Hooray!
Beautifully put and articulated.
But are you talking about integrated schooling, along the lines of New Zealand and the UK? Where faith schools are public in every way except for their faith character?
There is no doubt we need to relook at how we currently divide up our kids in schools, but the trend at the moment is to create ever more layers of schools - specialist behavioural schools in the public system, for example, as well as specialist academic, sporting, performing arts etc. We put girls with girls, muslims with muslims, jews with jews, smart kids with smart kids, rich kids with rich kids and poor kids with poor kids - some by choice, many by default. This is consumer driven and is inevitable if you take the view of schools that it should be driven by an amoral and indifferent market.
The consequences, as you make clear, could be profound and -forget social justice- risk impacting very negatively on our future global competitiveness by undermining social stability, cohesion and, of course, the potential for all kids to develop their talents.

I concur wholeheartedly with the article.

Though I suspect we'll hear from a few 'separatists' who disagree...
I can see what the objections will be - either a) they're not separatists or b) they are separatists, because the educational foundation is rotting.

I would say that if people genuinely believe b) then perhaps they should fix the problem instead of splitting society.

And no... god isn't the answer.

“On the one hand, there is growing support for policies aimed at integrating our diverse population into the “mainstream” Australian community”, claims Mecurius.

There is no such support. If there was, we would have thrown out the divisive policy of multiculturalism. Even Howard bottled out on doing that, so what hope is there of integration with the Rudd Government. The ALP actively preaches difference.

Social cohesion? We have that only because most of us still abide by the law, and most of us don’t have anything to do with self-separated tribes that Fraser-enforced multiculturalism and a totally inappropriate immigration programme has landed us with.

Come to think of it, we don’t have social cohesion; we have good luck, so far.

Mercurius is always full of bile against anything representing something he feels he is not. “Well- heeled families”, for instance, have “precious darlings”, a nasty put down if ever there was one. Either that or he doesn’t think the not so well off value their children as much as the ‘wealthy’ do.

Mercurius seeks to “clarify” that his piece is not about public versus private schools.

No. It’s about envy. But he still can’t help knocking private schools by suggesting that they are not really private or independent. Like all people keen on the welfare socialist state, he skirts the real situation on funding ‘differences’ between state and private, and in doing so, perpetuates the myths people like him want us to believe.

The author reaches lunatic pitch when he comes up with “separatist”, and carries on about “mass cultural suicide”, and undermining “… the stability and fairness of the society on which so much of Australia’s success and prosperity rests?”

This, when the multiculturalists have been hell-bent on doing this since the 70’s? Private schools, from the wealthiest to the humble parish school, are going to ruin Australia’s stability and just about everything else?

Continued…

….continued

Mercurius Goldstein is a good example of an academic so narrow-minded in his pursuits that he thinks the entire universe revolves around him and his particular discipline. Of course “separatism” is bad. But to start looking at the very narrow area of education when multiculturalism has spread the ‘disease’ in every area of life, is petty and ignorant.

Neither I nor any of my family went to private schools, incidentally; but I would encourage anyone who can to send their kids to a private school to do so

If the teachers in public schools are so good, then how come they don’t want performance pay?

If the public schools believe in “inclusivity “, then how come the teachers don’t want a common curriculum?

If the public schools believe in the public, then how come the public has almost no say about what goes on inside a public school?

If you want to be a face in the crowd, you attend a public school.

If you want to be regarded as a second class student, you attend a public school as a boy student.

Yes, it is seperatist, that is what happens when public standards fall below those of a large part of the community. Get used to it.

The immediate post war generations did not have anywhere near the level of drug abuse, family dysfunction and plain psychosis, all wrapped up in a casuist ideology that is used by parents and some teachers to justify what is actually a form of culpable parenting and culpable teaching. And consequently, there was no need for seperatism.

This is simply no longer the case. Children of almost voting age can kidnap, torture and apply cruel and degrading punishments to a disabled person and get away with a bond. They can sell products to each other that have a very high risk of serious injury or death and get a caution. Private schools won't completely insulate our children from those influences but at least we know that the other parents gave a suffient damn to make a sacrifice, an effort.

This seperatism is a response to a set of conditions that were not created by us, were not condoned by us, and are not acceptable to us. And to then turn around and blame us for the resulting social dislocation is a good example of the intellectual limits of those who, by omission or commission, created the problem.

You made your bed, sleep in it.

What a hilarious insight into the complete lack of self-knowledge of the public eduction lobby. People aren't leaving your schools in droves because they are religious - Australian's have never been less religious.

They are leaving because they don't want their kids to get a crap education dictated by the ideological whims and self-interest of the teachers' unions and their shills like Mr Goldstein.

Schools have never been better resourced than they are today but boys are still leaving less able to read and write than they were a generation ago.

Meanwhile, public school teachers try at every step to stop accurate testing of their students because they don't really give a damn about teaching, just about social engineering, as we can see from Mr Goldstein's article which doesn't mention educational standards once.

As for the idea that private school students should be forced to pay the entire cost of their education - I totally agree. Just give their parents a tax rebate on the public education they are paying for but aren't using and they will be happy to take care of the rest.

Of course, I know Mr Goldstein wouldn't consider that because giving parents a real financial choice would open the doors to the public school re-education camps and soon they wouldn't have any working class inmates left either.

The extent to which we can make real unrestricted choices, defines the quality of our democracy, and how much freedom we really have.

Society and homogeneity doesn't suffer because parents make informed choices, pay fees, and students attend schools that suit their values, beliefs and personal convictions. This denies fundamental values of democracy: freedom, to choose, and to act, with responsibility. The exercise of choice in education improves society and its intellectual, cultural and democratic foundations because people are, in this way, respected for their individuality, their intelligence, their ability to discern difference and to improve the circumstances for the benefit of their children.

You seem to premise your argument on the belief it is best in a democratic society for all children to attend State Schools.

In working with others in a democratic non-state school people gave a variety of reasons for making informed choice to enrol. Reasons included issues with the absence of democracy, conduct, operation, standards, values, class sizes, lack of identity, teachers and their attitudes, mundane old world State curricula, denying creativity, testing, denial of intelligence of young people, educational "fads", etc. Added to these were constant disruptions by party political ideologies written into policies, legislation and regulations that affected the stability of Schools, teachers and classrooms.

Change to benefit students is unlikely to happen by maintaining a system that suggests one size fits all. Change happens through new initiatives, different, innovative approaches to education. Change is least likely in monolithic, top heavy State School systems, where the pace of change is excruciatingly slow.

Allow me any day to work with others to operate a self-funded, not for profit, human rights and responsibilities based, democratic centre of learning, where young people are equals, and the so called "public interest" is not used to manipulate and distantly control and drag us towards the mainstream schools that we have tried and have found to be severely wanting. We need to fulfill the learning needs of our children NOW in accordance with our democratic and human rights beliefs and values, not at some future time when it suits others.

HRS,Leigh,Persius -your pathological hate for opinions that might be described as progressive,socially inclusive and public has no bounds. You respond to every article on education published on this site with the same bias and lack of understanding that is now totally predictable. Could you all please state if you have children where they are educated(state/school area) and by what investigation you came to the conclusion that the State school in your area or where your children may have attended is so eductionally hopeless, so left wing indoctrinating that any thinking parent would not contemplate sending them there.

Well said pdev.
As a parent with kids in a comprehensive public high school, and as a professional who runs workshops in many such schools around Australia, I am at a loss to know which schools exactly these public school loathers are actually writing about.None of the schools I have seen would fit the descriptions given. Mostly they are pretty good, well meaning institutions who are struggling to function on too little money. They actually need our help, not another ideologically driven kicking.
It seems the anti-public school lobby are driven by ideological conviction rather than genuine experience - and even if they have had a genuinely crappy experience, how come one bad experience in a public school (or even 3 or 4 or 5) means all public schools are crap, yet really horrendous scandals and behaviour and prejudice and lousy teaching and results can emerge in private schools and only that one school is affected, and even that school not very much?
Sure there are lousy schools in the public system, just as there are lousy schools in the private system but what has this to do with the importance of free, compulsory education for all kids regardless of their parentage?
If the public system is really as dire as these people claim, what are they going to do about it? Or are they happy with a system that allows them to rescue their own kids and leave the rest just to rot?
The freedom to choose is always predicated on the power to choose and most parents simply don't have much choice at all, and never will have, if choice is something you can only buy with money or the sheer good luck of having a bright, scholarship winning child.
The problem with so many of the people who heap invective on public education is that they only ever offer a solution for their own or other (lucky/privileged/take your pick) kids. What alternative do they offer for the children who have not been so blessed at birth? After all, education isn't really about parents, its about kids.

No doubt there are some good teachers in the public system, and some good schools. Unfortunately the problem is systemic. Not only has education been dumbed down in terms of academic teaching it also seems to have lost its way in teaching good citizenship. There is far too much focus on rights and not enough on responsibilities.

I note ena's comment in regard of public schools that "Mostly they are pretty good"; I would actually call that damnation by faint praise!

Thanks Ena, My view is that many of the rabid anti public school lobby are what Howard called his aspirational battlers. They live in outer suburbs which tend to have the highest concentration of struggling govt high schools and are desperate to differentiate themselves from their struggletown neighbours. They often live in new McMansion estates and equate something you pay for as being superior to that which is govt provided. These parents flock to private usually low cost church schools that spring up to service them. Again their world view is very much dominated by trying to get their children ahead-everyone else is the competition. They however are not intelligent enough to understand that it is usually the children of the tertiary educated, professional classes that are most successful in public and private schools and proceed on to uni and solid careers. Most of these people live in inner and welloff suburbs where public schools are often very much competitive with the private sector. That is its waht your parents do and where you live that determines how well you are likely to perform at school.

The author sees post WWII schooling through a very rose-coloured and distorted prism. I am a product of that system, and I can definitely affirm that "children from all walks of life" may well have shared the same school there was a well recognised difference in educational outcomes - for this was the time where there were good high schools and better high schools. I can, of course, only speak for Newcastle NSW in the early '60s. Parents who cared about educational standards sent their boys to either Newcastle Boys High or Newcastle Technical High and their girls to Newcastle Girls Hgh or Hunter High. The catholics also had the choice of Hamilton Marist Brothers (my alma mater) or a couple of girls' schools whose names are lost in the mist of time.

These were what might be disparagingly be referred to today as elite schools. Standards were required, and were enforced! The suburban high schools were where this tosh about levelling seems to have started. No elite schools, just drag everythig down to the lowest level. Going to these schools did represent a considerable burden for parents. In those days perhaps comparable to the burden faced in sending a child to a Public School.

I certainy observed on going to university that almost all my new fellow scholars had gone to one of the schools mentioned. Perhaps if elite schools were to reappear in the public school landscape less parents would find the private system so attractive.

Thanks to supporters and constructive critics alike. I'll just take this opportunity to address some of the creative misinterpretation of this article, as there are certain inaccurate remarks on matters of fact that I will not let stand.

Duncan, people aren't leaving the public education system in droves, period. The last few years have seen a strengthening of public enrolments and a slowing in the growth of other schools. Things seem to be stabilising around a 2:1 public:publicly-subsidised school ratio.

There is plenty of accurate testing of school students. Today students are tested by external exam for basic skills more frequently than at any time in Australia history - usually every other year, and at big high-stakes exams in Years 10 and 12. To this is added continual in-school assessment where nearly every assignment and weekly in-class test also adds to their final mark. Ours are the most tested students in history and if anything some exhibit signs of test-fatigue. And basic skills are on the increase once more - a point that Julie Bishop tried to make prior to the election.

As for unions, I've never attended a union meeting or engaged in dialogue of any kind with a union. If simply having an opinion that is favourably disposed towards public schooling is enough to get me labled a union "shill", how Duncan should we describe you and your impassioned defence of separatist schools?

Perseus, I'm 32 years old. I didn't make the world the way it is. Look to your own life and actions if you don't like the way the bed's been made.

Leigh, I'm not an academic. I'm a teacher and I just finished my first and only degree. Before that I worked in marketing 12-13 years. I've done a few casual research assistant contracts this year to pay the bills. I've never held an academic post and I don't aspire to. Perhaps in your fevered imagination it's Leigh vs. the academics, but since I'm not one, I'll thank you to take your shadow-boxing elsewhere.

(continued)

(continued) Nor have I any envy, as anybody who has dealt with me personally could attest. Despite being a public schoolboy from rentsville, my own upbringing could be reasonably described as well-heeled. I envy nobody their honestly-earned wealth, nor do I think it right or fair to envy children who by an accident of birth receive wealth. I do however have an implacable disdain for snobbery, which still drives much of the drive for separatist schooling, despite all the rhetorical fig-leaves about "standards" and "values".

Leigh, as for the phrases which you describe as "lunatic", go back and read those paragraphs again. Read. Every. Word. You'll see that the claims I make about 'cultural suicide' and 'undermining social stability' are precisely the opposite of what you accuse. I wonder whether you have the intellectual honesty to admit that?

By the way Leigh, your running mate Perseus seems to have embraced the label 'separatist' and positively to revel in it. Does that make him a lunatic too?

HRS, your questions are intellectually dishonest. The concerns about performance pay are related to many other valid issues other than teacher quality, as five minutes' casual online reading would tell you. And I am sure you would decry a common curriculum as "one size fits all" and therefore inadequate, yet here you claim it to be "inclusive". And the public has plenty of say about what happens in public schools. Through P&Cs, through MPs, through lobby groups, and through direct input and consultation into curriculum & policy. There are numerous formal and informal opportunities for any member of the public to have input if they so choose. The essence of public is that many voices are heard – not just yours. However, despite all the public money that goes to separatist schools, the public are there denied a voice – so what gives? BTW, I attended a public school when I was a boy, and I was treated equally to anybody else, as it should be.

Mercurius

Welcome to the OLO casualty station. Don't worry, yours are just superficial wounds. I've seen much worse. Luckily you weren't writing about multiculturalism (q.v. Islam), refugees, Indigenous Australians, women, John Howard or unions.

It's de rigeur here to abuse the messenger, to distort the message (consciously and unconsciously), to create straw men for mindless savaging, to deny any facts that don't suit and to manufacture 'facts' that do suit, to shadow-box, to jump at shadows, to sling around disparaging labels, to exaggerate with wild hyperbole, to shoot your mouth off without having read anything (including the article under discussion), to be called un-Australian and and to be offered salvation by the god-botherers (you've been spared the last so far - they must have used up their posting limits today).

But occasionally you get an intelligent, perceptive and contrarian comment that advances the debate. And it's worth the wait.

Change your bandages every day for three or four days. You'll be as right as rain (especially if the pack hear the word 'right').

What a great article. A couple of points to mention. Firstly the public schools I have seen aren’t hung up about secularism. Many go a considerable way towards offering a spiritual dimension for kids. Chaplains in schools weren’t dreamed up by Howard. Many public schools have chaplains funded by combinations of local churches. Makes a joke out of the cultural warriors who like to paint public schools as anti-religion.

The essential issue is that faith schooling by definition is about bonding like with like. Sure you’ll get the Christian school which takes Moslems and the Anglican school which will take middle class anyone-who-can-pay-fees. But bonding is an easy call – anyone can do it. As Putnam indicated, BRIDGING is by far the most important process, reaching across social and cultural divides to bring different kids together…..just we always did until 30 years ago.

Mercurius is right: we are cruising for a bruising if we use schooling to further religious and cultural divides. The socio-economic divides are just as critical and have been mentioned by others in Online Opinion.

He is also right about solutions. It should be possible to accommodate private schools into an inclusive framework. And it is possible to fund them according to the extent that they are inclusive and take on the tough end of schooling. The fact remains however that they wouldn’t be interested. Why would they want to give up their right to discriminate in who they enrol? They gain so many advantages in being able to “choose”.

I hope this article generates more discussion, even if it might require some people to take a cold shower! Don’t worry about the water restrictions, Leigh

Mercurious
P& C’s are a joke. I’ve been to many P&C meetings, and they are normally run by the teachers, and the principal only tells the P&C what the principal wants the P&C to hear.

I left a P&C after the principal let it slip out that they did not want too many boy students going to university, as male university graduates could earn more money than female university graduates.

Normally the schools just want P&C’s to raise money for the school, but don’t want any other involvement by the P&C in what the school does.

It is also not wise for a mother or a father to say too much at a P&C meeting, because the teachers may not like it and could take it out on their children.

Most MP’s are a joke also. In states such as QLD the local MP is not much more than a clerk, and everything is decided in Brisbane.

In a private school, the mothers and fathers can have very direct say about what is occurring, because if they don’t like what is occurring, they can always take their children out and enrol them elsewhere. Its called voting with their feet.

But with private schools, the public school system is now less of a monopoly. Maybe that is what teachers are afraid of.

Duncan 73,

You claim that schools ‘have never been better resourced than they are today’. If this is so, please explain why Victorian teachers are paid more than $31,000 less than in 1975 relative to average male ordinary time earnings, why the secondary pupil-teacher ratio is now 11.9:1, compared with 10.6:1 in 1990 and 10.9:1 way back in 1981, why the superannuation contribution has been cut from a notional 21 per cent of salary up to 1988 to 9 per cent today and why school support centers no longer even exist. Where are all these resources? Please also give me a reference to the evidence that shows that ‘boys are still leaving less able to read and write than they were a generation ago’

Thanks, Mercurius, for a most interesting article. I would like to see your ideas of what these schools might look like more fleshed out.

For me, the key phrase concerned the public system adjusting some of its assumptions relating to secularity.

Different people see different things in the word ‘secular’. Recently the Education minister in France chose to ban Muslim girls’ head dress in an effort to make their schools more ‘inclusive’ and ‘cohesive’. I think such intolerance in the name of tolerance will probably come back to bite them on the bum.

Yet, I think your article was aiming more deeply than just the teaching of values and religion in schools. Should we go even deeper? What is the basis for public education? Isn’t the attempt to deliver social cohesion through public education just a socialist ideal? Do we need it to achieve social cohesion?

First up, let's have rebates for parents who send their kids to state schools that follow ideals of objectivity and truth THEN pander to those who embrace denialism and superstition, and turn their snotty noses up at normal people's normal, decent kids.
Then let's up funding to state schools to the same level as antisocial private schools and see if results at less well funded schools don't increase exponentially. Lets have a REAL "level playing field".
Thirdly, lets have a good look at separtism itself. It's not much of an ideology ( won't dignify such an ugly ideology as a "philosophy" )when it's to do with getting your kid a boost by advancing her through crippling the kids chances whose parents have chosen the egalitarian alternative.
Bring the schools together as to resources and let the kids be judged on their merits and character rather than their parents crooked money.

Dan asks "Isn't the attempt to deliver social cohesion through public education just a socialist ideal? Do we need it to achieve social cohesion?"

Thanks Dan for your stimulating question. I can only sketch a response in the space available, but here goes:

I see no necessary relationship between social cohesion, socialism and public education.

The prevailing myth that public education is aligned with socialism is based on a laughably simplistic and mischievous assumption that anything other than free market fundamentalism is automatically deep-red socialism. But there are many more flavours of market liberalism than a fundamentalist Hayekian or Thatcherist vision.

The evidence is that the two postwar generations, raised overwhelmingly under a public education system, have created today's market-liberal Australia. Their social cohesion arose spontaneously in a shared playground environment, not as a result of centralised programs devised by an educational politburo.

So our supposedly "socialist" public system has produced a socially-coherent, market-liberal Australia.

By contrast, I predict that an increasingly atomised, separatist and "independent" school system could deliver us into a neo-feudal situation two generations hence, where people have a cradle-to-grave life trajectory marked out by their birth and subsequent educational opportunities.

I have witnessed this first-hand, seeing one of tomorrow's "Captains of Industry" being Christened at The King's School. His path is already mapped out. Many enthusiasts of snake-oil schemes such as vouchers believe that "choice" automatically enhances market liberalism, but all it does is strengthen the assumption that certain schools will determine one's eventual life path. In effect, vouchers would promote neo-feudalism.

So as I see it, the best way to preserve market liberalism in Australia is to achieve universal excellence in a universal, maximallly inclusive public system, and thus to remove the last redoubt of feudalism that is served by separatist schools.

There is no research evidence that suggests the public school do worse than private. (PISA actually suggest otherwise) Both Monash and Uni of WA research hows that public school students do better that private and selective (and single sex) at university. The most famous research into school choice, the randomized lotteries for "magnet schools" in chigago indicates suggest schools are a "blunt instrument" for improving diavantaged students. In other words schools are not the deciding educational factor and chosing the magnet school makes no differnce.

The trajectory of a student is more often than not decided before the child walks into a school. Nothing other than and enormous effort after that will change it. Hart and Risley's "Meaningful differences.." demonstrates That two things make the difference. Mother's conversation and parental warmth. Spending 20,000 a year on a 12 year old will not change that fact.

The problem with this private public debate is it is irrelevant and distracts parents from doing their job because school will sort their little darlings out. They do not its too late. But I do agree that the vehemence of the debate suggests a "religious" intensity.

The other problem in the debate is the illusion caused by judging from own's limited perspective. "My children had trouble at a normal school therefore all do", which of course is demonstrably false.

Mercurius, just how do some schools, (and which ones), inculcate the precious little darlings into the belief that they, the kids, have 'special characteristics'. And just what are these special things? Superiority? Ethics? A sense of belief in their future success? Buggery? Would have thought such an assertion needed a little bit of back-up.

You state the factors leading to the growth of seperatist schools IS the communities failure to make them feel included and validated. Never thought about The Kings School quite like that before.

That said, I'd like to say that I agree with the general thrust of your article. The fact that many feel that private schools offer something the public system does not calls for a change in attitude.

Inclusivity of religion is fine- A Comparative Religion course, that is. But you would also have to address the perception of anti-religiosity within the public system.

Ditto with peoples perceptions of morality as taught in public schools. eg if David or Mo decides that he finds the idea of homosexuality repugnant will he be allowed his viewpoint without being labelled a homophobe? Or marked down?

Does your idea of inclusion allow for those who want more immediate and harsher discipline of children who get out of line?

And, the perception that kids get more attention and more individual care at private schools, both academically and as people needs to be addressed. As public school teachers themselves recognize; primary teachers teach the child, and secondary teachers teach the curriclum.

Its in these areas that public education needs to sell itself better.

That's an interesting thought palimpsest - lets have schools that are punitive towards gay students or towards those who refuse to accept the status quo- actually we already have some of those schools, and the truly amazing thing is that some parents actually pay money -big money - to have their child harassed, belittled and condemned. Few psychiatrists have spent as much time dealing with the damage teachers have wrought (unless the poor kids were boarders or altar boys), in comparison to the time they've spent repairing the misery created by crap parents - often those who believe their children ought to be little reproductions of themselves, rather than big themselves. And that's the problem with having a rigid view of an acceptable way to be human (often, but not always thanks to religion) it stuffs your kids.
My daughter who attended a co-ed comprehensive public school in a wealthy area which had become a safe haven for all the boys who didn't fit the boy's private school model (mostly the gay ones) is now at Sydney Uni. Recently she was asked by an ex student of an exclusive girls school how she found uni and whether she'd made friends. Yes, she said, her best friend was a gay guy who she loved. Oh, said this escapee from single sex, one note schooling - we all have our token gay friend in first year. No, said my daughter, I've had gay friends since year 7, I didn't go to an all girls school. I'm not friends with him cos he's gay, I'm friends with him cos I like him. You may have something to prove, but I don't.
That's the trouble with separatist schooling - it gives you the illusion of superiority while really creating ignorance -and, unfortunately, ignorance's best mate - arrogance.

curious ena that you base your narrative on something I did not say. My point is that the perceptions of what is wrong with public education need to be addressed. Nowhere did I say that the points made were my viewpoints.

In plain English for you- does the authors idea of inclusiveness allow for views such as I highlighted above. Because these were examples of the sorts of reasons I've heard people give for sending their kids to private schools(along with tradition, distance etc).

I've got friends who were privately educated who give the lie to any idea of being somehow superior by virtue of their education by being thoroughly decent people and, shock horror send their kids to public schools.

Ofcourse this is a publiv v private schools article. To say otherwise is a dishonest ploy whether it's deliberate or not.

NSW is taken as an example however, NSW is the example of why the differences are needed since a parent has no choice of which public school their children attend. If your children go to a NSW Government school and are bullied, beaten, harrassed and vilified, you still must send your children to that school. If the school has poor management which creates a poor learning environment, you still must send your child to that school or, you pay up for private education.

It is the neglect of government schools that has forced parents into private schooling since standards of government schools has fallen. In QLD, we are now seeing P&C's starting to find funding the wages of classroom staffing for their Prep grade. Not to forget just how much P&C's are responsible that should be paid for by government.

Government buildings are exempt from paying local council rates but not schools, they must find this funding from their school budgets that would otherwise go to the learning environment. Government schools like all infrastructure is less and less funded in real terms no matter who is in power.

Australia won't see an education revolution until the needs of the young are put first, second and last. Australia must move away from the degenerate American education system and move in the general direction of european nations such as Finland who is the world leader.

The great tragedy of private schools is that it provides groups the opportunity to seperate their children from the rest of the population.

The jewish schools in Victoria do not follow Victorian school holidays so that their pupils have limited time to fratanise with the state school product.

While buying dried fruit I was alone with an Exclusive Brethren woman and it was very hard to find a topic to strike up a conversation. I was rewarded with a shy smile. That's the real reason for private schools to seperate and corral the young women so they have no contact outside their church and have no possibility of a future outside their church.