Bussing

	We all want the best for our kids.
We want them to go to the best schools, to live in the nicest homes, to wear the coolest clothes, and to have the neatest toys our meager paychecks can purchase.
	Some of us can afford less than others, but still we do the best we can. Others of us can afford more, and maybe, in some ways, we take some things for granted
We've got some basic precepts that tell us that, regardless of our race, color, creed, or social strata, all men (and women, for that matter) are created equal. The problem is, equality always looks really good on paper; but when somebody tries to enforce it, the folks on the side with the greener grass tend to get their backs up a little bit.
	Most of us can recall the preponderance of utopian ideals of the sixties that battered us with tales of harmony and understanding, and sympathy and trust abounding. Throughout our youth, we were beaten practically to death with the message that all you needed was love, which would steer the stars, as peace, if we gave it a chance, would guide the planets.
More recently, we've been smothered by political correctness: our children have stopped playing cowboys and Indians to play cowboys and Native Americans; gender references are altered to the point of distraction (George Halas threw around nickels like they were manhole covers; Mike McCaskey throws around nickels like they're subterranean access barriers), the big bad wolf no longer devours Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother, but instead fails to share his chocolate chip cookies; and we can't decide whether we should wring our hands first about what minority our high school mascot offends, or whether or not our alma mater's initials suggest any bodily function.
We've transcended sensitivity and found ourselves in fear of offending everyone. Again, though, these ideals look good on paper, but in practice, they've become more burdensome than we'd like to admit in this age of enlightenment.
What's the point?
Using these references, let's consider one issue that's made the news: someone has decided that it would be a good idea to change the boundaries of the elementary and middle schools on the west side of Aurora .A number of different proposals are on the table, and, none of them suit everybody, for some very good reasons. Unfortunately, to explicitly address these reasons, the concepts of peace, harmony, love, understanding, and ethnocentric sensitivity are going to go straight out the window, and we're going to be forced to call a club a club, as it were. Let's make it as inoffensive as possible: it's stupid to send our children to a school fifteen blocks away when we've got a really good school right in the next neighborhood. It's equally stupid to bring students fifteen blocks to our neighborhood, when they've got a perfectly good school in their own. It's called "bussing." Who remembers that word from the sixties?	A driving force behind the decision to change the school boundaries is the argument that some schools are better than others, so moving students from a bad school to a good school will make the bad school a good school. Unfortunately, the vice versa of that argument tells us that the good schools, in turn, will become worse. At the very best, the change will enable the district to reach an harmonious balance of mediocrity between them all. What else is causing concern? Well, obviously students from bad schools will infiltrate good schools, and make the good schools bad, too, and the students from good schools will be turned bad by the students who stay in the bad schools. Let's face it -- what are the chances of bad students following the example of the good students? We all know it's preferable to laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints because the sinners are much more fun.

Take the argument from one more angle: let's say a family has moved from one end of town to the other to avoid exposing their children to the unsavory elements of a specific school. They've incurred a higher mortgage, and by extension, a higher tax liability, a greater portion of which goes toward education. Then, one day, some local educational philosopher who's never faced a classroom full of students, decides the new residents, happily ensconced in their new schools and their new homes with higher tax bills now have to go back to their old school!
What's the answer?
Maybe we should bus the administrators.