equality is to your right

From the Adam Smith Institute comes this quote:

"Some of the most left-wing journalists I know pay school fees, or intend to do so. Other bus (or taxi) their children to a covertly selective state school, while making a fuss about how they didn't 'go private'. I can think of only a handful who chose a conventional council comprehensive."

- Peter Wilby, former editor of the New Statesman (Times Educational Supplement, 28 July 2006)

These journalists are smart enough to understand that selective schooling does allow the kids to reach more of their potential, and so they hang up their lefty morality out of love for their children to ensure they have the best possible start. Everybody elses children of course don't matter so much, and can therefore stay in comprehensive system. Their thinking being that it be better obviously that somebodies elses children suffer for your personal morality than your own. Just as it is better to spend somebody elses money (via state coercion) rather than your own (via charity) to demonstrate your personal morality.

Strangely it is generally people on the right that call for everybody to be able to get the chance of giving their children the education that they would wish for their own. It is therefore the right that is more egalitarian on this issue, rather than simply thinking that saying the correct words to sound egalitarian, like these lefty journalists, is all that is needed.