I am a total atheist, never attended a church.
My kids never attended a church, not even to get married.

However all my grand kids either attended or are attending church based schools, because we all wanted them to get a decent education, no longer possible in our lefty controlled public schools.

Dear Hasbeen,

What a load of twaddle.

Public schools are struggling because of the neolibersl cancer which has seen selfishness ingrained into our society like the kind you are so aptly displaying.

The sense of collectively contributing to educate Australian kids has gone up in smoke with the surge in private schools. Disruptive and high needs kids are foisted on an underfunded public system while billions of dollars of Federal funding goes to private schools. As the adage goes 80% of our teacher's time is spent managing 20% of the children. A third of the schools delivering problem kids into the public system has taken its toll on teacher wellbeing and student outcomes.

Finland has just 2% of its students in private schools while here it is around 35%. Yet it is one of the more socially and economically progressive counties in the world. Or in you language leftist.

So what has neoliberalism and the push for privates schools accomplished in this country? Unlike Finland with world class achievement ratings of its students our rankings continue to slide. But what it has allowed is the ability to continue to lower taxes on big business and multinationals here. It means high income earners get lower taxes too without there being much public outcry.

People like you have been sold a pup. You somehow believe that lower taxes and stripping away the funding for a robust world class public education system like Finland is somehow going to make you a little bit better off. That is what you have been told and you have lapped it up.

I could call you a traitor to our once egaltiarian Australian values but ultimately you are just a product of an ideology which has poisoned our media, made the rich richer, and greater deepening divisions in our society, all roundly applauded by your ignorant self.

Public schools are struggling because of poorly educated teachers and communist teachers' unions intent on politically brainwashing children and scaring them witless about climate change, sexual perversions and all things the Left loves.

More singing from the lefty hymn book SR!

I was a great supporter of state schools, I got a great education at a couple. My wife & I established & ran a school text book hire scheme for our local high school P&C for 15 years, that saved parents about 50% of the costs, & put $170,000 a year into the school, which cost us about 10 hours a week each.

While helping my kids with their math 3 & physics I could see a dramatic drop in the curriculum. This is I'm sure has been because the teachers hired were not up to even doing the subjects, let alone teach them. We had one Chinese lady teaching higher math that no one could understand a word she said, & an Indian lady who could not have passed a junior math exam.

We have a friend, ex teacher, running remedial math courses for university students & even TAFE tradie course students who find the very high achiever passes were not an adequate foundation for further studies. This is not because of disruptive students, but lousy teachers.

We have found much better teachers in private schools, particularly church schools. It is a considerable cost for many sending their kids to these school, that they don't undertake lightly, but they are almost forced to do it by the deteriorating standard of state schools, to get their kids an adequate education.

The ability of Australians (or any other western nation for that matter) to unite together is no longer possible.

Our nations are now far too polarised for the citizens to ever unite under any one issue ever again.

AC

You are right. Australia and our way of life has changed beyond recognition.