It Takes a Village.....Not!

What I am about to say should not come as a shock because I have made it clear that I am an individualist, so when I say that I never liked the saying "It takes a village to raise a child," you should say, "of course, that is what I would expect you to say." The truth of the matter is that the saying makes my flesh crawl because it takes the responsibility away from the parents and gives it to the group, the collective. Recently my granddaughter was removed from her school about a month before the official end of of the school year and ever since then, when my daughter runs into parents from the school they ask her for an explanation as to why she did this, as if she owes them anything. They try to tell her that she went about it in the wrong way and that she should take their approach and speak to the teacher or at least make them understand her problem with the school. They all seem to feel that she owes the school an acceptable explanation and they are waiting to hear something that will satisfy their collective conscience. They have suggested that it is the problem of the parents and not of my granddaughter and that my daughter, her parent, has some how taken their child, my granddaughter from the school against her will. They think that they know what is best for her and they feel like one of their children has been taken away from the control of the collective or the village if you will. The village knows what is best for this child and what is best is that she, like each of their own children, learns to grin and bear the below standard education that is being doled out to her. If this school is good enough for their children, it is good enough for her because she is a part of the village, the collective and every Black child is expected to have the same experience or else, how will she feel at home in the village? I don't know about anyone else but, one of the reasons I had children is so I could teach them my values and standards and in the end to teach them to always live by their own values and standards and not that of the village, the collective. The village has voiced its unsolicited opinions to my daughter but she made her decision almost a month ago and they will have to live with it because in the end, it is hers and her husband's sole responsibility to raise their daughter.