So in other words you believe that to work towards a better world, you have to expose yourself and family to all the disadvantages you are trying to fix? Yes, private schools are an instrument of class segregation. So is housing. Do you think politicians fighting for progressive housing initiatives can't live in wealthy neighborhoods. Particularly considering, even if Warren did send her kids to public schools (one of her two kids did attend public schools btw), if she lived in a wealthy neighborhood, her kids would likely have still enjoyed significant benefits because the public schools would have been much better funded compared to poorer districts.
I think you need to be more careful about how you define hypocrisy. She would be a hypocrite if she said wealthy people shouldn't send their kids to private schools, which I've never heard her say (maybe she has). She would also be a hypocrite if laws were passed banning private schools based on her legislation, but she created a loop hole allowing her to send her kids to private schools. This is very different from fighting to improve public schools while sending her child to a private school. Her sending her own kids to public schools fixes nothing. It would be purely theater. Passing legislation that promotes public schools over elite private schools on the other hand does fix the problem. I don't blame her for not disadvantaging her children purely for the sake of political theater.
Consider professional sports teams before salary caps. Even if a program believed in a salary cap, that doesn't mean that they should have to subject themselves to the salary cap before the rules were passed just to avoid hypocrisy. It means that if the rules are changed, then they are willing to play by them.
I'm largely going on my own reactions. I sometimes find, when encountering affluent liberals, that I find myself thinking, if _I_ find them annoying, despite actually agreeing with most of what they say, how much counter-productive resentment must they provoke from those more proletarian than I am?
Every time the Guardian, for example, carries an article decrying the under-representation of some group, women or black people, say, in some institution, they always have to delete any comment anyone posts pointing out the massive over-representation of the privately-educated (or elite grammar-school educated) and Oxbridge on the paper's own staff. And if you are sending your own children to such schools, it _is_ hypocrisy, to in theory favour a more equal society, yet do everything you can to ensure your own family continue to benefit from class privilege for generation after generation. That's why Labour politicians regularly get into hot water for sending their children to private or grammar schools.
It just isn't a good look to rail against some kinds of segregation and inequality while doing all you can to profit fro another kind. And politically you will have more success at bringing people with you if you share their experiences and concerns.
As for playing what is called the 'school catchment area game' - yeah, there's an inevitable degree of hypocrisy there as well, but I think it's a question of degree. The difference in resources and standards between different state schools of the same type has not, traditionally, been anywhere near as great as that between the state and private sector, not since the end of the grammar/secondary modern distinction (though now the Academies concept has allowed sneaking privatisation of all state schools, and reintroduction of selection by the back door, here that has started to change, which is depressing, and a reason why I dislike Academies/charter schools).
The fundamental problem surely has to be when all the major political figures, even those on 'the left' have so much money that the dilemma even arises for them. For most people, sending children to private school isn't an option because they can't afford it.
The 7% of the population who are privately-educated here increasingly dominate the media and everything else.
e.g. from
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/elitism-in-britain-2019
- Senior judges - 65%
- Civil Service permanent secretaries - 59%
- The House of Lords - 57%
- Foreign and Commonwealth Office diplomats - 52%
The media also has some of the highest numbers of privately educated people. Of the 100 most influential news editors and broadcasters, 43% went to fee-paying schools. Similarly, 44% of newspaper columnists were privately educated, with a third - 33% - attending both an independent school and Oxbridge.
I'd also mention that the presenters on the main non-BBC radio station, LBC, are most all privately-educated, as are most 'ordinary bloke' 'in touch with the masses' conservative commentators and politicians (like Nigel Farage or Kelvin Mckenzie)
So it's hard not to roll one's eyes when a privately educated writer on a paper full of privately-educated writers goes on about the under-representation of a disadvantaged group at some other institution.
I certainly wouldn't spit hate at Warren, or anyone else who at least tries to do the right thing on a political level, over this issue, my point is that it _is_ a vulnerability and a political weakness (and also a pet-irritation) but it doesn't invalidate everything she says. It's the sort of thing that I tend to remember when a politician or commentator backslides and stops trying to do the right thing by the majority of ordinary people, though. E.g. Chris Hitchens - it was when he moved rightward that I most remembered he was the son of an admiral and privately educated.
(My facetious idea is that we should send all the most disruptive and troubled students to the most elite private schools to be educated alongside the children of the rich, because those schools are the ones best resourced to deal with them.)
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