At the beginning of today’s Impromptus, I have an item on the public schools — about Bill Cosby’s effort, in particular, to get parents to shun charter schools and other alternatives and enroll their kids in public schools. I say that, when I was growing up, I knew a lot of people who thought sending your kids to private schools was an act of disloyalty — disloyalty to the community.

I’ve received some mail on this subject, and the below made me smile, and it may do the same to you:

Jay,
One of the barriers the Hebrew day-school movement had to overcome in the 1950s and ‘60s was the near-religious attachment American Jews had to public schools. Sending your kids to a Jewish school was just too parochial for them. Most parents figured that a supplemental afternoon or Sunday school was sufficient. Yeah, making schoolkids spend another couple of hours in class when they would rather be playing with their friends was sure to make them enthusiastic about Judaism. Not