Sorry, progressives — your privilege isn't a conundrum. It's just a bit awkward.
Parents put their kids first all the time. Don't apologize for that. It's your job.
Hey everyone, and happy Sunday. I hope your week was terrific. Last week, here at Code 47, I noted that there wouldn't be much updating in the update. That's still true. To be honest, I was even less productive on this second week of holiday — I frontloaded all the little errands and tasks I needed to get done into my first week off and spent this one doing very little. (Folks, I cannot stress this enough: when you go on holiday, delete your email apps from your phone. It's amazing.)
So, again, I'll offer a musing in place of an update. This one courtesy of the Globe and Mail.
The Globe's Saturday edition has a fascinating longread on inequities in education. I won't recap it at length. It's worth reading in full. But the crux of it is this: as wealthier families pull their kids out of public schools in favour of online learning or privately funded "learning pods" — very small classes with a tutor — public schooling as an institution will become more unequal. If this is just a blip that will vanish with a rapid passing of the COVID-19 threat, then probably no long-term harm will be done. If COVID is with us for many years, or if this marks a new trend in education that continues beyond the pandemic's conclusion, well, that could be a problem. The article also describes a related problem: learning pods, which are only going to be available to families of at least some means, will be less diverse (one would expect) than a public-school classroom. Pod kids will be less exposed to diversity, in all its forms, than they would be otherwise.
Again, that's a fast recap. It's a really interesting article and you should read it in full. But there was one part of it that seemed a bit — well, a bit "Duh" — to me. The article notes that some politically left-leaning parents, self-styled progressives, are struggling with their decision to pull their kids out of school for online learning or pods.
"Nothing is going to marginalize kids more than people like me who could afford a learning pod," one self-declared lefty dad told the Globe. "The bottom line as a parent is I still have to put my kid's interests above every other point of view or political point of view that I have."
I mean ... yeah. Or, in gif form:
The Globe piece (though generally commendable) fits into a subclass of articles that I am amused by on a semi-regular basis. "Privileged person enjoys privileges" doesn't seem like something that would need to be spelled out in Canada's paper of record, but it apparently is (and it's spelled out elsewhere, too, of course). The dad referenced above has it 100 per cent right, I think: a parent's responsibility is always to their children before everything else. And I've always been weirded out by anyone who either doesn't agree with that point of view, or does, but feels like they need to squirm on the hook while trying to justify it. You don't need to justify acting like a parent. It's what you're supposed to do.
The good news is, most of the time, there's no real conflict between being a good parent and being a good lefty prog. The Globe article brushes against this reality, perhaps without actually realizing it, when it describes "the conundrum of privilege": "Parents who identify as progressives, who care about equity, who may have taken their children to the climate strike or hung up a Black Lives Matter poster in their window, don't think twice about what it means to give their children advantages that others don't have access to."
OK, but ... these aren't the same things, and not saying as much was an odd omission in an otherwise fine article. Consider the major goals of mainstream BLM activists (simplifying here for space, obviously): eliminating/reducing systemic racism, reforming the police, criminal law reforms, improving the justice system and enhancing mental-health care supports. These are ideas that might benefit Black communities the most, and the fastest, but here’s the catch: they're good ideas on their own merits. Ditto climate change: catastrophic environmental damage to the Earth will land on the poor first and hardest, but won't spare anyone. That's why there's no problem here for the prog parents: it's easy to march or hang a poster for a cause that, at worst, does your children no harm, and may in fact provide at least marginal benefit.
The affluent demanding social change that isn't going to make their lives worse, and might somewhat improve it, isn't social justice. It's self-interest. A kinder, gentler form of self-interest than many others, of course, but still. Besides, the social advantages of being seen supporting the right causes is a benefit, too. It's a win-win: you get all the acclaim of being on the right side of the issue de jour and it won't make your life (or your kids’ lives) worse — it may, in fact, be of some benefit. For these folks, signing up for the march isn't exactly a profile in courage, is it?
But when there's actual skin in the game, when there are actual trade-offs — when it's your child's education and potentially their safety — suddenly, well, hey, I've gotta put the kids first.
Let’s see that gif again:
This isn't even a "conundrum" — defined as a "difficult and confusing problem or question." Because it's not confusing or difficult. It's just awkward for the climate-marching and BLM poster-hanging crowd.
I'm not clear why anyone would be surprised by this. The people fretting about putting their children first are undoubtedly the same people who fret about homelessness but lose their minds when a homeless shelter comes to their neighbourhood, or who demand affordable housing but also demand no high-rise intensification in their line of sight. "I believe in social equity and my child is in an education pod" is just another flavour of, "Gosh, I mean, obviously we need more housing, but why does my backyard have to be in the shadow of this new tower?"
I'm not even knocking these folk. I'm arguably one of them, at least on some issues. The only real difference is that I don't spend a lot of time pretending otherwise. My children, and then my family and closest friends more broadly and then myself personally, are always my top priority. Happily, most of my objectives can be pursued without harming others; some of my objectives would even be, gasp, progressive! But when there's a conflict between my family's wellbeing and the wellbeing of society at large, so long as the toll on society isn't egregiously awful, I'm OK with putting my family first. And I don't really believe anyone who tells me they'd act differently.
And this is, I suppose, my politics in a microcosm. I believe progress is possible in many areas. I believe progress is desirable in many areas. But it has to account for human nature, and I don't think my priorities are in any way unusual. I suspect I'm just more willing than most be honest about my self-interest. I've checked my privilege: it's still there and I'm grateful for that.
Oh, and by the way, in case you're wondering: both my kids are returning to public school next week, in person. We could afford a learning pod or private school — that last one would take a significant bite out of our discretionary income but it's within our means. But we chose in-person public school, because we felt that was the best environment for our kids, in terms of their educational but more importantly their social needs. If we'd felt otherwise, we'd have done something else (and we did consider it).
And that's the point: the decision was always going to be made with only one thing in mind — what's the best choice we can make for the kids. That's what I'd expect from every parent, no apologies or justifications necessary.
As for the roundup, there's just this: Jen Gerson wrote an interesting article over at The Line, where she makes the case for living in a second-tier city (Calgary, in her case). A big city like Toronto, where Jen spent her 20s, is good for that phase in life, she grants, but now that she's a working mom in her 30s, an affordable city like Calgary offers more than the rat race in Toronto would. Fair enough.
But as a guy who was born and raised in/around Toronto, it struck me as interesting. When you grow up in a big city, I wrote here at Code 47, you can accomplish all the things that Jen talks about doing — moving to the big city to find yourself, starting out in your first job in a condo in an affordable area, decamping to the burbs when it's time to have kids — all in the same city. Completely changing your financial and personal life doesn't mean moving 2,000 kilometres. It means moving a few neighbourhoods and keeping your phone number.
That's it for this week. Thanks for reading. Please enjoy and share widely, and stay tuned. I'm back to work on Tuesday so there'll be more to recap next week. In the meantime, take care of yourselves, your kids and, to the extent it does not conflict with the first two, everyone else.
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Twitter.com/MattGurney
Photo credit: Douglas P Perkins under Creative Commons 3.0 Unported licence.