
The case for abolishing private schools - rapnie
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/24/the-only-way-to-end-the-class-divide-the-case-for-abolishing-private-schools
======
user3359
There's a lot of valid arguments for a single school system - better teachers
from private, people with private wealth and influence pushing the public
sector forward, etc.

But the title is naive. This will do nothing for the class divide. Wealthy
parents will still hire private tutors for their children for 1 on 1 time and
expose them to a wider variety of extra curricular activities.

It's the concept of schooling itself that's the problem. You can't
absentmindedly send your kids off to school to be taught how to be a drone.
IMO the parents attitude and nurturing at home is 2x as important, and this is
especially problematic for either too-young parent or low income families that
don't have the time to nurture their kids because they're working 12 hour days
with 3 hours of commuting.

~~~
trukterious
_> IMO the parents attitude and nurturing at home is 2x as important_

Agreed. And since education is inseparable from a child's well-being and
general development, it remains the responsibility of parents. They must
choose according to their children's interests, wishes and aptitudes, and
according to the family situation. Try to take that away and you're putting
the State _in loco parentis_ \-- a role beyond its bureaucratic capacity to
manage.

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tomohawk
Given the dismal record of the government in running schools and improving
schools with poor records, the answer should be instead to privatize all the
schools.

Most private schools have lower per pupil spending that government run
schools.

~~~
megiddo
No, no. Let's double down on the existing system.

Also, we should eliminate fancy restaurants, because that's where rich people
meet other rich people.

And nice houses! Housing advantage is a clear indicator of classism.

Now that I think of it, pretty much everyone in the US does better than rural
Somalis. We should equalize the class divide by reducing the US standard of
living until we're all equal.

~~~
wwweston
If the point is that it'd be difficult and absurd to try and equalize all
_outcomes_ , that's reasonable enough.

If the point is that any attempt to equalize an _opportunities_ is
conceptually the same, though, that's much less reasonable.

Education is often one specific focus because it's in the overlap of (1) a
common and early place where inequality of opportunity presents itself (2)
early maximization of individual potential has potentially cascading effects
(3) baseline tractable social projects (raising the ceiling on outcomes for
everyone may be hard, but providing a reasonable floor more most is one thing
it already does) (4) seems plausible that everyone benefits the more educated
the population is (especially in a representative democracy).

And while eliminating fancy restaurants may be absurd, if you're thinking
about the question of when/why it might be important for poor people to meet
rich people, then it may well be _entirely_ worth trying to address that
problem. To pick one issue near and dear to the heart of HN folks, _access to
capital_ is key for many entrepreneurial folks.

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ilove_banh_mi
I have friends who send their children to Montessori schools (private). Other
friends send their kids to Waldorf schools (private, too). Others have been
homeschooling (the ultimate private).

They would consider it deeply unjust to seek to _abolish_ their schooling
alternatives. I consider it driven by a nasty, Platonic impulse. Leave parents
to make decisions about the education of their kids. Give schools more
flexibility, encourage local innovation, and we'd see a variety of interesting
outcomes. For example Marva Collins [1] had an amazing impact on the students
she was allowed to work with.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marva_Collins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marva_Collins)

~~~
notacoward
> They would consider it deeply unjust to seek to abolish their schooling
> alternatives.

There's plenty of deep injustice to go around. Other parents might consider it
deeply unjust that the only schools they can afford are hellholes where no
real teaching occurs and the classrooms aren't even adequately
cleaned/heated/ventilated. Does that injustice not matter too?

~~~
ilove_banh_mi
Yes, the low quality and outcomes of public education are very bad, and a
political system that insists on dooming a majority of kids to that hellhole
is very bad.

The positive solution is not to seek to destroy what decent educational
systems may still exist. Have you considered that it is public schools that
need radical change, to be more like private schools? or even to become
private schools?

~~~
notacoward
> the low quality and outcomes of public education are very bad

Cherry picking. The quality and outcomes of public education are highly
variable. Some schools are just as good as anything private (better if you
consider learning citizenship vs. elitism as a criterion). Nobody's suggesting
that a "majority" of kids be doomed to hellholes. Most are already fine, the
rest might be in former hellholes instead of current ones.

> Have you considered that it is public schools that need radical change, to
> be more like private schools?

Yes, I have. In fact, that's what many public schools have already done, and
more should do. However, the one way they can not and should not be like
private schools is by _ceasing to be public_. That includes the pseudo-
privatization that funnels public money to private interests, shedding
regulation and accountability to improve profitability at the expense of the
students and staff. Do that, and you'll just have private hellholes (a few of
which already exist BTW).

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40acres
There's lots you could do w/o abolishing private schools:

\- Pay public school teachers more & hire more teachers (reduce class sizes)

\- Free lunch for all kids in the public school system up until senior year of
high school

\- Widespread access to tutors for specialized tests

\- More funding for extracurricular activities (academic and non-academic)

\- Pay public school teachers more.

\- Desegregation bussing

~~~
mataug
Free Lunch for all kids has actually been shown to be quite effective at
keeping kids in school, especially in poorer parts of a country.

An example is the Mid Day meal scheme in India
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midday_Meal_Scheme#Evaluation_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midday_Meal_Scheme#Evaluation_of_the_scheme)

------
rhacker
Essentially recommending teaching your own kids something... illegal? I'm
definitely left-leaning, but this is kinda Left times 4000?

~~~
rbanffy
I agree it's a radical idea. A more palatable approach would be to just
adequately fund public schools in a way they'd out-compete the lower end of
the private school spectrum. Remember that when they deal with poor students,
they'll need to invest a lot more in the student to reach the same outcome.

Also, an increase in minimum wage, and curbing flexible work schedules and
other factors that prevents parents from giving their children adequate
attention would do wonders.

Then, as another step, removing all tax breaks for for-profit schools should
free additional resources for public schools and further drive up the lowest
range private ones (by killing off the low end, again). Rinse and repeat.

Another neat thing would be for public schools that receive donations to share
those with either all schools in the region or with a "buddy" school in a less
wealthy area. This is specially important in systems that tie one
geographically to a specific school according to their area of residence.

The wealthy will always be able to afford private tutors and to secure
advantages for their offspring, and I'm not discussing whether they are or not
"fair", but the large majority of the population deserve a more equal society.

Disclaimer: I grew up in Brazil, where there is a huge gap between the poor
and the middle-class and I moved to Ireland, where the gap is much, much
smaller, a couple years ago and I can tell you this is a much better way to
structure a thriving society.

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danieltillett
Isn't this assuming ending the class divide is something we should be aiming
to achieve? Where is the case that the cost of doing this is less than the
benefit?

~~~
jacknews
define benefit.

It's a bit like saying "It's too expensive to have 12-man juries, etc, so we
should just stick with mob justice" or "This democracy thing is all a big
hassle, we'll stick with divinely instituted monarchy"

~~~
danieltillett
No it is more like why have 12 person juries when 8 might be just as good and
cost less. What is the argument that 12 person juries are better than 8?

As an aside I was called in for jury duty on a civil case where the jury was
only 4 people. Of course because the legal system doesn't care about wasting
everyone's time there were 50 of us there hanging around all day while the
lawyers argued with each other. At 3.30pm the 4 jurors were chosen and the
rest of us finally sent home.

~~~
jacknews
I wasn't arguing about the cost, but the benefit. Your suggestion was that we
need to do a cost-benefit analysis, and to decide if "ending the class divide
is something we should be aiming to achieve" at all.

I don't think you can do a cost-benefit analysis of "freedom" for example,
what would that even mean? Sure, try to get it cheaply, but the "benefit"
should be clear, and invaluable.

Is it "beneficial" to reduce class-inequality, as in, simply being born into a
particular class gives you a huge advantage/disadvantage? Of course it depends
who you ask, and what you are measuring, but I would say it is worthwhile in
and of itself, and in the same category as "freedom", "justice" and so on, and
that's why I asked "define benefit".

Whether the proposed solution would work, or is fair, or is the best/cheapest
solution etc, is an entirely different question.

~~~
danieltillett
I was arguing if the aim is even something we should be trying to achieve. The
history of attempts to remove class differences have not been good.

Of course you can do a cost-benefit analysis on something like freedom. All of
society is a balance between freedom and the cost of exercising that freedom.

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berbec
Another actually possible idea is to separate school funding from the local
tax base. This leads to the nice public schools in rich areas and underfunded
wastelands in poor urban areas.

I went to such an underfunded school. Teachers were buying classroom supplies,
the ones who could afford it (usually because their So had a good job) and
cared.

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btilly
I call BS.

It is absolutely true that children who go to private schools do better than
children who go to public schools. However when you control for parental
socioeconomic status, this reverses. Public schools on average do better for
the children of rich parents than private schools do. (Specific schools can
vary widely.)

~~~
mataug
I agree, This seems like arbitrary opinion than an actual solution.

Private schools pioneer new learning techniques, they offer unique
opportunities that the public schooling systems cannot offer. Example
Montessori schools are mostly private and they can be extremely beneficial.

Yes private schools are expensive, but there are ways to fix the expensive
part.

Suggesting that we should eliminate private schools because they are expensive
and cater only to the rich is like suggesting that we should eliminate
expensive cars because they cost too much.

We need schools which range the spectrum, We need public schools to be like a
Prius for example, Efficient, affordable, reliable and checks all the basic
requirements of a car. While there's always room for the ferrari or the Rolls
Royce for people who can afford and want that experience.|

Also there's rarely, if ever, a single solution to a complex problem like
schooling.

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nerpderp83
We can start by making funding per child the same across the US and not tied
to local property taxes.

Long term classist ideologies are incompatible with Democracy.

~~~
ghaff
Per-student funding actually tends to be higher in urban school systems that
have lower performance as measured by test scores. Suburbs with "good" schools
don't necessarily have especially high per-student public school spend.

Added: Equalizing spending might transfer some money to poor rural communities
but it would also shift money from lower-income households in most cities to
relatively tony suburbs.

------
brightball
This is naive, in my opinion.

Even in the public school system there is a class divide system, it's just
based in real estate instead of private school enrollment.

At the same time, you can't abolish private schools without abolishing home
schooling, which literally becomes forcing all children to be educated by
government institutions...which is bad.

Public schooling alone would be much better off if it were more decentralized,
with less federal involvement. Most of the federal programs that the teachers
I've spoken with deem to be necessary could be addressed without being tied
into the school system directly (like free and reduced lunches) - in much the
same way that health care doesn't need to be tied to your employer.

The issue is that people don't take ownership in their public schools because
they don't feel they have ownership in their public schools.

Just as an example, remember the school system blow up in North Carolina over
the "bathroom bill" stuff? Parents were losing their minds - in some cases
without good reason but in other cases with perfectly good reason. They didn't
get a say in what happened. They didn't get to decide how to handle things in
a manner they were comfortable with.

Instead, they watched the threat of having federal funding yanked from their
schools if they didn't comply. Stuff like that is why public schools don't get
as much support as people wish they would.

I'll go ahead and tell you, I had no intention of sending my kids to private
school as I was ideologically opposed to it...yet when all of the common core
stuff started happening and I saw the stories coming from my friends from
college as their A students were coming home in tears for getting correct
answers the wrong way...it made me want the politics out of my kids education.

The school they go to actually teaches the common core approaches to things as
well. The difference is that instead of rushing to implement it based on
mandates, they researched options, all of the teachers at the school who
are...as it turns out...qualified to decide these things, made a decision on
what they wanted to do and rolled it out slowly over a period of years.
Parents were kept in the loop the entire way and they did it with zero
disruptions.

You can't do that in today's public school system.

There are a lot of other factors, but for me it boiled down to wanting a
stable and consistent environment for my children - at least when they are in
early developmental ages.

I'm strongly considering moving back to public for middle/high school though.

And for consistency sake, I want to be absolutely clear here...I realize I'm
lucky to be able to afford it. That's EXACTLY why I advocate for school choice
programs because I want to be able to tell other parents about this great
school and know that they can decide to send their kids there if they want to,
regardless of their financial background.

I get all of the terrible stuff that gets written about people's "devilish"
intentions behind vouchers or choice or whatever else. For me it simply boils
down to knowing that my kids go to a great school and I want everybody to have
the same true freedom of choice. Nothing more, nothing less. In our current
system, the only people with all the options are the people who can afford
those options (be it via houses zoned for specific schools, private or home
schooling groups).

~~~
leetcrew
> literally becomes forcing all children to be educated by government
> institutions...which is bad

this may be a very US perspective, but i'm totally with you here. it is
certainly in the interest of a free society for tomorrow's citizens to at
least have comparable standards of education (far from today's reality), but
to have literally 100% of education administered by the government seems like
a dangerous level of control to me. there's gotta be some independent system
keeping them honest.

anecdotally, i went to a private high school and had several friends at well-
funded public schools in the county. though we all received high quality
educations, they reported that their curriculum contained a lot less of the
dirtier aspects of US history, which i was gleefully exposed to in class by
some of the more subversive instructors at my school.

~~~
rhacker
I think that may be a teacher by teacher type thing. I went to a public
school. I definitely remember something that stood out:

The teacher instructed everyone to move all the desks to the perimeter of the
classroom. Then had everyone lie down and pretend their hands and legs were
bound together. Pictures of boats like this were also in the text books.
Similar classes where we discussed in detail the wars against native
americans... now, that all being said, this was in the Silicon Valley (before
it was called that collectively). So I can't exactly describe public schools
in say, Kansas.

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scarface74
Let’s not forget that desegregation started a boom in private schools in the
south.

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/segregation-is-still-alive-
at-...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/segregation-is-still-alive-at-these-
christian-schools)

------
monochromatic
Alternative: school vouchers.

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asdf1234tx
LMAO. This will go over like a shit hamburger with my friends of the middle
class, middle aged, nuclear family persuasion. Which at least half of them are
democrats, and I predict this type of thing would temporarily unify democrats
and republicans, of the voting kind, to shoot this down. I'd have a hard time
finding a non-laughable, scientifically backed, argument to press them with.

------
rbanffy
Public education is an important issue and I don't believe a coherent (if
wild) argument for improving it should be flagged. If it generates heated
arguments, those should be dealt with one by one.

We'll need to have this discussion at some point.

------
BadassFractal
Not trying to sound woke, BUT it seems analogous to how the elite couldn't
care less about kids being drafted for Vietnam until they started pulling WASP
students out of college and sending them straight into the jungle. Then you
suddenly saw the anti-war movement gain steam outside of the black community,
which was hit the hardest until then.

Seems reminiscent of the principle, which I'm sure has a name, exemplified by
the "cut the cake however you want, but you don't get to choose which slice
you get in the end, so it's in your interest to make it fair".

If rich parents couldn't choose which type of school their kids end up with,
would public school still suck?

~~~
leetcrew
> If rich parents couldn't choose which type of school their kids end up with,
> would public school still suck?

though my parents aren't rich, i did attend a private school, so i am likely
biased here. this strategy amounts to holding people's kids hostage until they
do what you want, not sure i can get behind it.

random aside: one of the great pleasures of my high school experience was
having the opportunity to take several years of ancient greek. i know of only
a couple other private schools in my state that offered this at all, and i
don't know of any public schools that do. obviously it is unfair that only a
few students can have this, but it would make me very sad if no one could at
all.

~~~
BadassFractal
Reminds me of arguments against affirmative action, which I can relate to.
Underprivileged Asian families in the US will save on everything, sometimes go
as far as skipping meals, only to be able to afford tutoring for their kids so
that they end up in a good school. If someone has sacrificed so much to get
their kids there, should they be denied that right just based on their race?

~~~
yellowapple
Not to mention that the kids more often than not had spent nearly their entire
lives up to that point working to the bone to be the absolute best students
they can be, only to face literal and blatant racial discrimination during the
college application process in the name of "affirmative action". And now there
are growing calls to do the same thing as they enter the workforce, all in the
name of "diversity".

Don't get me wrong, we definitely (as a society) ought to be giving
underprivileged demographics as many opportunities to no longer be
underprivileged, and in most cases I'm all in favor of diversity programs and
affirmative action. Shafting one of those disadvantaged groups because they
sacrificed everything else to level the playing field for themselves is,
however, a major - if not outright fatal - bug in that system.

Americans discriminating against Asian Americans is not a new thing, of
course. California's history in particular is deeply rooted in giving Chinese
and Japanese Americans - including even natural-born citizens - the shortest
possible end of the stick.

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newnewpdro
To abolish the class divide you must abolish inheritance of wealth. When
people die, their assets should become redistributed across the population.

Good luck implementing it; the wealthy would just find ways to put their
assets in shell companies or trusts where their descendants may access them.

Practical issues aside, I do believe inheritance is a major barrier of
progress towards equality.

~~~
djrogers
Let’s set aside the fact that 80% of US millionaires are first generation,
which somewhat subverts your underlying assumptions, and address your idea on
its merits.

By doing this, you would remove the single greatest biological imperative
humans have to excel - to leave your offspring better off than you.

~~~
rhacker
Let's also realize that to abolish inheritance would mean abolishing
inheritance for the other 99%. Many people in the 99% have saved their home or
otherwise kept their dignity because of inheritance. It's not just a 1%
concept.

