I Think Private Schools Should Be Banned

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/political-confessional-i-think-private-schools-should-be-banned/

by kwindla • 7 years ago

14 18 7 years ago

anm893• 7 years ago

I think the thought process behind this is generally good, something like "change the incentives of public school funding to help the worst off segments of our population get a better education". This is something we should spend more effort on.

The problem is I think the author making this specific suggestion on how to achieve that is having a hard time understanding the implicit statement they are making on the other side of this coin: "you don't have the right to decide how your child should be educated, a committee will decide intimate details of yours and your family's lives, where they go every day, what happens when they get there, what the curriculum is, what happens if it doesn't go well, what values should be encouraged, what narratives will be portrayed'.

For reference I'm not some radical libertarian I'm fairly centrist and progressive, but the ability to have autonomy in deciding what is getting blasted into your kids head every week day for the first 17 years of their life is not something to scoff at. If that means not every single person gets the exact same opportunity I'm ok with that (and outside of possibly this person's utopic vision that would be true in the other scenario as well).

intarga5• 7 years ago

Those things are not mutually exclusive.

For example, in England we have academies, which are exactly what you described, directly accountable to the Department of Education. However, we also have community schools, which are accountable instead to local authorities, and we also have voluntary aided schools (like faith schools), which receive some state funding through the local authority, but are primarily funded and run by a foundation.

You still get to choose where your child goes to school, and if you really want to you can also homeschool them.

Private schools are not about choice, they're about quality. Unfortunately, that comes at the detriment of the quality of state education, and ultimately social equality and mobility.

anm893• 7 years ago

"Private schools are not about choice", according to who? That's a subjective opinion which you are presenting as a fact.

The authors argument revolves around removing choice so everyone gets the same thing so we are forced to make that one option higher quality. I'm not saying that is the only way to do it, but that is what this person is arguing for and that is what I'm arguing is a bad idea.

dlkf• 7 years ago

you don't have the right to decide how your child should be educated, a committee will decide intimate details of yours and your family's lives, where they go every day, what happens when they get there, what the curriculum is, what happens if it doesn't go well, what values should be encouraged, what narratives will be portrayed

I hate to break it to you, but both private schools and public schools are bound to a curriculum set by the district (and typically overseen by the state/province). Short of hiring private tutors for every subject, parents don't have nearly as much control over their child's education as you are suggesting. And even in the private tutor scenario, if they want their kid to go to a decent post-secondary institution, the curriculum will have to be adequately aligned with the standard admissions processes.

anm893• 7 years ago

Yes there are some requirements like "the kids have to be able to read, and they have to take certain core math courses". That's a lot different than having one game in town where everyone gets essentially the same thing.

There are private christian schools that teach creationism and have religious classes. There are Montessori schools which probably have bordering on nothing in common with the christian school above beyond basic literacy and math education. So there is still an enormous degree of flexibility and choices that you have when choosing education in the present system.

milsorgen• 7 years ago

Yes let us drag everyone down in the vain chase for this nebulous ideal of 'equality'.

shatteredvisage• 7 years ago

That's exactly the narrative right now.

Tonight at 9 -- there's a movement to ban gloves, which exclude everyone except those lucky enough to have 5 fingers, MITTENS ONLY

intarga5• 7 years ago

There's more to it than that.

In my country (the UK), our politicians and all their donors/lobbyists are privately educated, and send their children to private schools. This gives them little incentive to make sure state schools are well funded and run, since that only affects "the poor". This only serves to compound the above situation

I was privately educated, and am grateful for the quality of education I received, but I lament that half my compatriots who I share a nation and political system with did not receive the same. My country is broken and divided along these lines, as recent political happenings like Brexit illustrate, and it desperately needs mending. If we need to abolish private schools to achieve that then so be it.

JSeymourATL• 7 years ago

Related: School Choice - The Case For Vouchers > https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/vouchers/choi...

skybrian• 7 years ago

What I'd like to see: vouchers, but only for integrated schools. (For some definition of integrated.)

mimixco3• 7 years ago

State control of education is one of Karl Marx's 10 Planks of Communism.

No, thanks.

intarga5• 7 years ago

1. Not everything that's communist is bad: see single payer healthcare and social security.

2. Abolishing private schools does not imply state control of education. There are plenty of public schools that are either controlled by local authorities instead of central government, or controlled by an independent foundation.

mimixco3• 7 years ago

A local "authority" is another word for "the state." Why do you think rich people don't want their kids to go to public school? Could it be because they don't want to raise another member of the plebescite?

mimixco3• 7 years ago

Down voting my expression of a known fact along with my personal preference is also straight out of Marx's playbook and constitutes an ad hominem attack.

hodgesrm2• 7 years ago

If the goal is to help as many kids as possible it's easier to make public schools better by funding them properly and ensuring they are well run. That's effectively what happened where I live. Private schools were much more popular 20 years ago; several have gone out of business since then.

At the same time, that's not enough to help everyone, especially economically disadvantaged groups. We still have an achievement gap. Kids show up with vastly different levels of preparation--some of the kindergarten kids have visited Rome and know where it is. Others have never even been to the zoo.

intarga5• 7 years ago

The point of the article is that the surefire way to make sure schools are properly funded and run, is to make sure the children of the wealthy and powerful attend there too, not just poor.

hodgesrm2• 7 years ago

"Surefire" does not not seem like the right adjective.

Eliminating private schools would enrage a large constituency across the entire political spectrum, so just getting it into law would be a huge fight that would make it hard to focus on improving public schools afterward.

The next problem would be to ensure that public schools are actually funded equitably across neighborhoods and that well-to-do parents don't turn their local schools into de facto private schools.

I Think Private Schools Should Be Banned

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