There are a three commonplace events that make me pause and feel how fortunate I am to be an American. One of them is when buying paper towels and toilet paper from Costco. It’s difficult to find a more effective combination of mass production, mass consumption, voluntary exchange, impeccable quality control, and a large corporation treating its customers and employees with equity.
The second is dining in an ethnic restaurant, preferably Ethiopian. It’s difficult to find a better expression of initiative, immigration, and freedom to open a small business.
The third is attending a peaceful demonstration on a matter of fundamental importance. That happened today at the Opt-Out Rally in front of MCPS headquarters.
Approximately 200 people, mostly Moslem Americans, gathered peacefully to seek the basic courtesy of having some influence on a curriculum that an illegitimate school board forces on their children. They easily outnumbered the No-Choice counter-demonstration by five to one.
Although the demonstration was sponsored by Moslem Americans, there was absolutely no sense that the participants seek to inject Islam into the school curriculum. These people believe that Islamic education starts and ends at home or at the mosque, and there is no justification for a child who is not a Moslem to be forced to study the Koran. Quite the opposite is the case with the No-Choice crowd, who really believe they should be able to force their beliefs on everyone, including children who are forced to attend public schools.
Public schools are a shared resource, just like highways and parking lots. The only thing the Beltway provides is a transportation route from Point A to Point B (and a lot of frayed nerves between them). The Beltway doesn’t offer lessons in calculus, and you don’t need to pass a calculus test to use an off-ramp. Similarly, you don’t need to cover the highlights of Sumerian civilization to use the county parking lot on Wayne Ave. There are no arguments over highways and parking lots, because those infrastructure items do the bare minimum they are supposed to do.
Public schools must behave similarly. Because the public schools are a shared resource, they must serve the all the people who use it. That means providing the minimal common denominator of services and no more. Every parent agrees that that common denominator is reading, writing, mathematics, and American history. That’s all the school system should provide. Everything else can be available on an opt-in basis.
Will the Opt-Out crowd be successful? In 2020 an equally arrogant Board of Education attempted to use students to repair failing schools, basically demanding unpaid child labor to compensate for their failures. Parents at that time successfully faced down the social engineers. In 2023, I’m confident that by keeping up the pressure, showing up in numbers, and applying a mild dose of civil disobedience, the Opt-Out crowd will force the school board to back down. The Board of Education will never be able to admit they are doing something wrong, but they may be able to realize that nobody, except for their very few friends, likes them. Given the five-to-one ratio at today’s demonstration, the Board of Education has very few friends indeed.
