Divert all government funding from private schools to public schools.
Last time you said this I commented on the impracticality of it and you never replied. Would you like to address that now?
We live in a society where, in theory, we strive to provide equality of opportunity for all kids. It doesn't mean everyone needs to be wealthy/super rich/successful, but it means that everybody should have the same opportunity to make themselves great. Today's private schools completely undermine that philosophy, so until government schools are good enough to the point where people only go to private schools for reasons that are related to social factors (i.e. religion), and not to get an advantage in sports/academics, I'd say it's very unfair.
I think that if all public schooling provides education to an acceptable level, then there's nothing inherently wrong with private schools offering educational perks associated with money. There's a curve of diminishing returns after a certain point and if you can receive a completely reasonable standard of education at a public school, then we don't need to worry overly much about the fine differences that private schools have. I see the major problem as being that some public schools are too far behind in areas they shouldn't be behind in, rather than there being small disadvantages based on private schools having smartboards etc.
I fundamentally agree with what you're saying, and my main problem is as you said, that many public schools do not provide anything close to what many would define an "acceptable standard". Class sizes no greater then about 20 students, competent teachers, a reasonable extra-curricular program alongside adequate sport facilities (i.e. every school should have an oval, equipment for sports such as soccer, footy, cricket) and language/music teachers is what I would consider a good standard. Many public schools do not offer close to all of that, and before we can think of making public schools better then private schools we need to get them to that standard.
With that said, I find that in discussions such as this one we always get to examples of people who"despite the poor public school, did well" etc etc. This is, in my opinion, a major problem in which we justify inequality by saying that some people are able to overcome adversity and therefore the adversity which they face is not an issue. I see that as flawed reasoning - the fact that we're saying that people are able to do well even though they went to a crappy school underlines the fact that we have great students being let down by the public education system. We shouldn't be justifying poor schools by saying people do well in them regardless, but instead using those students who do well in poor schools as justification to improve the poor schools in the first place!
Home
Help
Search
Login
