The Luv Doc: Private School

Dear Luv Doc,

Since our son turned 5, my husband and I have been arguing over whether he should go to a public or private school. My husband went to private school through eighth grade and is insisting that we send him to an expensive private school that is on the other side of Austin from us – easily a 20-to-30-minute drive during rush hour. Meanwhile, there is a public elementary in our neighborhood – that we paid a lot of money to be in – that is five blocks from our house and is ranked in the top 20% of local schools, both public and private. I can't even believe we are arguing about this. He says he doesn't want to "risk our son's education on the public school system" which, by the way, I am a product of, and I have multiple degrees. He never went to public school, so how can he be so sure? I am afraid my husband's private education wasn't as thorough as he thinks it was – especially given his abandonment of common sense on this issue. I am hoping that you can come to my aid with your always insightful and irreverent commentary.

– M.A. (Public) University of Texas

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Last week was Red Hot Chili Peppers and this week private schools? What an embarrassment of riches! Oh, and also thank you for the compliment! I am not by nature a pessimist, but I feel pretty certain next week's question will be much less salacious – probably something like, "Where is the G spot?" Yawn. By the way, I have no fucking idea, but I have a ChatGPT account, so expect a few thousand words of indecisive, ruthlessly tedious, and thoroughly unsexy prose on the anatomical enigma in question. That of course leads one to wonder: "Why is this supreme court justice-looking motherfucker even running an advice column? It's obvious he went to a second-tier school." True. Busted. I'm a UT grad as well. I couldn't scrape together the tuition for Liberty University.

Even though I didn't go to a top-tier Christian university, I can agree with your husband on one thing: Being a parent is scary. You send your kid off into the public school system and who knows what he might encounter? Drugs? Prostitution? Gang activity? Critical race theory? I'm not just talking about Eanes ISD (which, coincidentally, produced what is arguably Liberty University's most famous graduate, Super Bowl LII MVP Nick Foles, M.Div. 2018). I think we can all agree there are scarier public school districts. In fact, it's really hard to call Eanes ISD a school district, it's really more of a giant private school masquerading as a Municipal Utility District. I mean, anybody can move there from Dove Springs if they want to. Texas is a free country after all. Wait ... what? It's a republic? Well, fuck it, there goes my public school education showing again.

Anyway, point is, parents are scared. Some move to pricey places like West Lake, Pflugerville, or Lake Travis, and some people send their kids to private schools, many of which are called academies (academics right in the name!). Some of the priciest private schools are named after saints because if religion has taught us anything, it's that saints don't fuck with kids whose parents can't afford tuition. Apparently, this breaks Greg Abbott's black heart, because this year Governor Roomba suddenly has a huge boner for school vouchers (aka "segregation vouchers" by people who aren't hopelessly or willfully naive). In fact, GR is so randy for segregation he's having his speech writers urge Texas Education Agency officials to dig up dirt on underperforming school districts. How do they not teach irony in law school? Fueled by a heady blood rush of Dunning-Kruger hubris, he thinks his path to the presidency can be secured by giving Texas parents the "right to choose" – and to be clear, he means the right to choose segregation, not the right to choose what they do with their own bodies. Who knows? With a little luck and some shameless conservative grandstanding, Governor Roomba might actually become the next King of the Deplorables, but I doubt it. In this case, we should be thankful there are 38 states smarter than ours.

So, maybe ask your husband if he really wants to be on Governor Greg's D- Team, or does he want to be part of the solution and raise a public school child who is an educational inspiration to his peers? The happy news is that if you blew a lot of money on your house and both you and your husband have degrees, your son is already way ahead of the game. Segregation won't necessarily make him smarter, but it might make him more of a dick.