That’s today’s big story in the SMH: the growing trend over the last decade, in NSW especially, whereby white parents choose not to send their kids to the local public school, particularly for high school education, meaning the public schools have become predominated by indigenous and immigrant children of Middle Eastern descent. The trend has also started to affect selective public high schools on Sydney’s North Shore with large numbers of Asian children. School principals are expressing grave concerns for the implications this trend holds for social cohesion.
- White flight leaves system segregated by race
- Not so great a jump from dem ol’ days
- Long ride across border to school
One principal also made the point that it’s not only private schools that are contributing to the segregation of children:
Social cohesion was under threat, Dr Reid said, from increasing segregation in education according to race, class and academic achievement.
Public schools were becoming increasingly selective on the basis of academic achievement, sporting and artistic ability.
“We have increased segregation inside public schools into the smart and the dumb, the sports capable and the creative. It’s that crude,” Dr Reid said. “It has implications for social cohesion. What do we do if kids are no longer growing up together?”
I grew up attending several schools because my dad had a public service job that meant we moved around. My favourite school was in Newcastle, in an area of high immigrant population, where I was surrounded by a bunch of non-Anglo-Celtic Europeans, considered at the time to be very non-U. Certainly I found that those schools were better both academically and socially than several others I attended which were virtually wall-to-wall WASPs, largely because the kids came from so many different backgrounds that ethnicity became a very low-level concern: we pretty much just rubbed along. I have very little reason to believe that things would be that much different these days, even though the ethnicity of the immigrants considered most non-U has certainly changed. So why the changed perception, especially in Sydney, that if one doesn’t private educate one’s kids one mustn’t really care for their future advancement, and certainly not for their current safety?
Several of my neighbours appear to have succumbed to the perception that their kids would be disadvantaged by sticking with the local public school, although I don’t know whether they have consciously acknowledged a discomfort with the numbers of Aboriginal and/or Lebanese and/or Muslim students: they certainly haven’t voiced such sentiments to me. Their kids go to Catholic schools or expensive private schools, where the majority of the students are Anglo-Celtic and Western European.
My kids go to a public high school (although not our nearest one, because they wanted to go to a technology high school, and our nearest high school is a language high school), and I find myself increasingly given the raised eyebrow when my fellow middle-class urbanite parent-types find this out. This saddens me: we could certainly afford to send our kids to a Catholic school, or to one of the many private schools in Sydney, but we don’t want to. We believe in public education despite the current funding problems: it’s not just about what goes on in the classroom, it’s also about learning about others in your community. The proportion of immigrant and indigenous pupils at our high school is quite high, just as it was at our inner-west public primary school, and I like that. I like it that a few years ago, when my kids were having some troubles with some neighbour kids, they described them to me as “the boy with the curly ginger hair and his brothers” instead of highlighting their aboriginality.
The way in which “white flight” in the USA has contributed to their ongoing crisis in race relations has been well documented. I’m horrified to see the same short-sighted and destructive tendency happening here.
There are a number of issues there. I’ll address one of them - the lack of funding that public schools have been receiving in the past decade. Public shcools receive a disproportionately low amount funding compared to Private and Catholic Schools. In fact it’s just low fullstop. This was shown in a report on schools funding that was made available only a month or two ago. I was very disappointed to hear that the Rudd Government would be making no changes to the schools funding arrangements until possibly 2012. I hoped that they would jump all over that report and change the funding arrangements to be fairer.
Public education is being run down and needs serious attention now. Why would any parent who has money to send their child to private school send them to a public school, with the state that the public schools are in? It’s becoming a two-tier system, which is a great shame!
But not all public schools are in a “state”. The school my kids go to gets excellent academic results and offers a wide range of extracurricular programs. Why wouldn’t I send my kids there, just because there is a growing middle-class prejudice against public schools?
This is a really depressing story on a number of levels. Equally depressing is the fact that an otherwise well meaning person can make the statement that tigtog qoutes above. I suppose Alistair has visited every school in the state to make such a judgement.
Sure public schools in NSW are under resourced, but any parent who thinks that their little darling is getting a better education simply because they are paying big bucks for it is deluded at best, or a prejudiced snob at worst.
I’ve tutored kids from both public and private schools, and I’ve also taught them later, when they get to uni, and unless there are substantial changes in the next few years I will be sending my kids to a public school. There is nothing ideological about it for me, the kids at the public schools are generally - not universally, of course - getting better teaching, and are coming out of school better able to make the most of a tertiary education. I also feel like the public school system is going to be there for my kids in a way that many private schools (once again, not all) are not, and is not going to force them out if they start to have problems.
The irony is that reports such as these simply accelerate the trend.
The lack of funding for public education will not be resolved until the focus switches from parents’ rights to children’s rights. Why should children be penalised by a parent’s inability or refusal to pay the ‘extra’. Of course that debate is very difficult to generate because parents vote and kids can’t.
From his time in Queensland, Rudd knows the dangers of taking on the private school lobby and therefore there is little hope he will be the ’saviour’ of public education.
I agree with tigtog. My kids have attended 2 different state primary schools, and 4 different state high schools in Sydney and though the physical surroundings are pretty awful, the teaching, care and standard of education has been uniformly high. As president of a state school P&C association, I can see that principals generally neglect maintenance and grounds to spend their inadequate budgets on things that actually influence education — curriculum materials and support for teachers. I’m happy with that, although it is a disgrace that the NSW Ed Dept underfunds maintenance to the extent it does. But my kids have benefited greatly from state education, which encourages independent thinking, harmony with different types of kids and an inclusive approach. It saddens me too, to see sensible people who could be supporting and advocating for their local state school just opt out and leave, which removes their skills from the community as well as their kids from the school.
I also meant to say that as funding schemes increasingly need submissions from parent bodies, the more the capable middle class parents with bureaucratic skills opt out, the poorer and more disadvantaged the school gets. If all those ‘white flight’ parents stayed in, their schools would go from strength to strength, bringing the less advantaged families with them.
Klaus has nailed it - you’d be amazed at the myriad direct and indirect ways available for non-government schools to influence their less academic students to do non-HSC subjects in final years, or an external course like the International Baccalaureate. That way they keep only their most promising students enrolled in HSC courses, the results of which get published and publicly compared.
So if you did away with published league tables and honour rolls and published lists, this would remove the selection pressure for non-government schools to skew their samples in this way, and leave those kids free to choose their final subjects without indirect pressure to choose a ‘results-friendly’ repertoire…
My kids have been in (pricey, Sydney) private schools and are now in the local public school (although we now live in Armidale). Educationally, the public school is far superior (I won’t go into details). Socially, the public school is far superior (although there is a very broad mix of people who use this particular school). Let me put it this way: if you struggle to get along with the other kids at a private school, tough luck. At a public school, you can always find someone else to play with.
The local (pricey, private) high schools all struggled last year to generate better TER scores than the two public high schools. The boys school here was, frankly, a disaster and if I was a parent there, I’d be livid.
As for the grounds maintenance issue - one thing I noticed about Armidale vs. Sydney is that it’s much easier to generate and maintain a sense of “community” here, so when the local school runs a playground cleanup day, the turnout from parents is pretty good. That saves maintenance costs the principal can allocate to educational things, plus gives the parents a much better sense of belonging.
I’m struggling to remember why we chose a private school in Sydney when we were there, I guess part of it was a perceived safety issue, some idea that class sizes and teachers might be better. They aren’t safer, the grounds might be nicer but the kids aren’t allowed on the nice bits anyway, so it doesn’t matter. The class size grew to 31 and threatened to expand from there. One of our daughters teachers struggled to recall who she was. Sure, there might be a pool and an auditorium, but you’re paying for those when the school can just use other local facilities for those occasions.
I can think of one good thing that came out of the (wasted years) of sending our eldest to private school: it was one more factor in getting us the hell out of Sydney.
Hmmm. There’s one assumption behind this that I’d like to discuss - that in the “old days” everyone mucked in together at government schools. But is that really the case?
Most of our city’s suburbs are pretty well socioeconomically stratified. Here in Melbourne, I doubt the student cohorts of Brunswick Secondary College and Brighton High are all that similar…
I’ve also seen some dodgy measures taken in private schools to deal with minor behavioural issues - what amounted to ‘revenge’ against particular students by staff through strategically sending nasty letters to parents just before school holidays - while simple and effective steps could have been taken earlier in the year to remedy the situation. I don’t think public school behaviour management policies would support that kind of approach.
I can see why parents in particular situations do choose particular private schools. For example, some private schools offer inclusive environments for kids with disabilities, and put a fair bit of money into facilities for those kids that would be difficult to access in the public system.
“We believe in public education despite the current funding problems: it’s not just about what goes on in the classroom, it’s also about learning about others in your community.”
Good on you, tigtog.
tigtog says;
Firstly, it’s interesting to compare the sorts of things being said on this thread with those on the Finnishing first thread.
For example,tigtog’s statement that schools with high immigrant populations “were better both academically and socially than several others I attended which were virtually wall-to-wall WASPs” may or may not be at variance with the research data posted on the Finnishing first thread which suggested that schoolchildren from small, wealthy culturally homogenous countries like Finland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea typically outperform
Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Japan, Korea and the Netherlands spent less than the OECD average on education but did relatively well compared to other OECD countries, whereas the United States, Germany and the UK spent much more but was below the OECD average in terms of comparative results.
So, the question is whether that sort of outcome is also reflected at the local level.
A school with a high immigrant population might in fact be comparatively ethnically homogenous, not actually diverse. Also, might not gender balance be a factor?
Just looking at some top performing high schools in Sydney, public schools seem to rate fairly high, including North Sydney Girls High School, Baulkham Hills High School, Sydney Girls High School, North Sydney Boys High School and Sydney Boys High School all in the top seven performers.
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But of course, some of these at least are selective, so probably don’t give a good idea of what’s happening across the board.
[link]
Killara High was the best performing public comprehensive that year, and the only such school in the Herald top 50.
Killara is a mostly white Anglo area on Sydney’s posh upper north shore, though there’s a largish Chinese Australian population, too.
I don’t see too many schools from Fairfield or Canterbury or other ethnically diverse areas in the top 10, sorry.
Just on attitudes towards Muslims, this might be worth noting:
[link]
Australia is not mentioned in the Pew survey, but I wouldn’t expect attitudes here to be too far out of line with those in the UK. Does anyone know of any comparable research, though?
Let me just cast a summon Jack Strocchi spell. That’ll sort out the ‘wets’ from the rest.
I have no idea how good or bad the public high schools are in my area, but I don’t think having a few more selective schools for the kids that have an opportunity to excel is such a problem (though I understand NSW goes into them in a big way, unlike Vic) - what about the kids who are worthy of the additional academic focus? Are they to be penalised for the sake of the greater good, be bored and underachieve for ’social cohesion’ (if that means someone beats them up and calls them a geek?)
Where I live, privateschools have actively discouraged parents of children with disabilities from enrolling their children by pointing out the specific state funding scheme for students available in the public system. Saying in effect, ‘Gee we would love to have your child but we won’t be able to support them as well as in the state system’. This has led the teachers’ union to complain that, in the face of federal funding cuts, public schools are still doing “the heavy lifting” in relation to disability issues; a phrase I find rather abhorrent, but it is absolutely true that the majority of students with disabilities remain in the state system.
This is another area where Private school children are being, in effect sequestered from interaction with the full diversity of people within their own community.
Our local high school always does really well academically. My own personal experience is that even when shown the comparative results of local public high schools, people will justify using the private system on the basis that the children are “nicer”. In other words, sequestration is exactly what they want.
Queensland has just one selective high school, though there are now schools with specialties that are kinda selective. I’d be interested in how this phenomenon plays out in other states - Sydney is sui generis for a whole range of reasons, and I don’t think you can reliably extrapolate. From memory, the “flight” from secondary public schools up here is much smaller than down south - I think the split is about 75:25 public/private as opposed to almost 50:50 in Vic.
As to the “chance to excel” argument, wilful, you’d need to demonstrate that kids do better because they’re at selective schools, taking out the effect of selective schools as a whole doing better because they select better performers. Personally, I’d much prefer all students get more facilities tailored to their needs, and I’d err on the side of having a good mix of students.
“Are they to be penalised for the sake of the greater good, be bored and underachieve for ’social cohesion’ (if that means someone beats them up and calls them a geek?)”
There are good arguments both ways on this one but I’m not convinced that selective cohort programs are necessarily going to be more successful than vertical programs in comprehensive schools when it comes to boredom or underachievement anyway. By definition we can’t have context-specific figures on the alternative because where the selective system is entrenched, a large proportion of the academically high-performing students are moved away from the comprehensive schools before they reach high school.
As for bullying etc, I think that’s really a separate issue, but I don’t see how segregation does much to curtail the anti-intellectualism that provides justification for what you’re describing, wilful. All it does is remove some, but not all, of the potential targets.
Having said all of that, some of my friends at high school related their feelings of fear and apprehension about attending local comprehensive schools, and their great relief at getting into a selective school.
From the kids I’ve met from private scxhools (not Catholic schools) the boys for some reason appear to be emotiansally f***ed, nasry and prone to violence. I remeber one guy I knew from TAS punching his fist into a wall until it bled, screaming “I hate poofters!” because he’d just found out a gay guy had come out in college.Can’t common too much on private girls schools - mostly I’ve always found rheir former students at trhe least, very pleasant company.
For example,tigtog’s statement that schools with high immigrant populations “were better both academically and socially than several others I attended which were virtually wall-to-wall WASPs” may or may not be at variance with the research data posted on the Finnishing first thread which suggested that schoolchildren from small, wealthy culturally homogenous countries like Finland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea typically outperform …
Although you would obviously like it to, correlation doesn’t imply causation. The success of countries like Finland and Taiwan may not be due to their homogeneity but to some other factor - for instance, teachers and learning being held in higher esteem than football and boob lifts. (Having spent six months in Taiwan yonks ago I didn’t think it was particularly homogenous, but whatevs.)
Su, I didn’t mean to suggest that there was any general pattern, but I’ve met a number of families whose children with disabilities or other special needs have been very well served by particular private schools. I have no doubt there are private schools that are doing the opposite.
Also, on the ‘private schools being nicer’ argument: I’ve seen the youtube videos of playground behaviour at one of my local private schools, and ‘nice’ wasn’t the word that came to mind
“From his time in Queensland, Rudd knows”…
…what a disaster (ex education minister) Anna Bligh’s public school system is.
Did you catch Kev and Tess sending theirs to (selective, GPS, rugby, but nonetheless stressed) Brisbane State High, the premier ( pun pardon) high school of the Qld state education system, in his ( and Anna’s) electorate? Not a chance.
Hell, Anna (with the help of liberal mayor Campbell, a labor controlled city council, a few hundred consultants, construction firms, their subbies, and their well-looked-after employees, in a magnificent example of how class differences can be forgotten when there’s a trough to be snouted) is allowing a freeway (AKA hale Street bridge approach) literally through the middle of the State High campus.
Over the fence from the playing fields will be six and dead if anyone dares to try and retrieve the ball. Don’t mention the pollution, and example of civic dumbness at work on a grand scale, the kids will be exposed to while at school.
You should see the multistory, games room equipped, very air-conditioned instant gated community that has sprung up just up the road from the TLC building ( this is the turf of The Party’s South Brisbane branch, made infamous by the Sheperdson enquiry) to cater for those hard-done-by bridge-building toilers. It would be the envy of many an asbestos-dusted state school principal, ‘t be sure.
‘Course they first had to pointedly move on quite a few original inhabitants, and the tent city they happily and traditionally called home. It used to be called Kurilpa ( the water rat) Point, now it’s Domaine Demountable Deluxe, and bespoke 4wd car park.
This is not a completely new phenomenon. The teacher with whom I shared a flat in Marrickville in 1987-88 told me that some 70 per cent of the students at the high school she worked for were of either Lebanese or Vietnamese background. Whilst the suburbs around the school had a relatively high percentage of residents from these two groups, it was nowhere near 70 per cent. That said, the problem appears to have become worse in subsequent decades, and specific government policies (Federal private schools funding policies and NSW Government subsidies for cross-town travel for high school students) have contributed to it.
Apart from either overt or subconscious racism on the part of parents, it is also the case that Anglo families are more likely than either indigenous families or families from some migrant communities to be able to buy their way into the private system for whatever reason. Whatever the motivation, the damage to social cohesion and the polarisation of school populations along ethnic lines is just as bad.
Finally, there is clearly a collective action problem here. What might seem unproblematic when framed abstractly as the “right of the individual” can become a major problem when the right is simultaneously exercised by a number, or a proportion, of individuals in a community beyond a certain threshold. Traffic congestion is a case in point. In the case of NSW schools the collective exercise, by a large proportion of white and well-off NSW residents, of their “right to choose” which school they send their children to is contributing to a dangerous loss of social cohesion.
Klaus @ 21. Heh. Yep I think “nice” is a euphemism for dentist’s/doctor’s/professional’s offspring.
My earlier comment was rather narky, but I am really getting sick and tired of the attitude exemplified in a letter to the Herald: ‘I’m not going to let my children suffer for the sake of social cohesion’.
I’ve had extensive experience, one way or another with both the public and private systems, and these people are really having themselves on. Beautiful playing fields and swimming pools etc. etc do not a good education make, even though your sense of entitlement may lead you to believe that they do.
What many private schools do provide is a network of contacts, or an illusion of safety and separatness, much like gated communities. It’s all an illusion of course, because sooner or later they’ll enter that big bad world, in many cases rather unprepared for what they may find.
Mark,
There is (at least was) some very effective data from Victoria showing the efficacy of the selective schools.
In Victoria there is also a GAT (General Achievement Test) which is essentially an IQ test and is used to cross-reference performance to innate ability. This was designed to help catpure cheating on a school-wide level.
However, it also provided some very interesting results on Value-Add of the various schools. I remember that the two selctive schools in Victoria did very well on both measures: the overall result and the achievement over and above the baseline ability of the students.
Unfortunately, they stopped publishing the data in about 2000 I believe due to some bad reactinos from rich schools who performed poorly….
Helen says;
blockquote>The success of countries like Finland and Taiwan may not be due to their homogeneity but to some other factor - for instance, teachers and learning being held in higher esteem than football and boob lifts.
Yeah, that could be it. Like, nobody much plays football in Taiwan and nobody much has boob lifts in Finland. As was pointed out in the Finnishing first thread, Finland is a very conservative country when it comes to things like immigration and there is marked resistance to even the low levels of immigration they do experience. Also, it’s really, really rich. And fairly small with only 4 million people. Not too difficult a place to manage, I would have thought.
Really?
[link]
Always important to get out of the hotel lobbies when travelling, isn’t it?
The ‘White flight’ phenomenon allegedly occurring in Australian schools purportedly is happening because “white parents choose not to send their kids to the local public school, particularly for high school education”.
That suggests to me the parents are fussy about their children’s education. The perception is, if the claims can be believed at all, parents have a particularly low regard for the teachers at some schools, but not others.
I’m not aware that Australians are more racist than the Finns, that our parents are more boob-obsessed or play football more than Europeans and Asians.
Pity they can’t play better football, though.
This provides another angle on the collective action problem. Parents making decisions about which school to send their children to are usually not going to be guided primarily by considerations of general principle about how well their choice conduces (along with those of other parents) to a better, more harmonious society. They are going to be guided primarily by what they judge (more or less rationally, and on a more or less informed basis) to be in the best interests of their own children. In a society such as ours, the working definition of “best interests” will all too often include a judgement about what confers a competitive advantage later in life in terms of labour market, careers, finding a “nice” partner, etc. The synergism of many such individual decisions in aggregate will only accidentally coincide with the good of society.
Wrong. Public schools receive far more government money than private schools.
Private students receive about $5k in annual government funding, public students receive about $9k (actually I think it’s more like $13k, but I can’t find the figures again). You can’t leave out state funding and just count federal funding to suit your argument.
Why do these (plastic?) canards keep returning?
I’ve only had a quick read of the thread but nobody seems to’ve mentioned drugs yet (apologies if anyone did) — but I’ve heard that proffered by a number of parents as a reason for sending their kids to private schools. I don’t know whether they were serious or not, but if they really think there are no drug problems at private schools then I’ve got a nice bridge I’d like to offer them a bargain price for.
It’s only Howard and the recent federal vote buying exercises that have seen a massive change in federal funding of private versus public schools. But federal dollars aren’t nearly as significant as State ones, which are appropriately much more weighted to public schools.
Paul Norton at #27 - to follow up your comment, people are dangerously naive if they think anyone will (or ever has) sacrifice their child’s opportunities for the sake of some greater noble ideal. No chance you’ll see me doing that - I’ll make an assessment entirely based on what I think is best for my kids, both academically and socially. It will be an informed choice, not (I hope) made on prejudices and assumptions, but I really think it’s foolish and goes against the majority of the data to put public schools on some sort of pedestal of achievement. I find it hard to believe that all of the additional money on salaries, facilities etc. don’t supposedly get any results, as some seem to be anecdotally claiming.
My prejudices are academic, and if my kids are that way inclined, I’ll definitely be enrolling them in the selective school entry tests.
people also seem to have some strange prejudices about private schools that probably don’t reflect reality much these days. The private schools are nowadays a lot more than just the collection of ‘Public Schools’ and Grammars. A lot of private schools are low key, very multicultural, and not a lot different than the local high school, it’s just that the fees are formal not informal and the uniforms are a bit stricter. They really do the same job as a public school, same diversity and everything.
I think there’s a bigger concern missing from this thread, which is the increasing fractioning into niche private schools that are truly exclusive. The rise in religious schools that run quite varying lines to mainstream orthodoxy in ethics, science etc, are far more of a concern to me.
The question that should be asked is: why do so called private schools receive any government funding? However this, in modern Australia is not a question that will receive any serious attention, so entrenched is the system of public funding of private institutions, unlike most developed nations.
The current system of funding is a travesty in educational, social and economic terms, but don’t expect any significant change in our lifetimes. Instead we’ll have people seriously pointing out that public schools receive more money than private schools, as if this is proof of…what exactly?
Speaking of schools and race issues: anyone else see those idiot bogans from Sydney opposing a Muslim school in their area? Yelling “oi oi oi” and other assorted pre-fascist declamations?
And people wonder why I’m a Lefty Elitist.
Ok Tigtog, Adrian, I over-generalised. The majority of private schools do provide a better education than the majority of public schools.
Of course there are good public schools out there.
“The question that should be asked is: why do so called private schools receive any government funding?”
That’s a good question Adrian. I don’t understand that either.
That can be followed with the next question: Why do private schools receive more funding than public schools?
My almost-7yo is in Yr 2 at our local public school in Auburn LGA (one of the most ethnically and socioeconomically diverse areas of Sydney). He is bright. The school does not have a gifted stream — its strength is actually literacy for NESB students, which make up about 90% of the school. I am very pleased with the arrangements they have put in place for his particular needs. Their positive discipline programme is fantastic, and I have seen the way they care for kids with behavioural problems.
OTOH there are high schools nearby which have a bad reputation for disorder (My husband was dux of one of them, and has declared that there is No Way His Boys Are Going There). There are lots of Lebanese Muslims at these schools, but the schools weren’t well-regarded before the Muslim families moved in!
I met one Auburn woman who told me flat out that they had “decided” that their daughter would not go to James Ruse (one of the top selective high schools; entry by invitation only!) “because the students there were all Chinese and Indian.” I waited for her to add soemthing to this sentence, but she didn’t, and moved on to something else. I knew she was a battle-axe, but I didn’t know she was a racist! She and her family moved to a *whiter* part of Sydney shortly afterwards.
That can be followed with the next question: Why do private schools receive more funding than public schools?
Well I’ve got the answer to that one - because they charge fees! or if you’re talking government subsidies - they don’t!
Yes, Lefty E that 4 Corners really was a depressing sign of some all too prevalent attitudes in Australia. The final images of the youth refuge/gym closing down because the council refused to renew the lease, reinforced the short-sighted zenophobia that pervades decision making at a local government level.
We like to think that Sydney is a sophisticated and vibrant city, when in reality it’s probably more like a series of disconnected and frightened communities.
Wilful I’m talking about Government funding. Private schools do receive more government funding than public schools - it’s a known fact.
Actually, it’s a commonly mistaken fallacy.
Private schools do not receive more government funding than publick schools.
Alastair,
No. Simply wrong. They do not receive more. They receive slightly more from the Federal government, they receive a lot less from the State governments who make up the bulk of the funding for schools.
The teachers unions appear to have tried to paint the false picture you have swallowed whole during the election campaigns. Now - do you understand that? Repeat after me - the government owned schools receive much more government funding on any criteria (other than the false one of restricting it to one level of government) than the private schools.
They receive about 70% of federal education funding (after the feds have distributed money to the states). Still hugely disproportionate. Howard used money that should have gone into increased state allocations for education to buy off the private school lobby.
“The final images of the youth refuge/gym closing down because the council refused to renew the lease, reinforced the short-sighted zenophobia that pervades decision making at a local government level.”
Did it? I don’t know how many gyms there are in the Canterbury-Bankstown area but I live in Canterbury and I’m picking, heaps. I’m also picking that young Lebanese guys make up a significant proportion of membership/attendees. The program didn’t reveal why this particular place wasn’t having it’s lease renewed by the Council but I imagine that there would be dozens of reasons other than “short-sighted xenophobia.”
adrian says;
You mean, like Clover Moore, the Mayor of Sydney?
Andrew Reynolds says;
Oh, goodness gracious me, Andrew. The teachers unions are not some kind of self-interested professional lobby affiliated with some grubby political party. They are the very incarnation of post-Enlightenment selflessness bending over backwards sometimes to accommodate your kids.
Look, near the outset of this thread, I referred readers to the Pew Global Attitudes Project survey of attitudes amongst several leading countries regarding race, religion, etc. Actually, mostly fairly positive, encouraging stuff.
Apart from personal, anecdotal accounts of various Ku Klux Kouncils and colour-bars operating in the canteens of this or that GPS establsihment, does anyone have any actual research on attitudes to race and religion in Australia?
If so, are the racist pin-heads who dominate our culture the same half-wits who dominate our political culture? You know, being so prevalent and all?
Ok I accept I might be wrong. Andrew Reynolds there is no need for you to be patronising.
“The program didn’t reveal why this particular place wasn’t having it’s (sic) lease renewed by the Council but I imagine that there would be dozens of reasons other than “short-sighted xenophobia.”
You may imagine correctly, Geoff, but in the context of the programme the implication was rightly or wrongly pretty clear.
Andrew Reynolds, you may have an obsession, as many do, with teh evil teacher unions, but your point is irrelevant if you consider it invidious that private schools recive any government funding.
Surely the point was that it was a community centre with an explicit mission to Muslim youth and not just a gym?
Don’t get me wrong, I value social cohesion highly, and consider exposure to other groups in society one of the best ways to manage this. But I’m not sacrificing my kids education and development potential to an abstract good of this nature. I do expect my kids will go to the local primary school, in part for ‘exposure’, and because I know we can provide much that may (or may not) be lacking in their education. Of course, if the public secondary school is any good, or if they don’t look academically engaged, then they may very well go to public high school. But otherwise, we’ll be ponying up the cash, like most interested parents that can afford it.
I’ve occasionally wondered about a compulsory civic service year straight after the last year of secondary schooling. Not just (or even primarily) the military, but greencorps, peace corps type stuff. To build cohesion. yeah it’d never work, I know.
Yes Mark, exactly. But maybe Geoff Honnor was trying to imply that the Muslim youth should join any gym, and not be ’segregated’ into a specifically Muslim targeted centre.
I hope I have misread him.
su: the reason the feds today disproportionally fund private schools with their money is because the states disproportionally stopped funding them with theirs. Once upon a time both levels of government had similar splits. Together, the overall split was slightly more generous to private students then than it is today.
Successive state Labour governments made their funding almost public system exclusive since. To redress that imbalance, the feds do what they do.
I think it’s a concrete good.
I’m sure mixing with a lot of kids from different backgrounds - Vietnamese, Italian, Greek, particularly - and different interests (academic, football, etc) at High School in the 80s did me a lot of good compared to how I might have turned out if I’d been to a whitebread GPS school full of “high achievers”.
The point that I and others have been trying to make is that there’s really no ’sacrifice’ involved at all in choosing public education, in fact in most cases it is probably to the student’s advantage.
Parents who wilfully ignore this possibility are either ignorant or misinformed. Or both.
yes mark, but that’s a value judgement you can make for your kids. It’s a point that two reasonable people can differ on and neither be wrong.
I still don’t know why private schools receive any government funding, be it at a State or Federal level. If people don’t want to send their kids to state schools they can vote with their pocket.
“Surely the point was that it was a community centre with an explicit mission to Muslim youth and not just a gym?”
Well I’m happy to advise that there are lots of community centres engaging Muslim youth in the area as well, Mark. My point is that the impression conveyed by 4 Corners - that Bankstown Council shut the Centre because of small-minded xenophobia (as adrian put it) was devoid of any factual support and it seems to me less likely as a rationale, than a host of other possibilities.
There’s always more to be done but I think that the South-Western Sydney LGA’s do a pretty good job of working with cultural diversity, on the whole.
Well, I’m glad to hear that, Geoff. It’s very hard to judge these things at a distance and the implication of xenophobia was certainly there in the 4 Corners program.
Fine: the government makes education compulsory, so has an obligation to provide assistance for every child. Offering public schools doesn’t get them out of funding kids that don’t go to them.
Private schools are a good deal for the government. Every kid that goes to one saves the government money (~$5k/kid). If they pulled private funding completely, it would probably cost them more. Which means, cost taxpayers more - for no net benefit.
Anyway, this is veering from the OP so I’ll stop now.
Amongst all this talk of white parents taking their kids from ethnic exposure never deigns to consider that maybe the parents are just taking their kids away from a system designed by public teacher unions. Not everyone wants to be in an experiment.
Fine, the argument runs that if the kid wasn’t at a private school then s/he’d be taking up resources at the public school. The extreme counter argument to yours is one of vouchers - any kid can go anywhere, taking their attached dollars with them, be it private, public, whatever. Choice leads to quality.
In the real world, the merits of either system is debatable which is why we get a very mixed one. If there was no funding for private schools, there would be a lot lot less of them, many would fold immediately. Some say this would reduce diversity and overall quality.
I dunno really. From a purist point of view I can see the argument for no funding at all. But really is there such a big divide between many private schools and public schools anyway? They are hardly the bastions of elitism some seem to think they are. A lot of public schools (in nicer areas) rely on/demand contributions from parents that approach some school fees.
Personally, I’d like to see no funding for private schools at all (as in Britain and Canada - it’s not that radical) on equity grounds, and because I think there’s real purchase in the argument against ghettoising kids on any grounds. Let Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Pentecostals or whoever give kids religious instruction outside school hours. But because of the state aid issue we’ve got what we’ve got. But I don’t think current policy really even tries to make the best of it.
What a load of cobblers Craig Mc. If you really believe the NSW public school sydtem is run by teh evil teacher unions you are completely ignorant of the way in which the system operates.
I have my own explanation here: [link]
adrian: well someone’s apparently choosing otherwise, and in the absence of anyone actually asking the parents concerned why, that explanation is as good as any.
It’s not necessarily a black/white thing either. I’ve heard anecdotes of black people leaving the public system in the USA too - for the same reasons as whites. I think it’s more a middle-class/poor (perhaps more concerned/unconcerned) thing.
What an utterly disgraceful thing to say.
For the record, danny @ 22, even though Kevin Rudd sends his kids to posh private schools (and I believe Peter Beattie did the same), as far as I know Anna Bligh actually sent her son to the school she’s letting them build a road next to.
What’s disgraceful about that? Are all parents equally concerned about their kids’ performance? BTW, I’m not trying to say that poor people are universally unconcerned about their kids’ performance, if that’s the disgrace you’ve drawn from my comment.
There was a program on the ABC not too long ago about kids who were a looong way behind the national average. These were bad schools and the teachers working them deserved Silver Stars. You had people who were going to be in their 20s by the time they got to the equivalent of Leaving. A lot of parents would pull their kids out just so their 15yo daughter isn’t in the same class as a 20yo man.
Of course some parents are more concrned than others.
But:
“I think it’s more a middle-class/poor (perhaps more concerned/unconcerned) thing.”
The way you’ve written certainly states that you think middle-class equals concerned and porr equals unconcerned. Which is an otrageous thing to write.
I’ve heard the argument about private school funding saving government money and I realise that not all private schools are rich and privileged. But basically, my argument is the same as Mark’s above. Certainly other devleoped countries don’t fund private schools, so there must be a way to do it.
adrian says;
So, they’re not disadvantaged in any significant way from an educational standpoint, then?
Coupla points:
1. The last government ran two absolutely contradictory lines in education policy:
a. teaching “core citizenship and Australian values” while
b. funding every whackjob separatist religous group you could dream up to start their own school, and abdicate from society.
2. The idea that using the public system when you could afford private is somehow unethical is the most demented and dishonest species of claptrap of the Howard era. The reality is 180 degrees opposite. All you do is further eoncourage the run down of the public system.
That this truly absurd idea emerged *at the same time* as fat public subsidies to allegedly “private” schools and health funds signals its true function as a thin, half-arsed salve to whatever thin smear of conscience was left among the 4WD owning, privately insured and schooled saps who thought buying their thick kids out of imminent failure in a meritocracy was somehow ‘liberal’.
1)It ignores the fact that relatively few people have a choice.
2) It implicitly equates ‘poor’ with ‘uncaring’.
3) It implies that only ‘uncaring’ parents who did have the choice would send their kids to government schools, whereas, as this thread lavishly illustrates, there are many very ‘caring’ parents who wouldn’t touch private schools with a bargepole, not only on principle but also because of the mix (or non-mix) of students and the values taught in those schools. To which I would add that, as someone who’s taught thousands of first-year university students, I’d never trust a private school not to spoonfeed the kids to pass Year 12 well, cover the school in glory, and then enter university utterly unprepared to think, read or explore for themselves.
‘Performance’? I’m guessing that concern for their kids’ welfare, including their intellectual and social development, might be uppermost in the minds of genuinely ‘caring’ parents.
No ‘drawing’ necessary; it was clear (whether intentionally so or not) with no help from me.
For you Barry Jones pedants, perhaps the equation is more like: concerned*able to do something about it/(concerned*unable to do somthing+unconcerned)
Speaking of White Flight, you’ll never guess what kinda shop John Howard’s 62-year-old namesake in South Carolina runs:
Just a reminder that entrenched racism is not just an Aussie phenomenon.
Time to get you money back on those mind-reading classes Pavlov’s.
But perhaps you got them at a government school.
Im interested in these theories, and wish to know more eg
The demographic that traditionally packs their spawn off to private boarding school - concerned/, or unconcerned?
I have a bit of a theory.
(1) the flight to private schools is, for the bulk of the new entrants, funded on credit. I know we hear a lot of burbling about foregoing the expensive car, holiday, wardrobe etc but the reality is that most of us don’t have tens of thousands of dollars worth of fat to trim in these areas. Selling the family car secondhand, for instance, might get you one year at say, Essendon Grammar if you were very lucky. And our family holiday might represent the down payment on one season’s uniform.) This wouldn’t be a trivial amount, especially for families with more than one kid.
(2) If the economy comes a cropper, many parents will no longer be able to afford to service these fees and they’ll be pulling their kids out of the private schools left, right and centre.
(3) This will have a huge negative impact on parents like Tigtog and me who are already using the public system - like when petrol prices went up and the trains became a cattle-transport hell on wheels.
Good point Helen - its all part of the Howard bubble out there in la-la land. Drive on, Nissan Lotuseater!
And another thing that D-grade economic DUNCE Howard did: he made saving in banks an unprofitable activity, as that stoopid 50% CGT discount made shares, 2nd homes etc attractive. This is part of the reasons banks are borrowing so much off spiralling OS credit markets, and passing on the costs.