I think private schools should be banned. Too easy for the rich or even upper income class to gut public schools when you don’t use them. Everyone getting the same education chance is what I call equal opportunity.
Finland does actually have a private sector for health care.
The difference tends to be in how fast you get appointments for non-critical health issues. If I have a cough I’m worried about, I can go to my employer provided healthcare and speak to a doctor via phone in literally 20 minutes.
The public system atm would diagnose me with an automated quiz and determine my case to be “non-urgent”. I would eventually get a doctors appointment, if I’m persistent and find all the right numbers to call, online forms to fill in, etc.
If the matter is urgent however, the public system takes things very seriously. And private sector doctors will even forward you to a public hospital in some cases, if they don’t have the staff or equipment needed to help you in a particular case. With concussions for example, I’ve just walked into the local ER and been taken care of right away. If you need an ambulance, you don’t need to weigh your life against bankruptcy.
The public system is also efficient (except when it isn’t). That means you won’t always see staff spend their time on bedside manner. Their job is to keep you healthy, not happy (unless you’re there for mental issues). In my experience the private sector has a higher standard for customer service, because you’re not just a patient when you pay for your care. Your satisfaction matters more since they actually care about getting repeat customers.
Meanwhile, public healthcare wold prefer you never come back, which is sometimes a good thing, and sometimes bad.
I use both sides of the system, and as I already mentioned, the two sides inter-operate in many cases. While it’s been a huge mess at times, Finland is investing in a patient-data-management system called APOTTI which lets you switch doctors and care-providers seamlessly taking your patient-history with you. I once got x-rayd by my employee healthcare, then got sent to a hand surgeon in the public sector so I could get the diagnosis from those x-rays the same day. I left the private hospital and walked into the public one like they were operated by the same company. It’s amazing.
I guess the rationale is that you give precedence to the people paying for the healthcare (middleclass workers) to get them back to contributing to workforce (and earning those tax euros) as soon as possible. Also the decision is done by the companies (trying to keep their employees in working condition, also a big perk when employees are comparing different employers) and not the government so you can’t just decide to move the money like you just described.
Companies are by law required to offer health care. So when you’re working, you can choose which to use. Often work place healthcare is for those more urgent, yet smaller things. If you get cancer, you go to the public system or pay for private care.
But everyone here can get free care, which is the key take. You can just get some things faster via the workplace, or you can also pay to get a team of specialists or whatnot.
The system isn’t that split. In fact, it can work the other way around, in that a public doctor can send you to a private one when warranted, and the public system will then cover the cost.
In emergencies you can also walk into the ER of a private hospital and have the cost covered under the public system.
If you want to pay for a doctor to calm your hypochondria right now while small talking about something meaningless… Why not?
Also, my employer providing me with healthcare, isn’t optional, it’s legally mandated. If you have a job, you have the option of going to whatever private provider your employer has contracted. This is to make sure whatever sick leave you end up needing, is taken care of in a timely fashion so you can get back to work asap.
The only reason you can’t just walk into a public hospital and see a doctor the way you can with a private one, is that the public sector will actually make sure you need the care then and there before spending its resources on you. It’s triage, on a national scale.
The private and public sectors are integrated and inter-operable. This means the private sector hasn’t become a price-gouging insurance mine-field. Instead it’s more like an extension of the public system, serving as a more expensive but expedited channel, used where warranted.
Well, there are edge cases for private schools that would not make sense being solved by public schools. I moved a lot in my life (still do), and having access to schools in one of my children 's main language is an important thing for them. Those schools are still following local regulations though
Yeah let’s pull exceptional students down to the baseline. Every child should be forced to go through the government approved curriculum, nothing can go wrong with that.
Private schools are based. Much better education than public schools. Obviously I don’t want public schools to be gutted, so let’s make laws preventing that rather than preventing children from getting a good education that public school will never be able to provide.
Look at the Netherlands for a good example then. Private schools aren’t banned but public schools are so good even the princesses go to them. You’re just so used to public schools being underfunded that you think they can’t work. The reason you’d want to ban private schools is because it creates an incentive for the rich and powerful to fix your shitty public schools.
Why do we need to ban private schools if Netherlands was able to create good public schools without doing so? There is a limit of how good you can make public schools when you have no selection criteria. Private schools are based. I like that there is an option outside of government run institutions.
You have gifted programs in the public school. Your thinking shows the exact problem, that public schools can only “pull students down”. You can only see public schools as bad instead of, you know, funding them to be good. How about funding them so they pull everyone up, huh?
Then you go on to conspiratorial thinking to vilify, gasp, public schools.
A genius being around average people will pull them down. It’s a good thing to concentrate our smartest children in an environment that lets them learn with equally intelligent peers. There might not be enough hyper intelligent kids in a geographical region to warrant the resources required to fully support that minority of students. Nothing I said was conspiratorial.
Dude, gifted programs. Advanced classes. They are together. This is really easy. Any reasonably sized school will have enough to fill out an advanced class.
And this ensures all students can live up to their potential! How about that? Instead of only the ones that can afford stupid high tuition. Who have to pass screening, and wait times, and wait lists, and then long commutes. If you want more advanced people in society, the way you do that is opening the doors to more people, at all points in their life, right where they live.
And what the other guy said about selective public schools.
And yes you’re on about government approved education dogwhistle and authoritarianism. Dude, you’re right down conspiratorial thinking.
Almost every good private school has extensive financial aid programs. At the private school I went to, they had blind financial aid, meaning you got accepted first and if you couldn’t afford it, you would get in for free, so there was no discrimination against poor people.
I’m not against gifted programs and more resources being allocated to public schools. But private schools play an important role in this imperfect system and getting rid of them “because it’s unfair” just brings people down.
It’s not a conspiracy to suggest that public schools abide by a government approved curriculum. You are way too sensitive. You can improve public schools without making private schools illegal, is my point.
You know what’s even better than financial aid? Not needing it in the first place! Because you have excellent public schools. Which works for everyone, at all times, in all locations.
Had a bad year and couldn’t get the grades to make it to private school that one year? Well now you can pay attention to the excellent teachers you have in public school.
Can’t take the 1+ hr bus ride to a school far away? Well you can have an excellent school 10 minutes away.
And this all also starts in grade 1. Or Kindergarten if we get that sorted out. So you have good education before you ever have marks in any substantial way. This starts wayyyyy earlier than you’re portraying. How do you think someone can develop at later stages when they don’t have good schooling to begin with? Really I can’t emphasize this enough. Smart people don’t just pop up out of the blue and then we whisk them away to private school. How do you think people become smart or capable in the first place? We need good, public, accessible, education from the very start.
m “because it’s unfair” just brings people down.
Oh you’re still stuck in your mentality that public schools “bring people down”. I think you have this because that’s all you’ve ever seen. You can’t seem to conceive of good public schools, that have gifted programs, that don’t “bring people down”, that can in fact bring people up.
When rich and upper class don’t use the public schools, there is zero incentive to make them work. As seen by the current state of the US. It’s so bad that, like I said, you can’t even seem to conceive of a public system that doesn’t “bring people down”. It’s so bad that you’ve defined the public system as “bringing people down”. That it must “bring people down”. You’ve said it multiple times.
And yes saying “government approved education” is a thinly veiled dog whistle. If there was any doubt it was gone when you said authoritarianism. You just don’t like that I called it out, so you have to say I’m “way too sensitive”.
I’m not saying the public school system indiscriminately brings people down, but for the intellectual top 1% of kids it definitely can. stop thinking in absolutes. I think it’s a good thing for smart kids to hang out with smart kids. Believe it or not, different degrees of intelligence require different needs to allow children to reach their full potential. I believe that private schools are great in making sure that potential is met. It’s up to the schools themselves to allocate funding rather than a government bureaucracy, which is notoriously inefficient and frankly always will be, especially at scale. Advocate for improving funding to public schools so private schools would be unnecessary instead of making the choice on behalf of people.
for the intellectual top 1% of kids it definitely can.
Really? Do I have to add caveats to everything I say? It’s already long enough. But this is also about wayyyy more than the top 1% of kids, this is about everyone. You want a more capable society? That means everyone.
I think it’s a good thing for smart kids to hang out with smart kids.
Again, advanced classes. This is so simple.
Believe it or not, different degrees of intelligence require different needs
Again, advanced classes.
private schools are great in making sure that potential is met
Again, advanced classes.
And again, this means more students potential is reached. And that more students have the opportunity to become smart and educated from the very beginning. I notice you don’t respond to any of that, you’re back to acting like smart people just spring out of the blue to be whisked away to private schools. Think about how many people never intellectually developed in the first place because they never had good education to begin with. You want more smart people in society? The solution is public schools to develop those smart people.
government bureaucracy, which is notoriously inefficient and frankly always will be, especially at scale.
And now you define public schools as inefficient and all those connotations. Just like how you defined things before.
Seriously, it seems you can not even conceive of good public schools that yes serve and educate top students well (but again these students don’t just pop up out if the blue, they are educated from the very start).
But this is also about wayyyy more than the top 1% of kids, this is about everyone. You want a more capable society? That means everyone.
Hmms seems like you are implying here that it does actually bring those 1% of kids down for the betterment of the rest. I thought it wouldn’t bring kids down?
It’s a simple difference of opinions. I believe that private schools are better empowered to allocate resources to produce the best result since it bypasses government bureaucracy. That’s it. Acting like “advanced classes” is some sort of own that defeats the purpose of private schools is a cop out frankly.
You want more smart people in society? The solution is public schools to develop those smart people.
This can happen without making private schools illegal.
Hmms seems like you are implying here that it does actually bring those 1% of kids down for the betterment of the rest. I thought it wouldn’t bring kids down?
Lol no I didn’t imply that. See that “also”?Now you’re making things up. I thought you were better than this.
Because this is also about all of society (see that also?) But I see your game now. You have to try to limit this to top 1%. It’s a fake construct on my argument that you have to limit things to. I wonder if you’re going to strawman this now.
It’s a simple difference of opinions
I think the basis of this is that you can not even conceive of public schools that serve both top students and students well. (Insert all the words: also, in addition, etc),
Acting like “advanced classes” is some sort of own that defeats the purpose of private schools is a cop out frankly.
Lol that addresses your arguments where I said it. You want top students to hang out together? They do, in advanced classes.
You want their needs to be met? They are, in advanced classes.
Etc.
And all the other factors that you never respond to, like availability, travel time, wait lists, that smart people don’t spring out of the blue to be whisked away to private schools and that they are developed and educated from the start.
This can happen without making private schools illegal.
Like I already said, when rich and upper class don’t use the public system there is zero incentive to make it work well.
Really, you can’t even conceive of a public system that works well for top and also (see that also?) students.
Yeah I see your other game too, you want me to excessively add caveats to everything I say now. The first time may have been legit, but now you read implications that aren’t there just so I have to add more caveats. Nice games. But I think that shows you’ve graduated to bad faith and I’m just pointing out what I’ve already said because it addresses it all, so I think I’m done. Cheers.
The gifted program at my kids school is based on a single standardized test and practically speaking there is no way to appeal. It isn’t some perfect system.
So… marks. And I assume you can enter at most times.
So NOT ability to pay $$$, and ability to live in a certain area, and ability to have parents with pull, and ability to pass subjective screening (oh you went to what school before? Well this other student went to this other school we like more).
I don’t know why you are assuming when I am right here and you can just ask. Well okay I know why you are assuming I am just going to pretend that I don’t.
It is one standardized test given once a year. Kid is sick during it? No appeal. Kid had a bad teacher that year? No appeal. One single thing goes wrong on a single day of an entire year and your kid lags behind for at least another year. No teacher recommendations, no gpa, no retest, no other options. Maybe next time ask before you assume.
Oh and it isn’t some great equalizer either. I see tutoring places bragging that they can get your kid a better score on the test. If you have the money and the time you can get your kid in the program.
Dude I’m assuming because that’s how I’ve seen it work. Once a year, cool. Pretty much what I thought. I don’t know why you’re trying to turn this into something else. Boy and you run with that.
So your argument is more criteria. Ok cool.
And see my previous message about all the things that it’s not about. It doesn’t need to be 1000% equalizer for public schools to be a pretty good friggin thing.
Even if nationwide absolute mediocre student body was a goal banning private schools wouldn’t achieve it.
Next you would have to ban tutoring companies, after that you would have to ban test prep, after that private tutors, after that you would need restrictions on funding for all schools (which wouldn’t work since not all schools have the exact same funding needs), you would still have advantages. One kid is closer to the library, one kid has a parent who was a teacher, one kid has a stay at home parent with the resources to help them with homework, etc.
Nothing short of an absolute police state of fairness would be able to achieve this.
Next you would have to ban tutoring companies, after that you have to ban test prep
Lol no you don’t have to. Nice slippery slope. You do what the government can do, which is fund schools. This is really easy, but you want to slippery slope that it must lead to all these other fearmongering things which it doesn’t. Like lol at, sorry to say, your absurdity.
So back to schools. You fund them all the same. Where I live all public schools are funded the same in the whole province. This is really easy.
It isn’t a slippery slope. It is me showing you what is needed to achieve the goal. A slippery slope is when someone argues that if A then B must follow and hasn’t justified it, it is not at all the same as me saying if your goal is X you will need to do what you just said and more.
You fund them all the same.
I highly doubt your province is doing that because it doesn’t freaken work. This school has more kids that have special needs, this other school has more kids whose parents speak a different language at home, this school needed a major boiler upgrade last year, this school has poor students so needs to provide more school supplies, this school is more remote so they had to pay extra to get X, this school is more urban so it needs to pay all teachers a bit more, this school had an unusually low number of 2nd graders this year…
No government is so fucking stupid to try to do what you are saying. You can start with a baseline funding number and modify it as needed but you aren’t saying that. You are saying the equivalent of lawful stupid alignment for accounting.
Dude it’s a slippery slope, you literally went off how you “have to” ban all these other things. And the answer is simple, no you don’t have to ban those other things.
Oh I see what you’re doing, you’re making a bad faith argument ad absurdem. That it must be 1000000% equal, no adjustments for anything, ever!!! Wow and lol. If I really to spell it out, you fund based on number of students of each ____. Yes repairs and maintenance are funded as they are needed lol. Yes you have baseline funding for small schools.
In the small chance that any of what you say is good faith, you seem to be stuck in this it must be 10000000000% equal!!! mentality. Ban everything!!! To make it 10000000% equal!!! mentality.
Dude, this is really simple. Fund public schools well. See above. Peace.
OK so what if people leave them alone, and let them get on with their lives, but refuse to use preferred pronouns? No obsessing, no talking about a man can’t become a woman what is a woman what are you changing into if you’re already a woman, end all that talk, but people that disagree just don’t say things they think aren’t true? Would that work?
Does it matter? They just want to be left alone, they’re being left alone. The opinions of people they don’t even want to interact with have no bearing on their lives, so long as they’re genuinely being left alone. No laws against being transgender, no discrimination against transgender people in hiring or whatever, no harassment, but some people are going to use pronouns based on sex instead of gender because they personally don’t buy it. Is that OK?
Its irrelevant for this topic of discussion. Pronouns are a linguistic element with already clearly defined rules, proper nouns are chosen and have always been chosen. To answer you I’d say calling someone by some name other than theirs to be disparaging is not OK, referring to someone using a pronoun corresponding to their biological sex is perfectly OK.
I get what you mean, but the analogy does not work so well. Names are inherently individual. We got used to know hundreds of them. So when you’re meeting a new person, you expect to learn a “new” name just for that person. Likewise, most people don’t make a fuzz if you get their name wrong the first couple of times. It’s something which has to be asked, and learned.
On the other hand, gender is mostly inferred, and we used to use only two of them. So when you’re meeting a new person, you’re expected to already know the correct gender. Likewise, most people react insulted if you misgender them, even if only once. It’s something you’re supposed to just know.
My point is, many people have a strong social training to correctly guess the gender of a person before talking to them. To suppress this automatism and replace it with an active ask-individually-approach can be stressful, although we have a similar scheme with names already.
So if someone decided you were trans and started calling you by the wrong pronouns, you'd be ok with that?
Like if they personally just don't believe your presented gender and want to publically harrass you about it, are you allowed to put up a fuss in this scenario of yours? Or is that OK?
I don’t particularly care. It’s not really harassing me, when they address me they’d say “you”. They’d be doing it in conversation with someone else. I wouldn’t hang out with someone that did this, but it wouldn’t make me angry or anything, it’s literally not my problem at all, I know who and what I am.
Being an asshole was never forbidden. I can call a cis man a she all I want. Just because it isn’t illegal doesn’t mean that there are no consequences. Like people will just disassociate from me and my boss might fire me for bullying.
What do you mean by “consequences”? You want to punish people for believing a man can’t be a woman, even if they don’t go around harassing transgender and calling them names and fucking with their lives?
Intentionally misgendering someone is a dick move and generally people don’t want to hang around dicks. So first consequence is you’ll have other dicks for friends. Except, they’re dicks, so probably not gonna be very good friends each other.
I also hope you are self employed cuz intentionally misgendering people in the workplace is not a good look either. Better hope no one in earshot has a trans friend or family member.
No one’s saying you can’t be Your Best Inner Bigoted Self. We’re just saying the rest of us think it’s ugly and weak minded.
Alright, so you’re OK with leaving alone people who use pronouns to refer to biological sex, you don’t want to be their friend or whatever but you leave them alone, don’t harass them, don’t try to get them fired and if they get a job somewhere that doesn’t care then fine, leave them alone?
I never said people should be punished for thinking that. If people aren’t harassing or bullying people they aren’t being assholes.
Also consequences doesn’t just mean punishment. If someone is being an asshole by constantly misgendering a trans person on purpose and people don’t want to hang out with them anymore because of that behavior that’s a consequence but not a punishment.
So you’re OK with that? Not personally associating with people that use pronouns to refer to biological sex, but let them be themselves and do their thing and associate with who they want?
Yeah, but it’s not without contention. Some people believe it should be illegal to use pronouns in reference to someone’s biological sex. I’m just asking people if they’re OK with it, if they like that, to distinguish from people who do that and people who harass and berate transgender people. When someone says “they just want to be left alone” I’m trying to get whether they view that distinction as valid or not.
Edit: This is from a US perspective despite the article.
Should a teacher be required to call a child by their preferred pronoun? Of course; the child has no choice in the matter of attending school, and forcing a child to endure constant humiliation at the hands of their steward is an insane thing to require.
Should it be illegal to misgender someone on the street? No, we have the freedom to speak our mind in this country. If one puts themselves out there as a bigot though, they need to be prepared for the social repercussions of that speech.
Should it be illegal to misgender a coworker? Consider a situation where you start a new job. Your coworker starts calling you “cuck” over and over again. You tell him that you’re not a cuck, but he says that you look like a cuck, so that’s what he’s going to call you. You go to your boss, and tell them that your coworker is being disrespectful, but he says that he’s not going to get between the two of you about personal identity issues. There is a case for a lawsuit for creating a hostile work environment, and it’s a civil matter at that point.
The most concerning question is: why is it so important to you to be an asshole to other people?
The interesting thing about pronouns is that the only pronoun used to directly address someone is not gendered, it’s “you”. So it is not actually possible to directly misgender someone.
The words “he” and “she” aren’t slurs. Comparison to the word “cuck” don’t make any sense. Should a job require someone to use preferred pronouns? Well I go back to what I was discussing about free association, if they want to sure, if they don’t that’s OK too, but going after a workplace without such a requirement takes things a bit farther than just wanting to be left alone.
And as far as teachers, I actually don’t think kids should be forced to go to school, so that would really be a different issue. If they’re old enough to determine their gender they’re certainly old enough to educate themselves or determine if they even want an education.
If you are intentionally misgendering people, then yes. Yes, you are. You’re actively doing something that somebody asked you not to. You’re making their identity about you. It’s ridiculously self-absorbed.
The interesting thing about pronouns is that the only pronoun used to directly address someone is not gendered, it’s “you”. So it is not actually possible to directly misgender someone.
Another thing you’re wrong about. “Them” is a pronoun. “He” and “she” are pronouns that directly address someone if you’re talking to a third party with the person in the room; this is really not that hard.
The words “he” and “she” aren’t slurs. Comparison to the word “cuck” don’t make any sense. Should a job require someone to use preferred pronouns? Well I go back to what I was discussing about free association, if they want to sure, if they don’t that’s OK too, but going after a workplace without such a requirement takes things a bit farther than just wanting to be left alone.
Pretend that the coworker was misgendering you as a cis person instead. The argument still stands. Are they creating a hostile work environment? We have laws about that.
Why is it important to protect the bigot’s livelihood but not that of the person being misgendered?
And as far as teachers, I actually don’t think kids should be forced to go to school, so that would really be a different issue. If they’re old enough to determine their gender they’re certainly old enough to educate themselves or determine if they even want an education.
Fortunately we still educate kids in this country, so I don’t understand the relevance here.
Well that’s good, I 100% agree with you. But judging by the votes I’m getting for asking this question, I don’t think most people that support the transgender movement do.
Why would they think I’m an asshole? I have not misgendered someone, I have not even stated my opinion on that. I’m just asking, if that’s the compromise would you all be OK with it.
You know that there have always been effeminate men and masculine women, right? They might not even be trans, they just look close to the other gender. You’d still be an asshole for calling them the wrong gender, why would trans people be any different?
This requires some obsession on the part of the person who would have to try to learn everyone’s gender and sex just so they can purposefully identify and misgender this trans person.
That’s only how it feels, as you only notice it at all on people where it is “obvious”. And even then, people get it wrong, cis people have been harassed by transphobes often enough. Just be nice.
Nooooo, trust me, you don’t need regulations, haha. We’re good people who would never do anything bad, promise. Why do we want those regulations gone? Just because you don’t need them, that’s all, I promise.
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.
That used to be the case, mostly because the EU had rules about that. Then Brexit happened and dumping of sewage prohibitions were one of the first to be tossed on the bonfire of rules. And joy was in the corprate greedy shriveled heart.
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.
I respect where you’re coming from but you’ve got to remember that the lobby is on private property so you will get fucked to the full extent of the law.
Yeah, but we’re talking about a guy who had no problem gassing his own people to end a hostage standoff, so I’m guessing any dissent out there he’ll have no problem with putting down ruthlessly.
Exactly. It was aborted. And then the guy behind it was murdered. Putin doesn’t care if he kills his own people. He would either shoot/gas everyone protesting or send them all to the front lines.
Many people doubt that this would happen, because Russia looks weak right now, but imagine if there was stalemate in Ukraine and Russia got some time to recover.
After that it would attack one of the Baltic states and successfully capture its capital, and before NATO will even respond, Russia will say “that’s all what we wanted we don’t plan to go further”. Now (mostly Western European countries) might not want to get into a direct war with Russia and might let it slide. If that would happen it would basically erode NATO, because many of its members would start question what benefit they have for being members.
What sucks is that even if NATO would plan and would respond as it supposed to, if Russia would believe that this is the likely outcome they might still attack. So NATO needs to act and make clear that it won’t get divided in such situation.
The babushka and woman voice in russia is mostly supressed, but if there is protests, it is mostly the mothers and babushka that voice their protest more fearless. It was again visible during the demonstrations against the war in the first weeks. While some man do protest too, the mothers and elder woman feel more “invincible” while the male russian is mostly complicit of the state narrative because of the violence they can receive. Many russian protest in the past were started or hold up by russian (mostly older) woman. I think the reason is mostly that they do not fit into a righteous narrative of the state. Russian State TV is mostly right wing Police/Justice content showing bad people getting locked up. The famous cells inside the courtroom are to some degree a invention of the russian TV propaganda. Putting people behind iron bars does always look guilty on TV. Nobody feels sympathy for someone talking through iron bars. But it does not work for Babushkas. State TV could never show a old russian woman (or multiple thereof) like that and have the majority on their side. It would always look deeply inhumane to (even) russians from every generation, seeing their elders portrait like that. People would be outraged. Therefore older russian woman are more fearless in groups to state their protest, because they know the state can not (in general) beat them up like they do with male protesters. During the protest they had to carry them away one by one without first beating them down like they normally do. And I am sure the (young) male were more tortured by OMON Troops than the older russian woman - if at all. So paying the woman is a solution that works for russia and china and some other asian countries, where there is a deep rooted respect for elders and mothers that are able to state protests, that can only hardly be controlled by strong force when erupting. Better pay up before than risking the images.
Russian grandmas and wives should take the money and protest anyway. Sounds like a great opportunity for a rogue propaganda campaign... Something like the following...
(All images created with bing image creator, prompt "Russian grandmother with russian government check and flaming wine bottle" some with "in the style of propaganda posters" appended.
Text made with google translate, english > russian, should say "I got mine. Time they got theirs.")
Yeah that seems to be the mod style here. Violence can be done to people in real life, but talking about how violence should be done back is unacceptable.
In cases like this, I favour the kind of poetic justice that only irony can deliver - leaving them strapped down to be waterboarded by one of their sewage outlets seems like a good option.
inews.co.uk
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