rational-debate,

I have not and would not make any such claims as you suggest.

I've talked about private schools breeding an elitist "mentality" (though I don't believe Catholic schools, for instance, do that). A friend of my daughter's switched to private last year and is now aloof when they meet, she tells me.
I'm quite aware too that few private schools provide saunas and cocktails between classes.
I've argued there is no real qualitative difference--better resources are the product of more money, but wealthy kids also enjoy more extra-curricular support
SM, I'm blessed with high-achieving kids in the State system btw, despite its failings and inferior resources--though there's no lack of discipline. And they partake in the real world, warts and all, rather than a romantically-rarefied one.
I've argued against private schools, because it's a form of apartheid based on income, and I've argued for one public system that committed parents could then make great, and the wealthy would generously and eagerly fund with their taxes.
Despite the modesty too of the Catholic model, as places of education for formative minds, no ideological bias should be favoured imo; learning should be supported and not unduly directed.
Private schools tutor subliminal and overt ideologies. State schools are plagued with evangelising teachers, and chaplains etc., but they at least aspire to partisanship.
Whereas I've also argued that we live in an ominously privatising world that, applied to education, will lead to ever greater inequality among those who should be absolute equals in any ethical sense. Privatisation will also inevitably lead to deteriorating standards, as it has at universities, that ultimately only the wealthy will rise above. And as we know only too well, as the article's author demonstrates, that neoliberalism is as evangelising as any religion.
Education should be free and equal, and ethical and impartial in its delivery. If you find these values objectionable I'm wasting my time. Education and learning are the great hope of progressive humanity.
Whereas elitism, commodification, proselytisation and social replication lead to degeneracy, decadence, corruption and demise.
History should give us the benefit of hindsight.

Squeers,my sincere apologies for misrepresenting you. I hate it when people put words in my mouth and apologise if I have done the same to you.

I'd like to meet Squeers one day. There are too few like him who question the status quo, and I value those who do that.

Donelly is not questioning the status quo at all, in part because much of what is in place he has supported but also because, as Squeers and I have both noted, his real issue is the promotion of neo lib ideology, not the provision of any worthwhile form of education.

One cannot listen/watch Sir Ken Robinson, practically a one man comedy show, talking about education and how things could be, without feeling just a little bit vomitous about the system we have created here.

One problem in forums like is is the great differences between states, and the inclination of us all to speak with our own state's world view.

That makes understanding a big picture hard to do, unless one adopts a broader view, as the Squeers has.

I also tutored, not lectured, at a uni', and I can assure those supporters of private schooling that there was no obvious way to tell which students went where.

I did note, on a casual basis only, hardly a 'research outcome' that those students who got on with the tasks tended to be from state schools and those who demanded ever more information befor egetting started tended to be from the private system.

I also recall, but now cannot find the details to post here, some research indicating that public school students tended to drop out less, and stick to completion more, than private schooled students, at uni'.

More....

Squeers,

"Learning should be supported and not unduly directed."

That's an interesting point.

If we compare an infants ability to seek out and discover, we find that although they thrive on imitation they are simultaneously masters at directing their own methods of discovery.

It seems that our entire system is predicated on "directed learning". Assisting a child to build on their innate ability to self-direct their learning would seem to be something that is stifled once a child enters a "learning institution".

There have been several references here to car ownership in relation to the exercise of choice in schooling. The question is not about subsidies for particular models of car, but about the obligations of government. Governments are obliged to provide public roads that are safe, properly maintained, and of the same surface type and quality in both poor and rich suburbs. It is not obliged to fund the provision of an alternative private network for the use of drivers of imported luxury cars who don't want to share the road with the average family car. That would be un-Australian, and is the essence of the choice debate.

Caritas College, a Catholic school in Port Augusta, has sent a letter home to parents making great claims for the support that the Catholic Education Commission has for "choice in education", adding that "Catholic schools have a commitment to supporting all families - no matter what their economic or social circumstances."

There is no room for my response here. I invite you to read it at:
http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/catholic-education-office-lobbies.html

rational-debate,
thanks for your graciousness. There are of course great schools and teachers out there and I think school teachers have one of the hardest and under-appreciated vocations there is.

TBC, maybe we should meet annually on November fifth?

Poirot,
it disturbs me that education is not only often directed, which to a certain extent is inevitable, but also that these days the only goal in sight seems to be what lands the most money. My daughter's in grade ten and an accomplished musician (something that gets no public funding and I struggle to afford private lessons, exams and expensive instruments. That's why at her current age virtually all her competitors at Eisteddfods are kids from elite private schools who may take such incidentals for granted) and aspires to make a career of it. Yet she tells me her teachers routinely push business as the best career choice. The Arts are treated with contempt by much of our society.
I realise we don't live in a communist utopia, but I refuse to treat the current dispensation as put in place by God and immutable. We're never going to have a perfect society, but that doesn't mean we can't make reforms, embrace change and grow in our affections, rather than just economically and materially.