EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION: Senses-shocked pal asks ‘How did it get this bad?’ while a writer’s advice column on the issue oozes limousine liberalism
A while back I got a call from an old pal who, in his now-semi-retired existence had decided he wanted to try substitute teaching.
Although it’s been a number of years since I’ve been in the classroom, I still know many teachers still in the trenches and so I warned him it probably wasn’t a good idea.
I was reminded of my father who, a few years before I retired from teaching, asked me about possibly becoming a school bus driver for the district in which I was employed.
I told him flat out “NO. Bad idea.”
My pal began the recent convo by telling me he “was done.” Not necessarily because he couldn’t hack substituting, but because in the process of thwarting a recent attack by one student on another, he had grabbed the attacker’s shoulder.
After class, the attacker promptly informed an administrator the sub “touched” him, and, well, you can probably figure how it all played out.
My pal then went on a righteous rant about his utter disbelief at how kids in schools today literally can do anything they want — with little-to-zero consequences. Don’t want to be in class? They go roam the hallways. An admin may bring them back, but they just end up walking out again.
I told him he should try private, parochial, or charter schools that still actually maintain a degree of common-sense discipline.
“How did it get this bad, Dave?” he asked me. “And where are all the good kids who actually give a damn?”
I went a bit into how progressive “restorative justice” ideology had taken over public school culture, and how it would get worse before it got better. And that the good kids’ parents aren’t stupid; they’ve recognized this and have opted for private, parochial, and charter schools.
A few days later I happened upon Sigal Samuel’s piece at Vox.com. Her “Your Mileage May Vary” column is based on “value pluralism” — “the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other.”
Samuel seems to assume folks seek out alternatives to public education for the (allegedly) superior academics and “networking” advantages, and says traditional publics are “less stressful” and “more diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, or class” — the latter being “essential […] for a flourishing adult life and for a flourishing democracy.”
Lots of parents think sending their kid to public school would mean sacrificing their kid’s prospects on the altar of their own political ideals. They don’t realize they’ve constructed a false trade-off.
— Sigal Samuel (@SigalSamuel) March 30, 2026
The evidence in this might surprise you! Gift link:https://t.co/utRCs7Jsug
She invokes “world-renowned feminist moral and political philosopher” Iris Marion Young‘s “liability model,” which asserts that “assigning blame to a particular individual” regarding a negative “is inadequate when […] dealing with situations of structural injustice.”
Thus, if you withdraw your child from the public schools, the schools lose funding — money which serves those who’ve already suffered from structural inequities: “The kids who remain get less of the materials — from textbooks to counselors — that would have set them on the path to success.”
But as Young said, it’s “inadequate” to blame individuals in such cases, so Samuel points out these parents have the “political obligation to work toward changing the structure that produces injustice.”
“The more power you’ve got, and the more privileged you are by the current system, the greater your obligation to take action,” she says.
“Many white liberals have adopted blacks as mascots, in order to ‘make a statement’ against American society. But mascots are only symbols, and their well-being is seldom a top priority.”
— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) March 31, 2026
— Thomas Sowell
As King told Taylor in the award-winning film “Platoon,” “You gotta be rich in the first place to think like that.” This mindset is vintage limousine liberalism.
We saw it at Martha’s Vineyard when Ron DeSantis flew alleged asylum-seeking migrants there. The migrants were shunted elsewhere in less than 48 hours. Locals cited lack of resources, which perfectly made the point DeSantis was trying to make: See what average, everyday folks with lesser means have to deal with?
We also saw it with so-called “carbon credits” whereby the rich and powerful could assuage their guilty consciences of flying all over the planet and emitting tons of greenhouse gasses … by purchasing “credits” allegedly associated with things like renewable energy and reforestation.
In this case, it’s a I’ll display a few yard signs for the local (usually progressive) politician and make a donation to the local food bank to justify my kids being in a private school.
And the Catch-22 for Iris Marion Young is that the remedies of many who serve the historically marginalized — like contemporary educators and administrators — only exacerbate the problems.
Your average joe who actually gets his hands dirty for a living just wants a safe, orderly environment for his children at school, free of useless and even detrimental left-wing theories regarding discipline and learning.
In my home state of Delaware and elsewhere, these are key factors behind the almost-25 percent of the K-12 population enrolling in private, parochial, or charter schools. And, overall, it’s minority-student enrollment which drives charter school demand as technically charters are “free” (public), but with fewer bureaucratic constraints.
“You warned me, Dave!” my pal said at the conclusion of our conversation. “That you did.”
Yes, I did. But there’s nothing like experiencing in person the current insanity gripping our public schools … in order to, hopefully, inspire real common-sense transformation.
MORE: School discipline has gotten so bad even liberal ‘Education Week’ highlighted it
