educated together, introduces harmful gender stereotypes into public education. This could lead to, among other possible outcomes, emphasizing math and science for boys, and for girls, less rigorous course work.

Ah yes. The King Charles’s head for feminists. Off in a secret male-only classroom, there is a danger that boys will be gaining an unfair advantage over girls in math and science. We must stamp that out!

I recently spoke with a young women who delightedly told me that she was working as a genetics counselor. She had a degree in microbiology and had worked for a few years in a lab. But then she quit and went to Japan to teach English for a couple of years. Now she’s back and she much prefers her job as a counselor, helping people with genetic screening and associated life decisions, to working in a lab.

You can math-and-science girls all you like, but in the end most women will choose to do people work rather than numbers-and-things work. And why not?

But that is all by the way, and a distraction. Let us get this straight.

It is wrong and it is a gross injustice to maintain a public school system at taxpayers’ expense that impose a one-size-fits-all policy on the education of children.

It is wrong to submit the education of children to the centralizing power of political pressure groups.

It is the right of every parent to direct the education of their children.

And it is wrong for political activists to interfere with that right.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems… No more rules, no more models… Genius conjures up rather than learns… ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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