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By Jennifer Foote Sweeney

May 22, 2000 | As exposés go, it lacks originality. But the front page story "outing" public officials who send their kids to private schools never fails to ignite outrage and indignation. And these days, with the vouchers debate as a subplot, these stories offer even more shameful examples of hypocrisy for the morally pristine reader.

"Skipping public school: Bigwigs pick private ed for their kids" was the headline of last month's punishing entry, this one on the front page of the New York Daily News. The violators were very high-profile -- Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the Reverend Al Sharpton -- and included members of the Board of Education. Even more scandalous: Some are on the record as opposing vouchers, effectively seeking to deny the option of private school to families who can't afford it.

"It calls into question one's commitment to a public position when you don't practice it in your private life," responded Assemblyman Steven Sanders (D-Manhattan), chairman of the Education Committee.

But here is the problem. Or one of the problems. Assemblyman Steven Sanders doesn't have kids. Based on his own judgement, that should disqualify him from talking about this stuff. In fact, it should disqualify him from sitting on the Education Committee. You might even say that his commitment to any public position regarding children is seriously in question, given the details of his private life.

If admittance to the public debate about public education requires having a child enrolled in public school, we're done. Great minds, eloquent voices and energetic activists would be banned from participation and the enormous problems would remain unresolved. In fact, parents with kids in public school hardly have time for basic issues of survival. Place the burden on them -- exclusively -- to resurrect the public school system and that system is doomed.

I thought we had decided this issue anyway. Wasn't it the consensus of the American people that Bill Clinton's sexual meanderings should not disqualify him from running the country? Didn't we decide a long time ago that the details of our private lives would not determine our suitablity as activists, leaders or voters participating in the public debate? Can you own a car and take a position on air quality? If you are 23 years old, is it okay to demand new rules for Social Security? Is a vegetarian allowed to fight for strict inspections of chicken or beef? Yes, yes and yes.

But let's say fitness for taking a public position on education, as defined by a very narrow standard, is not in question. Let's say you have a child. Let's say that child is not yet in school, but scheduled to attend in the fall. This is where, if you are to maintain allegiance to the democratic ideal and perform your civic duty, you pack your child off to public school and then bask in the sanctimonious praise of your peers.

It is true that we have long assumed that our children belonged to us, or, in a more enlightened vein, that they belonged to no one at all. As parents we have fancied ourselves the guardians of these individuals. But in reality, the biological bond is nothing compared to the claim that society has on their wee bodies and minds. They are not sons or daughters, but symbols. They are "the future," our salvation, our little ambassadors to the beyond. Which is to say that they are the tiny conduits of adult ego, adult ambition and adult frustration.

Talk about passing the buck.

So as we consider where our symbols should go to school, we are supposed to give priority to the current moral and political agenda. Rather than base our decision on our children's idiosyncratic best interests, we must give priority to the greater good, to healing an ailing public school system.

We may believe that we know our children best, that we care most for their future happiness and that what matters in a school is what our children might love or like or find exciting or irresistible in that school. But it is considered more important to use our children to prove a point, to march them past the metal detectors and armed guards at their local public schools so that they can be counted, hoist attendance high and prove that public education is worth saving.

This is your responsiblity, your child's responsibility. And if it means that your child will be frustrated, hurt, uninspired and undereducated, too bad. This is the price you and your child must pay, especially if you have taken the liberty of publicly advocating the improvement of public schools.

The Dickensian model rules the day: Children once labored in the factory to support their families; now they must labor in the substandard school to demonstrate their parents' committment to public education.

Some of us feel that democracy in education is not about raising the attendance of public schools but creating a system in which families of all incomes have a choice about their children's educations. We insist that the real problem is that too many families cannot afford to even consider private-school educations for their children. And we believe that it is possible to support this point of view -- and the idea of vouchers -- without condeming public schools to ruin.

But we come up against another unwritten rule, another new twist on the First Amendment, which says that we are not entitled to a layered opinion, a creative response, a two-dimensional concept that provides for a generous and realistic approach to a seemingly impossible dilemma.

It would be nice if parents -- as citizens, as voters, as thinking human beings -- felt compelled to improve the public school system, and to acknowledge its teachers. They should, if only to enrich their choices as parents. But they have many, many tools at their disposal to do this -- money, voices, votes, time. One of those tools, however, is not their children. Their children are their responsibility, their first priority, people who they love and for whom they want the best.

As it happens, my child attends public school and I am entitled, by this credential alone, to condemn those who have failed public schools by not surrendering their children to the cause. But I am entitled to this privilege by privilege. I happen to live where the public schools are good (supported by wealthy taxpayers and their extravagant donations). Understand this: If my child needs, for any reason, to attend a private school, I will find the best one I can afford and send her there. And I will continue to support public schools.

Consider me outed, with no regrets.

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