And, frankly, what’s louder than a blog?  It really fascinates me how, in writing that last post, a number of ideas clarified for me.

1. I value diversity of opinion for each individual above all else – your own ideas should be internally consistent but I will happily sacrifice academic achievement to ensure that students are exposed to a wide variety of ideas and that they learn to think about things with at least some individuality.  It is impossible for an individual to have liberty if they are trapped in a single way of thinking.  The strength of the U.S. is in its creativity and innovation, and being educated in an environment with one strict perspective actually damages that.  Thus schools that cater to a specific perspective are a danger to society regardless of what that perspective is.
2. If I had infinite time I would find a way to write a dissertation that looks at the history of school choice and private schooling as it can inform today’s discussions of Religious Charter Schools.  I really want to be a historian.  I just can’t figure out how to create a viable research question on that topic that I can finish in a reasonable time without a historian of education who can guide my research.
3. I can do a dissertation on something more compact and still spend much of my career studying the above.  In fact I have an idea of a more compact, quantitative dissertation that will go a long way toward getting me a job.  Optimally that job will be in one of the states (Florida, Minnesota) or cities (NYC, DC) where they are starting to experiment with religious charter schools so that I can do research on them and tie the whole mess together.

I should write more long rambling treatise…. Even if no one ever reads them they are helpful to me.