Conservative Forebodings.

This Atlantic article by George Packer will seem foreign to much of the country, where children still have childhoods absent adult concerns, but it is good to see "push back" in the early laboratories of democracy. Public school students are not test animals/guinea pigs. But they are capable of taking tests and competing in places where there are enough resources to go around.

“Isn’t school for learning math and science and reading,” he asked us one day, “not for teachers to tell us what to think about society?” He was responding as kids do when adults keep telling them what to think. He had what my wife called unpoliticized empathy.

Parents who choose institutions over people, especially their own young ones, are forewarned.

That pragmatic genius for which Americans used to be known and admired, which included a talent for educating our young—how did it desert us? Now we’re stewing in anxiety and anger, feverish with bad ideas, too absorbed in our own failures to spare our children.

You can still vote with your feet, and walk away from unhealthy environments like that. There is sanctuary in common-sense places.