When rich private schools with their own Olympic sized swimming pools and cricket grounds with turf pitches and scoreboards, and theatres, etc etc, get more taxpayer money per student than government schools on their 40th year of temporary portables, the system is badly broken.
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Talking Politics
- Thread starter Legends of 2017
- Start date
I've had the advantage of viewing through two lenses.
For me at least the quality of facilities (swimming pools, running tracks, classrooms etc.) is not the key difference.
In our experience the key differences are student support for mental health & student welfare, parental communication, teacher availability & opportunities to learn anything a child shows interest in. Also there was a high intolerance for problem children & bullying in the private system. The public system fails dismally in a lot of these areas.
There is huge variation, within both and between both, dunno if you saw 4 corners a couple of weeks ago on the Sydney School Cranbrook? Very confronting, disturbing stuff. For private a lot depends on the religious philosophy behind it, there are some crazy fundamentalist "respectable" schools out there. And of course, there are many, most that aren't. I think for both, putting facilities and socio economic profiles aside, a lot is down to leadership and culture. Schools are like footy clubs in a lot of ways, they have dominant, productive periods, and stale struggling periods, usually dependent on a good principal, a critical mass of good committed teachers, and engaged parents.
Yes I saw that TS. Absolutely embarrassing. I hate things about many private schools. Particularly the 'old boy' mentality.
I think it's fair to say there are good & bad schools on both sides of the system which is true of life I suppose.
On that note I really hate simple pigeon holing. It's good to have a wider perspective.
Make the choice best for your child.
Nailed it. Massive difference due to resources. The support for kids with challenges at the school we attend is superb. The teachers are great, facilities great. My son flew a plane in Year 9. They can go down almost any stream of interest.
And, as you suggest, bullying is almost non-existent. Almost.
The cost for us is over $35,000 per child when you add in the extra costs of travel/camps/extra tuition and not something achieved easily.
I didn't have the privelege of a private school education and was not for it at all initially, but i think it has advantages.
Agree.
The other aspect is that if you want to predict whether a kid makes it to university, the biggest indicator is whether their parents went to uni.
If they want private schools make them privately funded.
If the government is funding private schools how come the government doesn't get seats on their boards?
It is ridiculous.
DS
Yes, but part of the intolerance for bullying and the like manifests in expelling the student who ends up at the local state school. They shove their problems off to the state system.
DS
Government funds plenty of stuff without being board members. QANTAS and AFL to name 2 off the top of my head.
I reckon public high schools were already going to *smile* before Howard, from a cultural perspective. I was educated in the 90s and witnessed it myself at public high school. The funding arrangements post late 90s onwards exacerbated it no doubt. But there was already a semblance of lawlessness creeping in, with no real meaningful consequences for actions.
I see pictures of my mother and uncle at public High School in the 1960s and the way the kids presented and the school conducted itself, you wouldn't be able to tell an enormous difference between a public school and a private one. And every person, no matter their income status had access to this.
More, what I bemoan is what public education has become progressively from the late 1980s onwards. And I don't think funding is the sole issue. Sure i acknowledge it's part of the issue. But in past eras (like I said, 1960s/70s) class sizes were larger, teachers did more with far less. I think a greater determinate is the social decay of modernity that gets foist upon public schools that they are unfairly expected to work miracles with. This is a consequence of cultural deficiencies.
When traditionalist concepts like mutual obligation, discipline, self discipline, self restraint, personal responsibility and accountability etc are degraded as values underpinning a society. And we instead lurch towards socially liberal values driven by self gratification immune from consequence as people's central raison d'etre, I think that gives a good explanation of the social fallout we see in public high schools as they descend into unteachable anarchy.
These themes obviously occur across all social classes. Non-govt schooling is not immune by any stretch.
But while these themes have been no doubt detrimental to middle and upper class communities, they have been absolutely devastating and a death knell to the social fabric in working class communities.
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Who'd want to be a school teacher?
When I went to school and misbehaved I got 6 double handers. I didn't get any that I didn't deserve.
The school teachers didn't have to tell my parents, if they did, I would've got he same treatment from my dad.
My dad smacked me when I deserved it. He'd give me a smack and talk to me about it, I didn't hate him for doing it.
Australia as a society has gone backwards since it was deemed cruel to punish misbehaviour.
When I went to school and misbehaved I got 6 double handers. I didn't get any that I didn't deserve.
The school teachers didn't have to tell my parents, if they did, I would've got he same treatment from my dad.
My dad smacked me when I deserved it. He'd give me a smack and talk to me about it, I didn't hate him for doing it.
Australia as a society has gone backwards since it was deemed cruel to punish misbehaviour.
Panthera, the values you cite are the opposite of the values championed by the extreme individualism of neo-liberalism.
Humans are a communal animal. If we weren't we would not have survived in Africa when we first evolved. Plenty of other animals could out-compete an individual human. But a community of humans can out-compete the other animals.
When we see the tech billionaires, nihilistic morons like Trump, various CEOs etc all act as if they alone are important and no-one else matters, and this is their pathway to success in our society, what values do we expect young people to have?
DS
Humans are a communal animal. If we weren't we would not have survived in Africa when we first evolved. Plenty of other animals could out-compete an individual human. But a community of humans can out-compete the other animals.
When we see the tech billionaires, nihilistic morons like Trump, various CEOs etc all act as if they alone are important and no-one else matters, and this is their pathway to success in our society, what values do we expect young people to have?
DS
I think you have me confused DS. Where did I ever champion political ‘neo-liberalism’?
I sway more traditionalist socio-culturally, sure, doesn’t mean I line up with modern neo-liberal politics.
For context. Not that I’m a practising believer, or even catholic, but find I line up more closely with the old Catholic-right of the ALP (that essentially doesn’t even exist anymore), albeit more moderate and pragmatic than them on some social issues. So called ‘red toryism’ from the UK is another political philosophy I tend to find myself lining up with in quite a few respects.
Suffice to say, in the current political climate, I find it extremely hard to place a vote. Hare-Clark is the best electoral system for me, where I can spread my vote across the card according to how specific candidates line up with my values.
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Panthera, the comment was not about your positions on things. The comment was about the way society has become so individualistic under the influence of neo-liberalism.
It was more a comment leading on from what you said than a reaction, any implication that you are neo-liberal was not intended.
In any case, I'm sure I could find things I disagree with you on
DS
So great we don’t charge any tax on institutions actively promoting misogyny and siphoning funds off their members for those at the top.
www.smh.com.au
Inside the ‘ecosystem’: the Brethren businesses in the sights of the tax office
The ATO this week conducted an extraordinary unannounced raid on the politically connected sect known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, which preaches a “hatred” for the world.
You certainly aren’t wrong regarding self centred people like Trump. It’s probably why there is a faction of the god bothering Republicans who despise him as much as liberals (liberals in the American context). He is the antithesis of their Christian values. Not that god botherers and liberals would find too much common ground on many other things.Panthera, the comment was not about your positions on things. The comment was about the way society has become so individualistic under the influence of neo-liberalism.
It was more a comment leading on from what you said than a reaction, any implication that you are neo-liberal was not intended.
In any case, I'm sure I could find things I disagree with you on
DS
I’ll add on cultural issues foist upon schools.
The complete breakdown and deliberately subversive unpicking of all authority structures. I don’t mean to suggest a tyrannical totalitarian authority structure needs to be in place, but a semblance of control is required. As opposed to encouraged modern parenting techniques that make the parents out to be cool ‘friends’ of the kids, rather than, you know, their PARENTS. Or where teachers are on a first name basis with their students (even primary school students) and are encouraged to see themselves as ‘partners in learning’ (with 5YOs) as opposed to being a teacher. It’s all death by a thousand cuts.
I have a good friend who attended public school in Singapore and he has friends who now have kids in public school there. A society that hasn’t descended down the same idiotic path of progressive cultural change as western societies (or at least not to the same degree). And no surprise that there isn’t the same behavioural issues in school. And this goes for many other East Asian education systems. Sure, their systems are not perfect with overly stressed students trying to meet impossibly high standards in some cases. But it’s the semblance of order that allows the teacher to teach.
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The only private schools in Singapore are International schools, which only foreign kids can attend. Local kids can get in only if granted an exception by the government.
While the public system is meant to be fair and open to everyone, it's certainly not like that in reality. The handful of elite "public" schools would have facilities that match Australia's best private schools, thanks to donations from parents and alumni. These are the schools you would struggle to get into even if you lived next door unless you were alumni or connected.
In general across the local schools, support of kids with special needs is very low. Bullying is rife.
The Evangelicals love Trump because he gets policy stuff done for them - like getting SCOTUS to jettison Roe vs Wade. They see no contradiction in a deeply flawed man who never goes to church as "doing the Lord's work".
Yeah it's bizarre - the Southern Evangelicals will vote for a secular heathen who screws porn stars and is an amoral *smile* over Biden who attends (Catholic) mass every Sunday.
