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To actually achieve what Benedikt wants, her moral rule needs to be much stronger: something like “if you can afford private school for your kids, you have a moral obligation to put your kids in the worst school within range of your workplace.” This is unworkable for a dozen reasons, most importantly, because no one would do it. Even if they endorsed it in theory, they’d come up with all sorts of excuses as to why they need to move to Montclair even though really, they are avid supporters of urban public schools … it’s just that little Silas’s asthma is exacerbated by bus exhaust, and Andromache’s ADD makes urban noise pollution intolerable. This is, in fact, just the sort of moral gymnastics you currently hear about vouchers or private school…by people who are shopping for homes in “good” (pronounced “affluent”) school districts.
In short, while Benedikt is right about the problem, she’s wrong to think that there’s an easy solution. Humans are too wily to let a moral precept short-circuit a more primal instinct to grab as much as possible for their kids.
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