I don’t know if something got lost in editing, but perhaps it was meant to say “no fee paying private schools”? I don’t know if it’s more accurate or not since the article is paywalled, I’m just speculating off the URL.
There are fee paying private schools too. The only honest difference is that private schools can’t generate profit, money going in has to go out. That just means that private schools here are proportionally even more luxurious than their public counterparts.
Might as well cite Singapore, but we also have our negatives. I wouldn't be so quick to jump to private/public as the main source of education problems.
The problem with private schools is that they have to sell themselves to the parents enrolling their children in it. You don’t sell yourself by putting down those important to your customers. Private schools are pressured to give an impression, not an education.
Paid for schools sell themselves to parents with their exam results more than anything else.
They may have a lot of equipment and resources that state schools don’t have, but it’s pretty irrelevant if they don’t have grades to back it up. Paid for schools I’m familiar with will often measure their results by what percentage of pupils are successful Oxbridge candidates, particularly if they’re studying classics.
The gimmicks such as laser cutters, 3d printers, green screens, recording studios, gym and sports facilities, personal laptops, art supplies etc etc. are pretty good for pupils who were never going to be accepted to a highest level university regardless of education. So you have selling points for higher and lower ability pupils.
Private schools are a privilege for the upper class and a symptom of the unjust social inequality in capitalism. In an egalitarian society with good public schools, private schools are obsolete and every child has the same chance to get good education independently of their heritage.
If there is one thing that my experience living in the UK (having lived in other countries of Northern and Southern Europe) has taught me is that private education as well as non-meritocratic access to higher education are a key component in suppressing social mobility and “keeping people in their place” across generations: in that country the rich and high middle class have this well established path for their children through very expensive private schools (curiously know over there as “public schools”, in the same sense of “public” as “anybody can spend a night in the Ritz if they have the £400 to pay for it”) and then an “interview” selection process for Oxford and Cambridge where selection criteria are arbitrary such as for example “having attended the right school” (as an aquaintance of mine was told he hadn’t, as reason to refuse his application) so that people who popped out of the right vagina and were sent to the “right” (£30k a year+) “public” schools are guaranteed to get in and come out of the other side with a diploma from an “elite” (not quite when it comes to pupils, but definitelly can and do hire some of the best researchers and lecturers) university.
By the way this all continues into their career, since “public” school educated types leverage the connections acquired there (and mommy and daddy’s contacts) to literally step into highly paid sinecures purelly on cronyism.
In the UK Education is very much part of a red carpet for life if you were born in the “upper” classes.
My impression there was eventually that, had I been born in the UK to the kind of poor working class parents I was born to, instead of having gone into Physics at Uni thanks to my very high grades at high school and 98% score at the entrance exam (though I ended up switching to and graduating as an EE) and having a successful career across various countries of Europe in Engineering, I would’ve at best been a car mechanic because the education system in the UK is not at all meritocratic and is designed first and foremost to preserve class membership through the generations.
All this to say that Britain is a perfect example of a very well establish use of private education to maintain the lowest level of social mobility in all of Europe.
PS: Oh, and don’t get me started on how “public” schools are “charities” (kid you not!) and thus pay no taxes. It’s the very definition of “adding insult to injury” or as they would say over there “really taking the piss out of everybody else”.
Private schools grant an “out” for the wealthy (and by extension, powerful). If they can pay for better results, they’re actively incentivised to lobby to defund public schools. If the private option doesn’t exist, they’re incentivised to lobby to improve public schools (the ones with kids, in any case).
I’m afraid if private schools were removed the really wealthy would just send their kids to study in another country like they already do, and the middle class would lose this option, and we get worse as a whole
Nah just pay for after school programs. I wasn’t happy with the level of progress I was seeing with my kids on certain subjects. So after a few attempts to push the schools I gave up and hired tutors. I am not really in the financial position to do this but the alternative is worse.
On the one hand, a significant number of people are motivated to improve public education. On the other, a handful of billionaires’ kids move overseas. That’s an insignificant trade-off, isn’t it?
Countries that invest heavily in public education have the best education standards in the world - see Finland as one example. Even assuming a couple of billionaires aren’t better off, why would I care - especially given the massive benefit to the broader population.
What I think would happen is that I would lose private education for my kids and the public ones will still be shit, like all public services in my country
For better or worse, I get the impression that an increase in social spending isn’t something you’ll need to worry about under the Bolsonaro government.
The problem with this solution in Brazil isn’t the solution itself - it’s the fact that you have an austerity-focused right-wing government that wants such investment to fail so that they can kill it.
With private schools you can choose what you pay for (at least in theory), and with public schools you take what you’re given.
Since school education involves lots of contention by different parties over which exact kind of indoctrination and\or mustering and humiliation will the kids experience, I’d say private schools are a good idea in this particular regard.
However, I live in Russia and here both the concept of private schools isn’t quite existent (there are some, but they are very expensive and at the same time not very good, and the prestigious ones are all public, and they’ll have the same standard program anyway) and I haven’t studied in one.
At least somewhere about 9th grade they gave up trying to make me not sleep at all the lessons.
My father went to one of the oldest English “public” (i.e. private) schools. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latymer_Upper_School He didn’t talk about the academics, which is surprising for an academic- he talked about the antisemitism he faced every single day from kids, teachers and staff. I’m sure it didn’t help that his parents were poor and he was there on scholarship.
I went to a private school in the U.S. for elementary school. I was bullied every day, not just by the kids, but by the only teacher I had from first through sixth grade, and he terrified me so much that my parents didn’t know until I was an adult and my mother ran into another kid I went to school with who talked about how sorry she felt for me.
My daughter goes to an American public school. She is bullied a lot too (we’re an eccentric family), but at least the teachers are mostly on her side, and if one isn’t, I have someone to complain to about it. I wouldn’t even think of risking her in a private school.
Your family is not eccentric. It’s exceptional. There is a big difference. Unfortunately people are afraid of that,that seems different to what they are accustomed. When they cannot do something the other can, they ridicule it. Being bullied feels like shit. Be there for your daughter and help her steam out all the feelings she has. Help her make alliances with other kids in the school. let her choose to do sports or art she likes. teachers may take her side, but don’t imagine that they’ll do something, no mater how much you complain. I hope my response has some meaning for you
I’m sorry you experienced that, but to be honest it’s entirely circumstancial. There are a lot of teachers in certain districts who normalize teasing students.
50 over the course of all the days of ceasefire to ensure nobody breaks the ceasefire. Israel will do the same with their 150 civilians. If you release all at once, there might be an incentive to break the ceasefire earlier.
inews.co.uk
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