Westneat to School Critics: I Wish You Could Just Shut Your Big Yappers!

We've been hoping for weeks to publish what Danny Westneat did today--an open letter to everyone who says Seattle's schools are shitty.

You've all made your point that Seattle schools stink.

But before we subject ourselves to any more of this Seattle self-flagellation, please first indulge me a little quiz. Among our state's 10 largest cities, where do you suppose Seattle ranks for academic achievement?

Westneat then supplies statistics indicating that Seattle schools are among the best in the state. He concludes that the mayor, the talk show pundits, and, pointedly, his own newspaper's editorial board, should stick it.

But he left out a critical wellspring of bullshit: the parents/"advocates". The shrill, bizarre, and sometimes offensive barrage of absurd reasoning from a lot of people with waaaaaayyyy too much time on their hands is what's brought this debate to the boil.

Just one example, which we apologize in advance for absolutely skewering, but it really lit a fire under us: Here's a guy who asserts, in an article called "It's Time for Visionary Leadership," (ok, when is that ever not true, guy?) that the next superintendent of schools should be part Martin Luther King, Jr., part Bill Gates.

Sir, if that person existed, he or she would be running for President, or climbing the ladder toward CEO of Time Warner, or something. Not running the fucking Seattle Schools.

If you want to wait around for Almighty God to send you a Nobel Prize Winner to run your local schools, you are going to be well and truly, fucked, my friend. How about if you pull your head out of the sky/your ass and look around you.

We see public schoolkids every day. They aren't all earnestly discussing Proust, or proving Fermat's last theorem on a portable dry-erase board. But they are bright-eyed, sociable, frequently funny, active, and damned if they can't send a text message faster than we can even get our phone out of its holster.

Westneat had a message for his employers, here's our message to the parents/"advocates": SHUT THE FUCK UP. Instead of constantly second-guessing the school board and the superintendent (who you've now driven away), let the professionals do their jobs.

Schools will get closed. That will suck. But until your kid comes home one day and starts screaming racial slurs at you (like some parents did at superintendent Raj Manhas) or holding a paper where he suggests that his Dad should be part Ichiro, part David Beckham, maybe you ought to put a fork in it.