tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post2057973983489766956..comments2024-03-22T06:22:08.010+00:00Comments on Stephen Law: Ban Private Schools?Stephen Lawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02167317543994731177noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-66082923461519907362007-06-11T11:01:00.000+00:002007-06-11T11:01:00.000+00:00Question: Are we all presuming here that the job o...Question: <BR/><BR/>Are we all presuming here that the job of the state is to promote fairness? <BR/><BR/>Why shouldn't the state, instead, seek to raise standards across the board? <BR/><BR/>I'm not arguing against fairness here, but of the two, the second seems to be a more productive goal.Joe Ottenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18380362092159905533noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-31528031325198969352007-06-11T08:26:00.000+00:002007-06-11T08:26:00.000+00:00http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2...http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2100041,00.htmlgeorgesdelatourhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03548858896924613970noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-38373941637263691842007-06-08T16:22:00.000+00:002007-06-08T16:22:00.000+00:00Sorry to keep posting. The middle classes who curr...Sorry to keep posting. The middle classes who currently use the state system buy better education on the sly, by finding "good" state schools and buying overpriced houses in the catchment area. None of this raises the general quality of state education - quite the reverse. So I can see no reason to assume that forcing even more middle class people to use state education will make them fight for better state education for others.<BR/><BR/>My mother was in an NHS hospital, her condition completely misdiagnosed. I read up on it, and got her moved to a really good NHS teaching hospital, where she was operated on successfully. My efforts definitely benefitted my mother. They did not benefit the majority of NHS patients.georgesdelatourhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03548858896924613970noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-79405095514288869752007-06-08T15:52:00.000+00:002007-06-08T15:52:00.000+00:00"the situation re the quality of education in stat..."the situation re the quality of education in state schools would substantially improve if private schools were abolished. As a causal consequence."<BR/><BR/>Well, the profits of Easy Jet would definitely rise if we abolished Ryanair. It doesn't mean you'd have more satisfied passengers overall.<BR/><BR/>You seem to be arguing that if we have a single monopoly supplier of education, whose customers (Parents) have no choice but to use it, that supplier will be more willing to listen to its customers than it is at present.<BR/><BR/>Can you give one example where a state monopoly has behaved like this?georgesdelatourhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03548858896924613970noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-79170561835909315922007-06-08T15:29:00.000+00:002007-06-08T15:29:00.000+00:00There are good general argument in favour of aboli...There are good general argument in favour of abolishing the Monarchy. I'm very sympathetic to them. But there are individual monarchies (say, the Netherlands, or the Nordic monarchies) which are arguably nicer societies than individual republics. That's why anyone proposing to abolish the Monarchy has to have a clear idea of what kind of republic they wish to replace it with. In Australia, opinion polls show most people want a republic. But when they had a referendum, people voted to keep the Queen, because the kind of presidency on offer seemed worse.<BR/><BR/>Similarly, if you're going to outlaw private education, you're going to have to argue for a particular vision of state monopoly education. It's no use saying we'll abolish private schools, and only decide what kind of state schools we want later.<BR/><BR/>I noticed you didn't address my point that, right now, the biggest single way people pay for education is by buying a house in the catchment area of a "good" state school. If I was prevented from paying for my son's private school, I know I would have taken out a bigger mortgage and moved to the catchment area of the secular state school I liked.<BR/><BR/>You have to think about how parents will behave in practice. There were excellent arguments in favour of banning alcohol in the USA from 1920 to 1933. Just so long as you ignored human nature.georgesdelatourhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03548858896924613970noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-45489379003508186992007-06-08T15:03:00.000+00:002007-06-08T15:03:00.000+00:00I think, however, you could make a much simpler ar...I think, however, you could make a much simpler argument at a more fundamental level: Education as a fundamental civil right.<BR/><BR/>More or less without regard to consequentialism, <B>every person deserves as much education as he or she is innately capable of making use of.</B>Larry Hamelinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-50509648862684115602007-06-08T14:57:00.000+00:002007-06-08T14:57:00.000+00:00You have a too-strong premise in your argument: It...You have a too-strong premise in your argument: It's not necessary to assume that "innate talent" is <I>equally</I> distributed across classes; it's necessary only to assume that such talent is substantially less concentrated across classes than is educational opportunity.<BR/><BR/>I remain unconvinced on several points:<BR/><BR/>How does the concentration of private-school graduates relate to class and money concentration in various occupations? We might find of those 7% that half were scholarship students.<BR/><BR/>What occupations show these sorts of concentrations? You mentioned mid- to high-level civil service occupations (counting judges as civil servants). What are the ratios in technical and private managerial occupations?<BR/><BR/>If the ratio (or the argument) is focused primarily on the civil service or government two questions immediately spring to mind: Do we actually want the most innately talented people in government? Also, how do elected positions relate to civil service positions? Elections are, to some degree, a measure of the people's desires—perhaps people <I>like</I> having a class bias in government in general. (I suspect, however, on no other basis than a decades-old TV comedy, that we'll see public : elected :: private : civil-service.)<BR/><BR/>Private schools might well be a <I>mechanism</I> to push the upper and upper-middle classes into government, or they might simply <I>symbolize</I> class. I'd like to see evidence that they are actually a mechanism.Larry Hamelinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-78146443084050792532007-06-08T13:19:00.000+00:002007-06-08T13:19:00.000+00:00Well, I would be much happier with a privatised su...Well, I would be much happier with a privatised supply, voucher-funded no-top-up system.<BR/><BR/>Your Oxbridge analogy doesn't do it for me, again on an issue of (hypothetical) fact rather than principle. I am sure that it if Oxbridge went to a purely who-can-pay-most model, it would not mean that the top professions became dominated by stupid rich kids (speaking as one who has done a lot of graduate recruitment). Even if we suppose that Oxbridge actually graduated the stupid ones, many of them would fail at interview, and even more in the first couple of years in the job, so Oxbridge would rapidly lose its current status as a marker of "more likely to do well than ex-poly".<BR/><BR/>I know this is not a full answer to the issue! just dropping in in the middle of doing something else.<BR/><BR/>BTW, have you addressed my technical issue below? (It may not be possible to disentangle).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-75832465677536594222007-06-08T12:26:00.000+00:002007-06-08T12:26:00.000+00:00Hi CagliostI am not saying other universities find...Hi Cagliost<BR/><BR/>I am not saying other universities find their funds dwindling as a result of Oxbridge adopting the private-school model. They just do find themselves increasingly hard-pressed, financially. You know, like state schools currently are.<BR/><BR/>Think of my analogy that way. It still works, I think. The system would now be not only deeply unjust, it would be socially and economically unhealthy compared with what we have now.<BR/><BR/>However, I think a good case can be made for saying that the situation re the quality of education in state schools would substantially improve if private schools were abolished. As a causal consequence. As I said, force the children of the most affluent to attend the same schools as the rest of us, and I think you'll find them improving tout suite! I'll argue this a bit more later.<BR/><BR/>Re state school undergrads outperforming private-school kids, I'll look for a ref. I am confident about it though....Stephen Lawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02167317543994731177noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-46719362622240246062007-06-08T11:45:00.000+00:002007-06-08T11:45:00.000+00:00"Suppose that Oxford and Cambridge decided to drop..."Suppose that Oxford and Cambridge decided to drop selection on the basis of academic ability (other than to a reasonable minimum standard) and select instead on the basis of cash. Their fees go through the roof, with the result that only 7% of parents can afford them. Other universities find their funds dwindling, their best staff fleeing to now-loaded Oxbridge."<BR/><BR/>I'm not convinced by this analogy. I agree that other universities' best staff would move to Oxbridge, because they would be paid better. In this way allowing some universities to charge more would cause the standards of other universities to drop (because they don't have the best teachers). (This could be developed into an argument for paying state school teachers <EM>much</EM> more, rather than banning private schools. (All this extra money being spent on state education - where's it going? Could lots be diverted to raise teachers' salaries?))<BR/><BR/><BR/>But the part I don't agree with is "Other universities find their funds dwindling". <B>Why?</B> This is a repeat of my previous objection that allowing private schools doesn't reduce the quality of education of people at state schools.<BR/><BR/><BR/><BR/>Also:<BR/>"(note that, even now, state-school pupils outperform the privately educated peers at Oxford - why? because they have more native talent.)"<BR/>Could we have a reference? I'm not denying it, but a reference would be useful.James Jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10487916621748348915noreply@blogger.com