Thank-you Al...your such a nice person, and I think I have you all wrong. Sorry....Iam not that all edjamaked...and don't understand much iam afraid. It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same--everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same--people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world." sounds a little religious...don't you think:)...fishing...one of great actives rarely seen by those that don't.

Thanks AL, your philosophies are out standing:) but watch out for the hypocritical gestures by some.....it never work out well for the fish:)..and noted.

BLUE

why does anyone think we have to have a fair and intelligent system?

We have what we have after years of various governments trying to meet the disparate needs of the community. There was no intention I'm sure for anyone to be disadvantaged, however much some posters think there is some kind of plot afoot.

I came from a working class family, worked hard .. and now get this, I took risks big risks and they turned out OK, I could have failed, many do. My family supported me when I was working 90 hours a week for years .. now they enjoy the fruits of my labor and success. Should we all wear hair shirts because I improved myself?

Seems to me many who whine about inequality, are just covering up their own shortcomings by blaming someone else.

I wonder if many posters are parents who pursued personal hobbies and goals in their careers only to find out they don't get paid as well as others and now are bitter about their life choices.

I worked hard to be successful and resent the implication that somehow I'm privileged.

If you want more for your kids, you should have studied and worked harder, harsh, but that's the truth many of you refuse to accept.

You want people like me brought down to your level, when you could have worked harder to be successful.

Perhaps instead of doing bugger all to improve yourselves you could have done more .. did you seek my advice on your career? No, but now you want to comment on the fruits of mine.

The circumstances of your life, are your problem, not mine .. I'm happy for my taxes to be used to prop you up, let's leave it at that, your taxes do not prop up my family.

You are responsible for your place in life, it is not luck, it is hard work, or the lack of it that separates people.

I look at successful people and see hard workers, I look at the whiners and see bitter people who made poor choices.

Blue, try to find something to be happy about, it feels better....Why!:) RPG has just worded all just so well:) I read a book once called...from the ground up:) I didn't quite get it:)

BLUE

I think the article pays way too much attention to what Janet Albrechtson (a well known John Howard apologist) thinks on this issue. The increased public funding for "private" schools that Howard brought in has absolutely failed - by Howard's own criteria - as Howard said that the increased public funding would cause private schools to reduce fees. As private schooling is a "positional good" - like gold watches, boats, jet skis - of course the private school's response has been to increase fees, to maintain their exclusive status. The increased public funding has therefore proved to be a complete waste of public money, another form of middle class welfare. Clearly school funding needs to be clawed back from the wealthier private schools and re-allocated to the most disadvantaged public schools and students. This will advantage all taxpayers, by ensuring the students who benefit later lead productive lives, with the added benefit of a smaller prison population of illiterates. Incidently, the other reason Howard always gave for these inequitable school funding arrangements was to increase parent's ability for school "choice" - public subsidies have not increased choice anyway (private schools are more out of reach than ever for most people). And the mantra about "choice" has always incensed me anyway: should I subsidise someone's taxi fares because they don't want to travel on Sydney's hot trains? What is school choice anyway - as private schools will not take any student - many parents have no choice - I personally know of a Catholic school that refused to accept an autistic child into Kindergarten (so much for Christian charity anyway)....

I don't believe that the current public/private school systems really benefit enough children at all.

If we had a two-tiered public system where schools in the first tier babysat all those 'troubled', 'demanding' and 'apathetic' children who really don't want to learn at all, until they were old enough to leave school.

In the other tier, we would have schools that only catered for those kids who really want to learn and work hard, regardless of their academic ability or their parent's incomes.

Then we wouldn't have the current problem of kids wanting to learn being distracted by those who don't- regardless of the school they go to.

We can do without religious distractions in any school too. Schools should be places of learning, and not waste time with holy theories.
Those that want that type of indoctrination should go to their own places to worship their God.

Much of this argument centres on acheiving 'equality of outcomes' and makes the assumption that this is good or even acheivable. Neither assumption is particularly valid. There seems to be this quaintly naive belief that if we work hard at social adjustment we can remove disadvantage and acheive equality of outcomes. It is no wonder that we spin our wheels so often with maximum effort and obtain no traction. This 'equality of outcome' dream is a utopian fantasy - a waste of time. Anyone with more than 2 children can tell you that the same advantage, the same effort can often produce wildly different outcomes. Why should education somehow be expected to be the great equaller when nothing else can?

Before we have any hope of improving our education system and finding a compromise solution to the private/public debate we have throw away some of these ridiculous utopian goals and find some acheievable yet still equitable ones to replace them.

Private schools save the government many billions of dollars. That isnt in dispute. Some elite schools clearly dont deserve or have any arguable need to public money. But that example cant be used to drive the debate. The vast majority of private students are in low-to-medium fee schools where parent go without to give their children the education they want.

A question that is rarely, if ever asked is would public education improve if public funding was increased by say 30%. I personally doubt it very much. The infrastructure would improve, teacher salaries would improve but would the outcomes? I am of the opinion that superior educational outcomes come from superior teachers. Superior teachers are bred and thrive in superior schools. Superior schools are built by motivated and passionate educators and supported by committed parents. Almost none of that exists in our public schools and virtually none of it is obtained by mere money. The argument that educational outcomes are a function of the money thrown at them is dubious and misleading at best and usualy just plain wrong.