IWF for State-Subsidized Male Fantasyland
Writing over at National Review, Carrie Lukas hypes public education:
Some states and localities are allowing public-school systems to offer single-sex options. Increasingly, policymakers and the public believe that all parents deserve to have more control and options for where their children are taught.
Michigan recently moved in the direction of allowing single-sex education. In late June, the Michigan House of Representatives and Senate passed bills that would permit single-sex programs in public schools. No child would be required to attend a single-sex classroom, but Michigan parents may have new options to consider.
One might assume that women's organizations, like the National Organization for Women (NOW), would cheer for the mothers in Michigan who stand to gain more control over their children's education.
I'm not sure what readership Lukas is addressing here; you'd have to be pretty out of touch to assume that NOW would be in favor of this. But the setup here is equally ridiculous: Do you support options for parents? Yes? Then you must want the state to cordon off nine-year-old girls!
I had a fine time at an all-girls Catholic high school run by middle-aged lesbians, so I'd be open to the argument that single-sex schools produce better results. Turns out, they probably don't. More to the point, the rhetoric of choice, which Lukas employs promiscuously here, doesn't fly when someone else has to pay for your choices. Lukas could have used the same logic to justify anything a state-funded school decides to waste money on: You don't support taxpayer-funded abstinence classes? Traditional Sex-ed? Creationism classes? Condoms for all? Free ponies? Why do you hate choice?
Here's my favorite bit:
NOW's reaction to Michigan's legislation reveals the absurd lengths to which the feminist gender warriors will go to paint women as victims and preemptively cry discrimination. NOW president Kim Gandy warned of the dire consequences of allowing single-sex options to exist… Can Gandy seriously believe that Michigan public-school systems are going to develop male-only advanced math and science courses while shuffling girls into woman-only home-ec classes?
Can Gandy seriously believe that public school administrators—government employees—won't be scrupulously fair, impartial, and competent? Weird.
Question: Do people still take home-ec classes? Even when I was in high school, I thought that only happened on Saved By the Bell.