| Subject: Re: Let's privatise schools |
Author:
Raisinmom
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Date Posted: 06:53:41 07/06/02 Sat
In reply to:
Astrid
's message, "Re: Let's privatise schools" on 00:38:29 07/06/02 Sat
>Additionally, it would also be illegal to discriminate
>just as it is in the workplace.
Astrid, your private schools are beginning to sound more and more like public schools -- funded with tax dollars, some required to be secular, no discrimination...what makes a school "private" versus public? For example, here in NYC there are a number of high schools that are public but regulate entry through tests (they only take the very high performers, from wherever in NYC they are).
I am still undecided on the voucher issue. On one hand, it is clear that, at least in my city, the public schools have completely failed inner-city kids, and I do not believe the problem is solely money (that's just one of the problems). Additional problems are parent apathy and general societal woes in some areas (drug and alcohol abuse, high crime, broken households, etc.), plus the general ineptness of the schools to deal with these problems.
On the other, I have at least three serious reservations about vouchers. One, I do not want my tax dollars to go to religious schools, as they almost certainly would under a voucher system in NYC. The amount of the voucher is far too little for any of the secular private schools and given the extraordinary cost of secular private schools here ($25K a year) almost none of the families recieving vouchers could make up the difference. However, parochial schools are far less expensive -- the tuition is about the same as the likely voucher amount. So the reality here is that the vouchers, if used, will go to religious schools of whatever stripe. And I am not comfortable with that at all.
Two, I think that public schools provide certain benefits that the voucher system destroys. In particular, I think it important for children to attend school with their neighbors -- it builds community and continuity when your classmates are your playmates, and makes for a stronger, better-behaved class too. I also dislike the increasing fragmentation here in the city (it may be different elsewhere); if the children scatter to different parochial schools, it will only increase this problem. Finally, I think it important for children to meet other children who are not like them at an early age, and the culture at parochial schools is, in my limited experience, more homogenous than in public. (Someone can tell me if this is not true more generally; I don't have a lot of experience here.) For example, there are many private schools, and two public schools, in my neighborhood. The private school kids tend to look alike and strongly resemble each other in terms of race, SES, etc. But whenever I pass the public school, I see groups of kids of all races (who knows if they are the same SES; this school is a magnet, so quite possibly not) intermixed.
Three, I fear that vouchers would end up making things even worse for children whose families lack the resources, time, knowledge or desire to seek out alternatives for them. If all children who can leave the public schools DO leave them, those who are left will have the absolute worst of all worlds. School is, as someone above commented, what the parents make of it, and if there are no parents left in a school who could and did remove their child, that school is going to be a wasteland. Astrid, I know you say you want to get rid of any public schools, but then where do the kids whose parents can't seek out a school go? Where do the troubled kids go? They will all be lumped together, and we're back to the same problem. At least in theory, public school could allay this by having a *good* school of last resort -- something very unlikely to be undertaken by the private sector, since it won't pay.
My reservations don't mean that I have decided against vouchers or other forms of privatization. The schools are failing, and I agree we have to do something.
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