Feminists Against Choice

In Michigan the state legislature recently passed a bill to permit single-sex programs in the public schools. “No child would be required to attend a single-sex classroom,” writes Carrie Lukas, but parents would be allowed to choose. Those parents who believe that children learn better without the distraction of the other sex in the classroom could have their way. And those parents who believe that co-education “breeds healthy social interaction” could have their way too.

It is a radical concept, of course. The very idea that parents ought to direct their children’s education!

But the feminists object. Kim Gandy of the National Organization for Women:

We strongly oppose these bills because the separation of boys and girls, and the underlying (and false) assumption that girls and boys are so different that they shouldn't even be educated together, introduces harmful gender stereotypes into public education. This could lead to, among other possible outcomes, emphasizing math and science for boys, and for girls, less rigorous course work.

Ah yes. The King Charles’s head for feminists. Off in a secret male-only classroom, there is a danger that boys will be gaining an unfair advantage over girls in math and science. We must stamp that out!

I recently spoke with a young women who delightedly told me that she was working as a genetics counselor. She had a degree in microbiology and had worked for a few years in a lab. But then she quit and went to Japan to teach English for a couple of years. Now she’s back and she much prefers her job as a counselor, helping people with genetic screening and associated life decisions, to working in a lab.

You can math-and-science girls all you like, but in the end most women will choose to do people work rather than numbers-and-things work. And why not?

But that is all by the way, and a distraction. Let us get this straight.

It is wrong and it is a gross injustice to maintain a public school system at taxpayers’ expense that impose a one-size-fits-all policy on the education of children.

It is wrong to submit the education of children to the centralizing power of political pressure groups.

It is the right of every parent to direct the education of their children.

And it is wrong for political activists to interfere with that right.