Thursday, October 13, 2011

'Parental authority is at the heart of school choice'

John E. Coons, an emeritus law professor at Cal-Berkeley who has championed school choice for four decades, says "parental empowerment can't exist unless the parent has the power to enforce his or her own rules or decisions."
You can't be a responsible person unless you have authority. The popular talk about parental responsibility needs to include this premise. Bill Cosby picks on parents who disengage from school. He’s right, but this stick of his has two ends. Passivity and despair are the response of powerless parents to the predicament we've arranged for them. It is the classic recipe for impotence and withdrawal by the adult and bewilderment by the child who learns that the role of parent carries little social or moral weight.

Whatever family may mean, if you value it, you’d better see to it that the not-so-rich American parent has real authority over who has access to the child's mind for the prime hours of 13 years of his or her life.

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