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The Forum > Article Comments > Separatists at the school gates > Comments

Separatists at the school gates : Comments

By Mercurius Goldstein, published 7/12/2007

Private schools are finished. In their place, we have separatist schools.

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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’
Posted by Chris C, Friday, 7 December 2007 10:47:39 PM
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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?
Posted by Dan S de Merengue, Sunday, 9 December 2007 10:43:45 PM
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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.
Posted by funguy, Sunday, 9 December 2007 11:01:04 PM
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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.
Posted by Mercurius, Monday, 10 December 2007 12:14:56 PM
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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.
Posted by Richard, Monday, 10 December 2007 4:28:54 PM
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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.
Posted by palimpsest, Monday, 10 December 2007 8:14:26 PM
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