Dear runner,

You want God in the schools. How about Allah, Vishnu or Zeus? They are gods and people either have believed in them or believe in them now. If you want god in the schools what excuse would you have for keeping them out?

Is it really too hard to aspire to the Finnish model?

http://www.weareteachers.com/hot-topics/special-reports/teaching-around-the-world/finlands-a-plus-schools

Poirot, there's nothing wrong with aspiration. I asked David earlier how he thinks this aspiration might be achieved and he squibbed it, preferring to take refuge in faux umbrage at something said by SM and then reiterating his belief in a utopia that apparently we're all simply too mean to accept. This sort of response, sadly, is all too typical of the sort of thinking that has lead to the enormous problems that beset the teaching profession.

Care to have a go? How do we create this utopia without first creating a genuinely committed workforce? How do we create that workforce? How do we overcome the reflexive resistance within the existing workforce to an imposition of higher standards? How do we stop people from wanting their children to have the best educational opportunities they can afford and get them to support a more egalitarian model? How do you make schools in Woop Woop North provide equivalent educational opportunities to those in The Big Smoke, or even different SES parts of the Big Smoke equivalent?

I know these are tiresomely practical questions, but do you have an answer to even one of them that doesn't involve spending lots of money to make people do what they don't want to do?

Clearly this subject raises strong emotions and opinions. Thanks for a sharp and intelligent article. A few points only:

1. Where in the media are the sensible voices of intelligent people who were educated in the State schools? It is so disappointing to hear only the voices of the teacher unions in the public debate (especially in the news on TV)

2. Why can't the media show people commenting tartly on the laughable simplicities of Christopher Pyne and others who pretend that all independent schools are deserving more money and are one "independent system", whatever that means?

3. Surely we need more attention to the ethnic and social groups using the selective schools. And let's look hard at those from Asian countries who are beginning to use them very heavily.

4. Labor has not helped the State schools. Its efforts have been tragic. After all the hoo ha from Whitlam, they were given moderate help. Latham's attempts to highlight unjustly over-funded wealthy schools were too easily ridiculed. And Rudd-Gillard wasted time and money mucking around with some silly Education Revolution which mainly helped the wealthy schools.

Anyone who cares about helping disadvantaged kids can only get depressed. What a huge disappointment Labor Governments have been. Lots of noise and no progress. And we have to look forward to years of Abbott and (presumably) Pyne. More funds for wealthy schools coming up!

Davidf

Either you want money to improve public schools or you want to remove the subsidy to independent schools, as I have shown conclusively you cannot have both.

Dear Shadow Minister,

You have proven nothing conclusively except in your own mind. You are defending a system which the article has pointed out is unfair.

Assertion of nonsense does not qualify as proof. The article remains spot on.