Visionaries,
Ralph raised a couple questions based on the reports in the newspaper that our private Christian school was limiting board membership to men only.
First, the board has not voted on that proposition. The board approved presenting the proposed change to the school’s constituency, and then collecting feedback. According to our by-laws, the board cannot change our by-laws without going through this process first. A vote on the change itself is still in the future.
Secondly, the fact that Ralph wants to debate the proposition from outside the school community might be one argument in favor of it. We have actively sought to build a school community in which fathers take responsibility for their children beyond the point of begetting them. This emphasis (which is all it has been from the founding of the school until the present) has resulted in de facto male representation on the board for some years now. So the change was obviously not being proposed because of rampant feminism in our school community. But once outsiders take an interest in what we are doing (as they have done), we want to be very careful about our political and legal position. Officious secularists don’t like genuine diversity anywhere, and more than once have resorted to coercive means to attack the right of private associations to determine their own rules for their own governance. One thinks of poor old Hootie at that golf club back east. So in one sense this is merely a question of whether we need formal authority for a de facto situation.
Third, I am grateful that the reality of what is happening with education in Moscow is becoming obvious. What our school board does on such questions is now newsworthy, and of interest to the broader community. Given the demographics and trajectory of education in our town (discussed in this space before), I actually think some of this is appropriate. But secularist outsiders will need to practice some things. Actual diversity in a community includes things like this, instead of the pretend diversity of the scratch and sniff variety so popular in progressive circles. And frankly, Ralph’s suggestions on what we should be teaching our daughters comes across like a helpful Gentile suggesting BLTs for the synagogue potluck.
Cordially,
Douglas Wilson
“Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community, whose names I have changed. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.” Reading just these posts probably feels like listening to one half of a phone conversation, but I don’t feel at liberty to publish what others have written. But I have been editing these posts (lightly) with intelligibility in mind.