If anything the ‘anti-capitalist tirade’ doesn’t really go far enough. Cory lists various other hypothetical things that schools could auction off, presumably for hyperbole.
Except those things are mostly things that richer parents already can and do pay for.
Richer parents can afford to buy books for their children that poorer parents can’t.
Richer parents can afford to pay for tutoring which poorer parents can’t afford.
Richer parents can buy their children a place they can do their schoolwork.
Richer parents can buy houses where there are better schools, if they don’t want to go to the expense of paying to send their kids to a (better, natch) fee-paying school.
Richer parents can afford to buy food that poorer parents can’t.
And so on and so on.
This scheme acknowledged and put right out in the shop window the fact of inequality and lauded it as desirable.
The Swift reference elsewhere in the thread was apt, except this proposal was apparently in earnest (at least at the brainstorming stage) instead of being a deliberate satire.
Again, it would be one thing if this was an actual thing or intentional. But odds are it was put a list from a group of ideas people had. Some of those ideas were bad, really bad. The fact it got rejected shows that someone thought about it and came to the same conclusion that it was bad for the various reasons already outlined. The people who rejected this are probably horrified it somehow slipped through. Or maybe not, who knows. But the fact it was rejected shows that the people in charge agrees that it was a horrible idea.
To be honest, I can see someone saying this as a good intentioned suggestion to raise money. They didn’t put thought into it. They probably are naive about how other people live, but it wasn’t from a place of malice. They may have even been corrected already as to why they weren’t moving forward with this. Honestly it feels like dead horse beating.
I think our discussion here is more akin to an autopsy of a dead horse. Unless the person who typed up the orientation package is in this forum.
I’m just saying that all of these are appropriate consequences for honest mistakes:
Being exposed to the harm you’ve caused by making the mistake
Being expected to right whatever wrong was done
Being expected to explain what you will do to make sure a similar mistake is not repeated
Some mistakes would have even more severe consequences, but I don’t think it’s at all reasonable to argue that any of the above is invalidated just because a mistake was an honest one. I don’t think any of the reaction here goes beyond any of that.
My mother was a elementary school cafeteria worker in the Midwest for many years. I’m sure if a kid slipped her a crisp Benjamin, they would have gotten their food first.
That’s the lack of ethics I was talking about. Why is it important that we don’t encourage that kind of thinking with our progeny, despite the fact that realistically in many cases, it proves to be true?
Because of the current POTUS; that’s why.
Therein lies a perfect example of someone who grew up believing that money matters more than anything else, and that having it exempts a person from all responsibility and morality.
Or: it was intended to be implemented, and this is their way of backing out of it now that it has blown up in their faces. Either way, it shows where their heart is.
Likewise, I don’t give any credit to Abraham for not killing his son. You’re supposed to not kill your children. Yet, Abraham still trundled him up to the mountain and had his knife at Isaac’s throat.
School’s aren’t even supposed to consider methods and practices that corrode the well-being of their students.
Children are already massively attuned to minor status distinctions, in and among their peer group. This constant questioning “Am I OK? Do you think I’m OK? Am I OK in the group? Do they accept me? What’s my status level?” is basic to our primate biology.
So, here comes the school, the ostensibly neutral arbiter, telling certain children to “eat first-class.” The institution of the school (after it singles out the Poor Kids from the Rich Kids) is telling the poorer kids “The Rich Kids better than you.” And the kids themselves, being kids, will certainly revel in their power. “I get to go first.”
This is Dr. Suess’ The Sneetches put into practice.
