The future of forced progress

Georgia school district separates the boys from the girls

One parent in this video really hits the nail on the head.

"We have no choice. We have to send our children to school. It's this way or no way."

If parents want to send their kids to schools that do this out of their own free will (though I would seriously suggest that you consult your children), I would not take the kind of issue with it that I take with this proposal.

The issue I take with it is not only that it condescends parents who disagree (and I happen to be someone who thinks it is a bad idea on its merits, completely independent of whether parents are forced to do it or not, even as I understand the reasons that lead parents, teachers, administrators, and others to consider this route). The issue I have with this proposal is that it offers people no other option. And this case illustrates the problem with this foolish trend of "forced progress" more than most, because it also happens to be a foolish and regressive policy, completely independent of whether it is forced on people or not, I think.

I know. There's a lot in such an idea for parents to think about. Our teachers kicked it around last year while we were trying to figure out what to do to improve scores and improve schools. I didn't. I thought it was foolish. I had thoroughly come to terms with the fact that boys and girls have to learn to relate with one another, and as equals, in this generation as they have needed to do in every generation. And I had no illusions that a proposal like this one actually removes that need or that issue that they will face at some point in their lives, regardless. It delays it. And that is what parents want. But I think it's a better idea to teach kids to be responsible for themselves and for their choices in a world where temptations to not be responsible for our choices abound, have always abounded, will always abound for the course of humanity.

If parents and kids decide that they want children to go to schools that segregate the sexes, I say good luck and so be it and hopefully your choice turns out to be a better choice than mine and I will have something to learn from it.

But forcing an entire district to do what I very much doubt that such a move will do for growing up and academic learning that these parents want such schooling to do for their children is assinine and arrogant in the extreme.

Those dissenting parents are right on this matter, completely independent of the merits of this decision. They deserve a right to choose what happens with the lives of children who are not the primary responsibility of the state. Those children are the primary responsibility of their parents and themselves. The school district responsibility comes after those responsibilities and the rights of those parents and students to govern and determine their own lives.

Had this decision been made by a school district 40 years ago, there would be no doubt how progressives at the time would have argued this position. It is only now that baby-boomer progressives have absorbed the fears and anxieties of their parents' generation and responsibilities for raising children that they or we would even consider such a move a "step forward."

It is amazing how propaganda and our own bullshit color our view of the world, isn't it?

If you want to send your kids to segregated schools, I say so be it. I think it's a bad choice. I think it's sexist, even as I understand the concerns. I hope I'm wrong and I hope you're right and I have something to learn from your better choice.

But there is no reason that you or anyone else should be able to force me or other parents to make what I regard as an understandable but foolish choice with you just because you are so cock-sure that you are right.

That is exactly what is wrong with this political era. And what I love about it is that it pops the bubble of self-righteous liberals (like myself, back in the day) who have always been sure that they have all the right answers about everything, that is why they have been so confident that they could force their way to progress and the world would look back in unfettered celebration of their efforts (except for their critics, of course, especially those evil conservatives, who wouldn't know what progress looked like if it was forced down their throats or not).

What I always find ironic about this kind of proposal for schools is that those who make it clearly did not really study the ideas around liberty, in school and in their history classes, that are abundant in the history of Enlightenment thinkers who are the basis for every modern, liberal democratic thought and institution that we take for granted today. Even the fact that these school district leaders would be elected to the positions they hold is predicated on a commitment to liberty and democracy that was not even possible before people like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Baron von Montesquieu, Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Mary Wolstonecraft and later and significantly, John Stuart Mill, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, John Dewey, Jane Addams, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Betty Friedan, and many, many other fine thinkers set and kept us on a course for such a liberal democratic world. The ideas of "liberal" and "democratic" were not even serious options before these and earlier thinkers seriously considered the course of human civilization in deeper ways than the more repressive governments of their times.

George Orwell would have a good ol' time with this era. Too bad he's not here to enjoy it with us. Mark Twain would laugh his head off at what goddamn fools we still are.

And we are stuck dealing with the consequences of all our foolishness.

I think Mr. Twain had a point.