<Trolling for outrage across the Bay in Oakland again, eh Tom? Definitely a target-rich environment for you.

I must admit, finding this stuff in the Bay Area is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel.

Hard to dispute that that special school is way off at the fringe. However, it was interesting to read down a ways in the article that the school is working, by traditional measures: Attendance and grades are up, dropouts and behavior problems are down.

I ran through the article three times...I know I miss stuff, but I didn't see any references to data on grades, individual attendance, dropouts, or anything on the school's statistics at all. What were you referring to?

I understand that a special part of your ire is that this is being done with tax money. That raises an interesting question: Would it be OK with you if this curriculum were taught at a private school? How about a private school paid for by vouchers?

I could not care less about what is taught at a private school if I am not forced to attend and have other choices. Like the car my neighbor down the street decides to buy, what school he sends his kid to is his own business, and I consider him to be at least as competent at making such decisions as I am. If schools were private, good ones would get customers, and lousy ones wouldn't. If the approach this school is using actually worked in a private school--and I have my doubts--more power to them. Vouchers are kind of a neither fish-nor-fowl approach, and not where I would like the education system to be in an ideal world, but they at least give parents more of a choice, and I support them in the real world.

More broadly, seems to me that any voucher system leads to Balkanization of curricula...you'll see more of this kind of thing under vouchers than you see under a government schools system, with its natural bureaucratic bias towards standardization and inoffensiveness. The Right focuses on liberation of Christian schools to teach "traditional values" under a voucher system, but it will also facilitate the teaching of values you find offensive. Can you handle it?

Bring it on! "Balkanization" is not a good word. A good word is "choice." Like what you get in the cereal aisle at the grocery store. Fiber-rich organic health food, right next to Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. It's only a problem for the sort of people who think other people aren't competent to make their own decisions.

In real life, of course, the market would drive the schools towards a lot of common curricula anyway. Stuff that is proven to work, as opposed to politically-driven, would spread to many schools, and be cheaper for the larger numbers.

Interestingly, the education bureaucrats who fought a wonderful voucher initiative in California used a similar argument, warning parents in meetings that all sorts of bizarre schools like "witchcraft" schools might spring up.* Of course, the proper response would be to turn to the audience and ask all the parents who would send their kids to witch school to raise their hands. Well, what do you know? No hands. Not a problem.** And hey, maybe some pagan parents WANT to send their kids to a Wicca school. Or a "Black Power" school. Or maybe a school that teaches using methods no one has even thought of yet, like a home internet hookup. It's a free country, right? And someday even the vouchers won't be needed any more.

*It's interesting that they would steer their example specifically to frighten religious fundamentalists.

**Of course, this was before Harry Potter was popular, so who knows how many parents would raise their hands now?