Moral quandries
In discussions about the issues involved in choosing a school for one’s children, Bitch, PhD has raised the example of the black kids who faced both emotional and physical danger as they attended previously all-white schools:
"I’m torn on the question of whether one sacrifices one’s kid’s safety and future: I keep thinking of the Little Rock Nine. Black parents and black children made *enormous* sacrifices to integrate schools; part of the reason integration hasn’t been as successful as it should have been is because white parents didn’t."
She’s right, but I don’t think this is an unambiguous moral choice. As a parent, you have obligations to your child as well as to the world, and sometimes they conflict.
I was reminded of this quandry today reading this post at From 0 to 5 (via This Woman’s Work). The writer of this blog (Holly) and her partner are adoptive and foster parents to some extremely troubled kids, and sometimes these kids act out in ways that hurt the other kids in the family.
I’d really like to be a foster parent someday; I think it’s incredibly important work. But I’m not sure it’s fair to my kids to bring into their home a person who would take so much of our emotional energy and who might well hurt them. I know, there are no guarantees in life — either of our kids could turn out to have extremely high needs, and the other might feel that he got the short end of the stick. But there seems to me a difference between such things happening by the luck of the draw and such things happening because you sought them out.
I hope this doesn’t come across as critical of either the parents of the Little Rock Nine or of Holly and her partner. I think they’ve made good choices, even heroic choices (although Holly cringes at being called a saint and I don’t know how she’d react to be called a hero). But I don’t think those choices are the only good choices. I’ve never heard anyone talk about the tradeoff between parental and societal responsibilities, and I’d love to hear it discussed.
June 4th, 2005 at 12:37 am
The tradeoff between parental and societal responsibilities comes up in discussions about homeschooling. Sending your kids to the neighborhood school strengthens the community: children’s friendships bring parents together. If you have a bright, creative, well-brought-up child, her classmates will benefit from being around her. She’ll make up games and fantasy stories when she’s small, and make herself useful on Student Council when she’s older. She’ll provide competition and motivation for her peers. But the same child may well be bored, unhappy, or uncomfortable in the neighborhood school. She would probably advance a lot further academically in a homeschool program tailored to her interests and abilities. Thus, you balance the interest of the community (to which you and your child belong) against your child’s interest in intellectual stimulation and meritocratic advantage.
June 4th, 2005 at 10:45 am
This is a great discussion because it is something that I used to grapple with, but haven’t of late. My husband and I are black homeschoolers, educating our two daughters at home in Chapel Hill, NC. Many people ask us why aren’t we sending our girls to public school because Chapel Hill has some of the best public schools in the country. Well, that may be the case, but it isn’t for black children.
That aside, many black educators say it is parents like us — those of us who are genuinely invested in our children’s education — who should send our black children to public schools because we could act as true catalysts for change. I, on the other hand, believe that public education for black children is largely irreparable and it would not be advantageous to sacrifice our children’s educational futures in the hope that we could make a modicum of change.
I tend to believe as parents we should do what is in the best interest of our families first as long as we aren’t way off base and/or delusional. Society can wait until our children can make their own mark. For right now, their well-being and futures are of the utmost importance.