I find it hard to believe that education alone is the issue, or even the main issue. There are plenty of crappy public schools in the suburbs. The school system in the very white, very middle class suburban town that I live in doesn't offer an enrichment track either. Our state mandates that school systems test to identify gifted and talented students, but it doesn't mandate that they offer programs, and since the schools can't afford it, they don't. I think people flee to the suburbs because they prefer homogeneity to the multicultural atmosphere in big cities. By doing so, of course, they deprive their children of the opportunity to get to know all sorts of different people, and also (if they're really interested in education) remove them from proximity to world-class museums, art galleries, huge libraries, theater, live music, and all that other good stuff that really goes into making an education. It would be interesting to see how many of the kids raised in these places want to stay on once they're done with college.

And if Brooks is attempting to argue that conservatives actually take their child-rearing responsibilities more seriously than do liberals, well, I'm not even going to dignify that with a response.

David Brooks does extensive quoting in his article of Steve Sailer.

"Sailer, whose work Brooks cited, has been a strong defender of the Pioneer Fund, an organization designated a 'hate group' by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its support of eugenics"

Tapped and Media Matters expose the article for misinformative garbage.

Blue state populations are on the increase, red state populations are on the decrease. So what 'exodus' again, who's involved exactly, and where are they going AND WHY? Alternatively, we can ask how many people can Ruby Ridge hold?

Here's some more ideology from the guy quoted:
From the Tapped link:
On gays: "[M]ost of them were effeminate little boys." "[A]n infectious disease itself could cause homosexuality. It's probably not a venereal germ, but maybe an intestinal or respiratory germ. It's radically unfashionable to call homosexuality a disease. But you can't think rigorously about the gay gene theory without drawing straightforward analogies to genetic diseases."

Yeah, and you want to take logic from this guy?
It's too bad MD isn't here, she could expose the article for what it is much better than I could.

I find it hard to believe that education alone is the issue, or even the main issue.

Your gut instinct is correct, Distorted Angel. You can get more accurate information in the links I provided.

And if Brooks is attempting to argue that conservatives actually take their child-rearing responsibilities more seriously than do liberals, well, I'm not even going to dignify that with a response

What they are really getting at, is that conservatives define 'threats' to their children differently.

(But they aren't really talking about conservatives, they are talking about people they perceive to be conservatives but who are in reality too far off the right side of the scale).

Very interesting links, Steve, thanks! The point you make about conservatives definining threats differently than liberals is a good one -- certainly if one thinks of the world in terms of "us" and "them", and sees "them" as a threat, this trend is nothing more than a 21st century version of white flight, updated to include fleeing from a whole new host of demographics. What a sorry way to raise children...

I certainly think children with specific gifts should be given the opportunity for those gifts to be developed fully.

But what about the children who aren't percieved to have "more academically oriented skills"? Are they to be just tossed aside?

Also, the David Brooks "natalist" article in the N.Y. Times inspires me to ask -- what about those of us without children, or whose life aspiration is not limited to a white picket fence exurban nuclear family fantasy? Must their suffocating so-called "family-friendly" cultural environment be imposed on all of us? Personally I would not want to raise children who would be so psychologically warped that they would be traumatized by the sight of a woman's nipple. People in the so-called mainstream United States need to get a grip, grow up, and rejoin the civilized human race.

I am a college educated, stay home ,fundamentalist Christian homeschooling mother of 6. My husband and I were both raised in a very large city. We now live very close to the poverty level by choice,that is , I choose to raise my kids, not put them in daycare or public school. We vote Republican. We do not hate anyone. We believe that teaching our beliefs and our faith to our children is best done by homeschooling and living in the country. Yes, the city has museusms, and culture, but it is also full of traffic,child predators that are released from prison after 1 or 2 years and put into neighborhood halfway houses, billboards, endless shopping centers, crowded neighborhoods, 10 year olds giving blow jobs on the school bus, drugs in elementary schools, teachers teaching evolution and humanism and tolerance of what we consider to be sin, as written in the Bible. We just got sick of all that. We didn't move because we hate blacks or Hispanics or anyone. As a matter of fact, Jesus is the one who teaches us to LOVE our neighbor as ourselves, so you see Christianity is not a religion of hate. HOwever,we do not believe that all behavior is good or should be tolerated, and that there are no absolute right and wrongs. We believe that if America loses it Christian faith which it was built upon , that it will go downhill until it is no longer the best country in the world. As a person who does not use birthcontrol, I consider myself quiverfull ,not a natalist, whatever that is. Quiverfull refers to Psalm 127:3-5. I am glad I live in America where I still have the right to freely express my opinion and live the way I choose. I do not want that right taken away from me or from you. Let's not let the humanists make it illegal to be a Christian.