Watching last week's confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos for secretary of Education, we found ourselves in a difficult position. As progressives, we'd love for America's public schools to be good enough that everyone—including us!—is comfortable sending their children to them. But if we're being honest, we want our sons to have every advantage... and we just don't think public schools are good enough. Is it morally defensible to send our children to private school?—Handwringing Parents in St. Johns

No. If your children are in private schools, then you—and they—are part of the reason America's going to shit, and your family is both exploiting and entrenching the very real, very damaging issues of privilege, discrimination, and economic segregation. With progressives like you, who needs conservatives?

Look. I could give you convincing arguments about why every family's involvement in public education is important. Or I could try to get you to listen to Nikole Hannah-Jones when she says it's "important to understand that the inequality we see, school segregation, is both structural, it is systemic, but it's also upheld by individual choices." Or I could point you toward data that shows private schools don't even really accomplish much more than public schools, aside from placing affluent children amongst other affluent children.

But let's be honest: Placing your affluent children amongst other affluent children is why you put them in a private school. And let's be even more honest: Even though you know it's wrong to support the cultural and economic schisms that are caused and embraced by private education, it's not like you're going to put your kids into public school. You—like most parents—think your children are wondrous little snowflakes, and you will labor under this hollow delusion until the end of your days. The difference is that you—unlike most parents—have the means to turn this false belief into a practice that hurts other children and society as a whole.

So—as someone who doesn't have children and is only taking the vaguest of guesses about all of this—the only advice I can give you is, in fact, a curse: For the rest of your life, you will know that any success enjoyed by your spoiled, cretinous sons will have only been accomplished by treading on the bony backs of less privileged children. Each time your hated sons laugh their hateful laughs, all you will hear will be the horrific screams of those other, publicly educated children: We are not stairs, they will cry, we did not deserve to have our bony backs trod upon. Their wails will echo in the empty chasm where your heart used to be, and with each of their gasping whimpers, your soul will wither and crack until all that is left of you is a dusty, desiccated husk.

Wait—was Hogwarts a private school? Because if Hogwarts was a private school, I'm going to have to walk this whole thing back. Pretty sure it was open to everybody, though? Maybe this should have been a Harry Potter column.

Do you have a Harry Potter question for Erik Henriksen, who is not a parent but who likes Harry Potter? Write erik@portlandmercury.com for the chance to have your query answered!