According to the Washington Post, President-elect Obama has decided to send his two daughters to the Sidwell Friends School. This is a wise decision. Earlier in the week both the Post and syndicated columnist Cal Thomas had editorialized that he should send the children to the District’s public schools. The pundits were arguing that to do otherwise would be hypocritical because Obama is opposed to school vouchers.
Give me a break. There is no voucher program in the country that would give enough money to any significant number of parents to send their child to Sidwell Friends or any other expensive private school. Parents who do receive vouchers in the few cities where they are available are gradually finding that most of the private schools they can actually afford aren’t doing any better at academics than public schools. The President happens to make a lot more money than most of us. This gives him options we don’t have. What he chooses to do with his income is his business, and he can spend more on education or more on chocolate bars. Big deal.
Moreover, can you imagine, Jay, the amount of extra security that we would be paying for if his daughters went to a public school? Sidwell Friends, which also has experience with the children of “celebrities”, will also be more likely to be able to protect the privacy and relative normalcy of childhood for Obama’s kids.
Jay, will you join me in an “amen” for good parenting, and a chorus of “boo” for editorial writers who are weighing in on a strictly private matter. (As an aside, I see that Matt Drudge is shocked that Obama’s car is not green and is built like the protective tank it is supposed to be.)
posted December 13, 2008 at 11:27 am
Once again, the Stooges in AU show that they will tolerate any hypocrisy from their candidates of choice. Barack “no child left behind” Obama and his band of Chicago reformers put their kids in private schools, while useful idiots like Barry Lynn say it is their right because of their income. The public school systems in most major cities are a joke thanks to the policies of Obama, who wants everyone elses children going through metal detectors while his have Secret Service protection, which they will also have at the private school they attend. No, Barry and Company hope that taxpayers will allow the NEA to ruin a fresh batch of children with the same old secular humanism they have been taught for four decades, and allow crime and violence to go unchecked, while they whisk their kids to the friendly confines. Parents, if given the tax vouchers, overwhelmingly send their kids to private schools. They have that right also, Barry, because it is their tax money at play. To say that other families would never be able to afford the schools that the Obama’s and the like send their kids to is sheer hypocrisy, considering that good ole’ Barry and Michelle got scholarships to schools that their parents couldn’t afford either. Let’s do away with all forms of financial aid then, Barry, so that the Obamas of this world can go to the community colleges they could have afforded, and not Harvard and Princeton.
posted December 24, 2008 at 10:26 am
I have a special argument against vouchers. I have a mental disability. Most private schools would not take me even if I paid the full tuition, without a voucher, so I had to go to a public school.
posted January 2, 2009 at 10:40 am
You definitely sound like you have a mental disability. The Obamas fall under the worst kind of socialists, like Sadam Hussain, they can live in luxury and get the best, yet the people can suffer and appreicate that they have anything, but all they have our promises, and the Obamas (or the Democratic elite)continue their power and hold on the promises
posted January 2, 2009 at 2:52 pm
The Republicans just socialized the banking and auto industries and Stevie Wonder calls Obama a socialist. Is there anyone more hypocritical than a Christian? There couldn’t be. That would be IMPOSSIBLE! I’d rather be a socialist than a Christian fascist.
posted October 9, 2009 at 10:07 pm
If I lived in DC, I surely wouldn’t want to send my kids to public school either, but certainly would apply for the DC voucher program that you are opposed to, Rev. Barry, or home school them with all my “spare time”.