Yes, We Should Focus on Peace in Education

Neal McCluskeyOver just the last 24 hours, I have seen several videos of rage and recrimination at school board meetings, including a mobscreaming at and threatening people who had just testified for mask mandates in Williamson County, Tennessee (video below) andthis meltdown in North Penn, Pennsylvania. These painful videos join this Junebrouhaha in Loudoun County, VA, and many other anger-soaked meetings over the last year or so.It is hard to watch these often-incensed exchanges and be anything but saddened at neighbor pitted against neighbor.Recently, Robert Pondiscio at the American Enterprise Institute has been highly critical of something I emphasize about school choice: it offers more peaceful coexistence among diverse people than does public schooling. Instead of forcing one answer on everyone, which is the crux of the wrenching scenes we see playing out across the country, choice enables people to pursue what they think is right – masking or no masking, critical race theory or no critical race theory – without having to impose it on, or deny it to, those who disagree.Ina piece last week, Pondiscio framed this argument as saying “public education sucks,” and even wrote, oddly, that the message seems to be pulled “from a mob movie: ‘You’ve got a nice family. It’d be a shame if anything were to happen to ‘em.’”Part of Pondiscio ’s complaint is that saying people should be able to avoid imposition of ideas they find unacceptable is basically the o...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs