Currently an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values, Gallagher has worked as an article editor of National Review, senior editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, and as a senior fellow at the Center for Social Thought. In this month's Commentary, for a change, he aims his rapier logic at the part parents play in our education problems. Not all parents, and probably not even most parents. But enough parents to drive the average school administrator or teacher absolutely bonkers. As mandatory policies go, this one is pretty respectful.
Parents can have their own kids excused for religious, medical or other reasons.
Good parents, we have been raised to believe, are those who side with their kid against all comers. We also have a hard time with the idea of judgment and competition, which perversely breeds in our kids the idea that losing is not a normal part of life but an emotional disaster. However it happened, the mess has to be untangled. Parents have to support their children's schools, and schools have to support their students' family values, because education is the process of transmitting not just technical skills but cultural values. Of which I think learning to play by the rules, take your lumps, and honor the achievements of others are no small part.