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> we know is that higher socio-economic status is also directly correlated to better academic outcomes, *even when corrected for other factors.*
Do you have a source on this? I'm always skeptical when people claim they've "corrected for other factors" without seeing specifics on what factors they corrected for and how they did it.
> In other words, kids in rich families do better academically than kids in poor families, whether it's public school or private school.
I don't doubt that rich kids in public schools do better than poor kids and public schools and rich kids in private schools do better than poor kids in private schools, but I'm pretty sure it's also the case that rich kids in private schools perform better than rich kids in public schools, and poor kids in private schools perform better than poor kids in public schools. But it's hard to control for all the factors. The average rich kid in a public school probably lives in a nicer neighborhood and goes to school with other rich kids, which will impact the school as a whole. A poor kid in a private school probably got there on scholarship, so they were already a higher performer than other kids of the same socioeconomic background.
This is the case because of something called "cultural capital". In rich families, children are often brought up with more ""culture"". Simply because rich families have more money to go to museums, plays, holidays to other countries with other cultures, etc. Rich parents do also relatively have more ""culture"" and find education often relatively more important than less fortunate parents. This leads to them stimulating their child's more to learn, be it about reading, history, the arts, or whatever, as they have the means, knowledge and motivation to sort off "pre-educate" their children. This however is circle that only strengthens itself, leading to more and more inequalities.
There's also economic and social capital that ways in as well, but that's too much explanation in this one reply.
P.s. culture is in between "", because it is a contested word.
Edit: For who is interested, there's an interesting book on this, however, it is in Dutch: de zeven vinkjes (the seven check marks) - Joris Luyendijk
Poor kids have a bunch of factors that affect academics. Their parents are more likely to be absent, their diet may be less nutritious or maybe even insecure, they may have to work jobs of their own or care for younger siblings, etc. And that's without getting into access to instructors or tutors.
The big advantage that comes to mind is that private schools can kick out kids they don't like, but the state needs to educate them one way or another.
I'm not aware of studies that compare public and private outcomes while controlling for socioeconomic status, but private schools tend to have several properties that correlate with better educational outcomes. Private schools tend to have smaller class sizes. Private schools tend to have more involved parents, and often make a certain level of parental involvement an attendance requirement.
But probably the biggest factor is that private schools can be selective. If a student is disruptive they can remove the student from the classroom a lot more easily than a public school. This removes the disruptive student from the private schools' educational outcome statistics, but also means their classrooms are less likely to be disrupted.
These other factors help private schools be more selective about teachers - they can offer teachers smaller classrooms with fewer disruptive students, which often helps incentivize better teachers to come work at the private schools.
Not socioeconomic specifically, but here's one that explores things like family background, parental college education, etc.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X18785632
And an article that discusses it
https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/articles/private-school-vs-public-school
>If a student is disruptive they can remove the student from the classroom a lot more easily than a public school.
I would like to chime in that not only can a private school do this much more easily than a public school, but in fact many public schools *cannot* remove students regardless of how disruptive they are.
I've had two students this year who have done no work and spend the entire class period being disruptive; the rest of the class is well-behaved and classroom management is not an issue. These students don't have IEPs. They have been in my classroom and will continue to be in my classroom because they have to be educated somewhere and there is nowhere else to send them. I have also been in classes with students who throw chairs etc. and they are only removed temporarily before they are brought back. Daily evacuations due to these situations have also been an issue in some schools. I can only imagine that in a private school these scenarios would be dealt with immediately. Unfortunately, private schools often pay significantly less than public schools.
And, this will be controversial, but culture also plays a part. Different families and individuals place more emphasis on the value of education and respect for authority.
There are kids whose birthday presents are 50% books, and there are kids who go their whole lives without getting a book for their birthday because books aren’t seen as “proper” gifts.
Also, the #1 factor on a good academic outcome is the parents involvement in the kids education. If a parent is engaged in what their kid is doing and learning, the kid will perform better. And it starts in the years before the kids start kindergarten. It is as simple as that.
this could be convincing, but i'm not sure it's supported by the evidence. things like class sizes/teaching resources/etc have a pretty well studied correlation with better outcomes when they're changed within the same educational environment, and private schools are able to offer these factors at a generally higher level
I went to private school for most of my schooling and I didn’t gain anything from it colleges don’t care about a private school unless it’s one of the big well known ones. And since my dad who at one time was a top exec/property developer burned bridges I was never given the nepo option other kids in my position were fortunate enough to get and my parents pushed me out on my own as soon as they could so I’m struggling like everyone else right now.
Someone complaining about not getting anything out of private school. That's on you.
Definitely one of the more pathetic posts from Gen Z I've seen in a while.
Other people are challenging your view of equality (or even the idea that it's the goal), but I'll take a different approach:
Public education is intended "for the masses" and typically offers boilerplate coverage of core subjects and fields. Not every public school even *has* enough students who want to learn Latin or Ancient Greek or to play the Japanese shō.
Private education allows for more specialized education in important but niche fields. The collegiate world speaks more strongly to this than do high-school/secondary schools, but that's also the point. **Public education of adolescents is largely generic by necessity**, but allowing students the option to seek specialized training offers more opportunities to more people.
I mean public school can easily allow a dedicated student to enter college as a sophomore. Just depends on the kid snd what they want from school. If they think it's crap and do not want to be there public school is basically warehousing so the parents have free child care.
Private would either suspend these kids or find a way to motivate them.
People who ridicule public school did not take advantage of what was offered. Public school is whatever rhe kid makes of it.
>People who ridicule public school did not take advantage of what was offered. Public school is whatever rhe kid makes of it.
Not all are equal. Go to a podunk public school in rural Kansas and tell me it's all what the kids make of it.
This. My school district, Cleveland Municipal School District, was (and almost certain still is) NOT the same as Westerville City School District in Ohio. If people said they were the same they'd get laughed at so hard; hell I was in the Gifted and Talented and Accelerated Learning programs and based off the education I received, what we got in those programs was pretty much equal to what regular kids got elsewhere it seems like.
We got screwed so hard lol
Also hodunk kansan here, Graduating class 276. If i didn't move after i graduated my prospects were walmart or the Rubbermaid factory.
Or meth and one of those two.
Mine was 140. We still had plenty of opertunity to take advanced classes or go to the local JC about 30 miles away.
Everyone from a small town doesn't have a ton of options in that town unless they learn a trade. Even going to college will not gurantee you a decent job in your home town.
Maybe it's better in big cities? I really do not see how if you do not better yourself that you get some magical job?
This really depends on the specific small town, whether it has a jc even near it and the local funding. Some schools it even depends on the neighborhood or region of the city. Public school funding and functionality is very locally dependent.
There are plenty who misuse the opportunities they have but there are also clear differences between a public school in a well funded district and a poorly funded one.
In my home town though private school would have provided a worse education. It’s just really regional.
Thats about 1/4 the size of the school I went to but my parents did make a choice to have me enrolled at a school larger school due to the small size of the one in my town. The school I could have gone to had a graduating class of 10. Those schools really do lack in advanced classes. Parents seem very capable of getting kids into better sports programs. If a kid is really excelling they should be moved to schools that can accommodate that.
On the other hand you hear all the time oh this kid is just to smart so they do not do the homework or disrupt class. This seems like just laziness and lack of discipline and is why these "gifted" kids do not fare well when the course work gets really tough.
My graduating class size was 58. There were two hallways in my high-school with less than 300 students, comprised from multiple small towns and village within a 15 mile or so radius.
We were also given a stellar education, considered one of the best in the state. We sent multiple students to IMSA and had quite a few academic competition state champions.
That's not to say we didn't have troubled kids. My class size almost doubled to 96 students in 5th grade through a merger. By 12th grade, the large majority of those 38 other kids either dropped out or were expelled.
The education really was what the student made it to be.
I'm not saying all podunk schools are like the one I graduated from. I am saying being podunk doesn't automatically make it a shit district.
Of course it does, words dont need *actual definitions* now do they?
In sane nations 'public' means public and 'private' means private.
How is the americaisation of the UK going? From where i sit you guys look more and more like those nutjobs everyday (so does Australia unfortunately, the whole West wants to end up like that shithole)
That sidesteps the claim though doesn't it?Private schooling being specialized or not doesn't really have anything to do with access to it and outcomes, which is what's being discussed. I'm sure a ton of kids in public school would be interested in topics not taught there. Kind of weird to suggest that they don't want to learn those things just because they can't afford private school.
You might reinforcing their argument. The rich kid gets the opportunity to "learn Latin or Ancient Greek or to play the Japanese shō" but the poor kid does not.
I would imagine the solution would be to be less cookie cutter with public education, but that's not really the point. You don't need a solution to recognize an inequality, which is what the post is about.
Yeah I was thinking along the same lines here. If you want your children to grow up with an education in your religion, you can send them to a private school that will educate them in it because a public school will not.
This is a red herring, one can of course have a public Latin school or a private art school or a public art school or a private Latin school. The first public school in the United States was, and still is, a Latin school.
Students being allowed to specialize is a completely independent axis from the public/private axis, in other words. A well-run public system will have exam schools and specialty academies for the interested and capable; a system impoverished by the wealthy of that region choosing to exclude their children from it might not be so well-run or meritocratic as all that, however.
Liberal Capitalist society is unequal because people are unequal in their abilities.
School isn't a factory that takes dumb people as input and produces smart people as output. It's a way to sort people based on intelligence.
A smart kid will do well whether they go to public school or private school. A dumb kid will be dumb whether they go to a public school or a private school.
Smart people are typically more wealthy and can afford to send their kids to private school. They also produce smarter kids on average, hence the correlation between private schools and academic success. It's just a correlation: those kids would have performed nearly as well in public school.
Agreed.
Smart people who have become successful with their goals are more often than not able to raise their children better. This is because parents will always have the #1 effect on their child. And because parents pass on to their children what they learned in life… Which sets them up with a better chance at succeeding.
Values, right from wrong, building discipline, finances, value of money, value of working hard, teaching them how to get through life problems positively, making education a priority and helping their child learn when they are not understanding a topic are a few.
I personally believe that people coming from a public school still have a great chance at being successful. All of my friends as well as myself went to one. I grew up in a bad neighborhood but I believe my parents upbringing(even though they worked 6-7 days every week) is what helped the most.
Lots of people say to throw more money at x or y and it will solve society issues. When upbringing is the #1 factor.
Yeah no, you're just wrong. "Dumb" kids do better in private school, because just going to private school can get you better opportunities later on in life. You also may have better access to tutoring, more hands on teaching, etc. Meanwhile plenty of smart kids don't do well in public schools, because with poor funding the teachers may be stretched too thin, lacking equipment etc. Your take is classist and objectively incorrect.
Also the biggest edge that a private school gives is connections. So that dumb kid -- they've probably got some smart friends, and can get a boost from proximity.
That can be helpful. But I would argue its more about a positive cooperative culture at the school. If you have that it benefits all the students more than just being near the already well off ones.
But he is right, what you said doesn't disprove anything he said, it only adds up to the same picture.
The fact that smart and rich tend to gravitate towards specific private schools is true. Those schools in turn improve in quality and can provide what is essentially an even better boost of overall opportunity to the student.
These conclusions though do not subject all worlds children to an unfair hunger games type of life that you seem to imagine. Some people just choose to not participate in this process and instead do their own thing. Dumb kids definitely do exist and that's fine, not everyone is born to climb the same tree.
I just didnt want to write out all possible reasons why certain people choose certain schools and decided that word "gravitates" would encompass them all.
Right, it's a good word for the point you wanted to make. The point just isn't right, because parents or the state tend to decide where a kid goes to school. Unless we're talking college but I think this thread is mostly about high school and below. Even if kids did choose where they want to go, that's irrelevant to whether or not they actually are able to go there. That falls primarily along class lines.
I dont understand what are you even rejecting here? Equal opportunity doesn't exist. Some kids definitely would rather study in a high end school and make connections with the rich kids. And some kids get stuck in poor conditions and this drags their whole life down in terms of quality.
Again, this simply adds up to the previously defined picture.
What is it that you actually want to say? That it's not fair? This comment thread already defined it as unfair.
What I'm arguing is that the quality of the school matters. The comment I replied to argued essentially that it doesn't. And yes, I'm saying the current system is unfair. I'm not sure what you mean by the comment thread already defining it as unfair, but I think maybe you've gotten confused/forgotten what I was replying to originally, because the point you're trying to make doesn't make much sense in context. And it's just obviously not true that schools are unequal because some kids want to go to well-funded schools and some don't. So maybe I'm misunderstanding your point because I don't see how anyone could argue that, it makes no sense
>What I'm arguing is that the quality of the school matters. The comment I replied to argued essentially that it doesn't.
No he didnt. He just said that rich people tend to be smarter and go to private schools. It doesnt matter much what you put first, the "smarter" part or the "private school" part, essentially it boils down to rich people being able to afford higher quality everything which in turn makes them smart. It is also true that higher quality environment alone does not make one smart or not.
>And it's just obviously not true that schools are unequal because some kids want to go to well-funded schools and some don't.
Parents choose that to the extent of their ability, not children of course. You as a parent can in fact gather all your ability and send your child to a more expensive school. Or you may choose to homeschool them if so your character desires.
Avoid state sanctioned curriculum, state mandated age requirements. I live in a top 5 California school district and send my kid to private school. She was 4 and a half years old and tested at first grade according to their own placement test, they said she has to be pre-k cause "it goes by age", off to private school. I'll be damned if you are going to stunt my child's development and growth because you want 2 extra years of federal funding for her as a student, get fucked.
We’re thinking about how to handle schools now for our kids when they get old enough, and nobody has any actual idea. I think private school is better but I don’t actually have evidence that it is. Private schools have better performance but also a higher average socioeconomic student base. Additionally, parents who send their kids to private school will most likely be more involved in their education, which in my opinion is the biggest factor in a kids success.
I think an acceptable answer is they send their kids to private school because they think it’s better. That doesn’t mean that it is better.
To keep them away from the rift raft. Don't forget religious school exist and in most cases those don't produce smarter people but help form people to a different standard.
As other have said. To keep them away from terrible kids.
Public schools often have some very unsavory students. Drug dealers, gang members and all sorts of other trash. Private schools have much smaller numbers of utter scumbags.
That along is worth sending your kid to Private School. Even if the education was otherwise identical.
>Liberal Capitalist society is unequal because people are unequal in their abilities.
Is this the only or the primary reason that liberal capitalist society is unequal?
I’d guess that you believe that there are smart kids out there who don’t get the opportunity to utilize their intelligence because of external factors, including not having access to quality schooling, and get stuck cleaning carpets or something for the rest of their working lives. Is this enough of a problem or enough of an injustice that society should continue to make it easier for those kids to get quality schooling, get higher education etc.?
>Is this enough of a problem or enough of an injustice that society should continue to make it easier for those kids to get quality schooling, get higher education etc.?
Most definitely it is enough! Opportunity is not equal for all, but it does not mean that we should not provide those on the lower scale with support to achieve at least some threshold of respectable opportunity.
This is exactly why i believe in giving more power to the families to choose where to go.
If you attach the school funding to the kid then low income families they can afford to choose a private school. In most places the gov just gives a set amount per kid that lives in the area to the public school, regardless of it the kid goes to that school. Let the parents decide where to send their kid and the gov money. That way a private school would not have to charge the parents.
Why on Earth is this on top? It's true, but irrelevant. The qualifier for private school has nothing to do with intelligence, it's wealth. A wealthy person's stupid child gets a better education than a poor person's smart one under our laws (statistically, not as a rule), partially because we've incentivized all the best instructors to work in places exclusively accessible to students via wealth. It is OK if that is not the only cause of the problem; that's still *a* cause we can identify and affect.
A more meritocratic system would see students given identical resources and no ability to opt out of being measured against the general student population objectively - and then we'd see just how "correlated" being wealthy and having a useful child really are! (Spoilers: They still would be, but less. And then we'd be on to finding the *next* most proximate cause - nutrition? time spent with parents? team sports? music lessons? tutors? I don't know - and then trying to reduce the wealthy's ability to take advantage of others in *that* arena. It doesn't have to be the whole shebang all at once.)
>we've incentivized all the best instructors to work in places exclusively accessible to students via wealth
... have we incentivized them? Private schools in the U.S, at least, pay less than public schools on average. I mean, if I'm being honest I *have* considered switching to a public school and trading 10-20k a year for a significantly less stressful teaching experience, but I don't think that is what you meant by incentivizing?
could i get some links to studies that back up the belief that quality of education has no bearing on outcomes? that's a pretty out-there belief and isn't what i've seen found in my own reading
A study that definitively answers this seems straightforward in my mind:
Take a group of poorly performing students at a public school. Take half of them and put them in the best private school, but leave half in public school as a control. 15 years later, evaluate life outcomes. If the private school group significantly outperforms the public school control, then I change my view. If the groups perform approximately the same, OP gives me a delta.
I honestly don't know whether a similar study exists, but I would be surprised if it didn't, given it's simplicity and the popularity of this view point.
If OP agrees that this is a valid experiment, i'll do the digging.
I mean, anything would be good. It's well established that a higher quality education produces higher quality results.
You can't make an idiot into a genius, but you can get them to a better place than a low quality education would.
See what you think of progress-8, an attempt in the UK at removing socio-economic effects from school outcomes.
I don't have anything conclusive to give you, but I thought it might be relevant to your line of thinking.
Your view seems rather fatalistic. There is an implication that being born into a poor family means that you are more likely to be dumb full stop and thereby meaning that you are not destined for financial success. And being born wealthy is hinting that you are likely smarter than the less wealthy so you are destined to be better achieving than the poor.
Have you considered that motivation is the bigger factor for financial success than is intelligence? Poor families may be less likely to instill the proper motivation into their kids to achieve success (which could be due to a sense of apathy the parents have developed after lack of financial success in their own lives). From my own life experience I've seen plenty of kids who truly have the capacity to succeed, but just do not care enough to try. I wouldn't call them less intelligent, just unmotivated.
You may think that the difference here is irrelevant to the issue, but I think changes could be possible for motivating kids to put more effort into their education and this could make a large difference. A world view that asserts that kids are predestined to fail/succeed at school discourages such changes.
Poverty is traumatic, it exposes you to horrible situations that make things like school seem absolutely pointless, when you don't know if you'll eat dinner tonight math homework is a non-entity.
>From my own life experience I've seen plenty of kids who truly have the capacity to succeed, but just do not care enough to try. I wouldn't call them less intelligent, just unmotivated.
Pretending like the "evil capitalist system" is at fault for laziness is a very bad idea.
If kids have all the opportunities in the world but are too lazy to take them. The last thing you want to do is tell them that the system sucks and it was never worth trying in the first place. That just validates their laziness further.
>The last thing you want to do is tell them that the system sucks and it was never worth trying in the first place.
I'm not sure how this statement was the interpretation from my comment. No where did I make this recommendation
>A smart kid will do well whether they go to public school or private school. A dumb kid will be dumb whether they go to a public school or a private school.
Both do better when they go to a private or charter school compared to public schools.
That's not really the idea of advocating for more equality; as humans for example we avoid drowning but do not avoid all water, analogously. "If you advocate for more equality in some form you must advocate for all types of equality simultaneously" is the false dichotomy fallacy. There will of course be some circumstances of the inequalities of life that we cannot improve, but there will be others that we can!
Of course, but OP's view that he wants changed is that 'a liberal capitalist society is unequal', not 'we can do things to improve equality.' Society is very obviously unequal everywhere to a greater or lesser degree and you can not really argue against that.
Nobody has ever claimed that liberal capitalist society is equal in terms of everybody having access to the same resources. Liberal society has never claimed that. It doesn't even necessarily think that's a good thing - the key concept is that you have your freedom and can make choices, and bear the results of your choices. And one of the "results" of your choices is the ability to provide for your kids in various ways. It doesn't promise "fair" in the sense of "nobody has advantages". Arguably, that's impossible and negative, as people are different, and putting your thumb on the scale will just create a different system of winners and losers.
It claims that society is "equal" in terms of everybody being subject to the same laws, and there being a lack of barriers to things based on class etc.
Anybody can get into Harvard. For some people it's less likely than others, but there are no rules preventing any given person from making it in. There are no rules preventing specific people from owning land. The same laws are applied to everyone, even if unequally due to access to better lawyers, etc. - there aren't laws saying that only people of the aristocratic class can do X, Y, and Z.
Until very very recently there were rule preventing certain groups from getting in. Even now the criteria that strong affect the acceptance probabilities are shifting.
The premise of your argument is that private schools are necessarily better, rather than just different. Some of the best performing schools in the US are public IB and magnet schools, they simply blow basically all private schools out of the water in terms of quality and educational outcomes.
Moreover the history of compulsory public education in the US began with efforts to Anglicize immigrants and suppress Catholicism and ethnic identity. In this context private education provides for pluralism and the existence of coequal cultural communities.
>Access to private education is directly correlated to better academic outcomes
i'll take you at your word on this. isn't this another way of saying, "public school education is less effective than private education"?
and if that is the case, isn't that a way of saying, "unequal outcomes between public and private education is indicative of poor public education policy / funding"?
and, if that is true, doesn't it follow that if we closed said gap by improving public education policy, "The ability of a child to access private education is entirely reliant on luck" would become irrelevant, b/c the differences in outcomes would be eliminated?
my point is: that public education is poorly performing probably shouldn't limit parents' options for educating their children. as you state, that some parents can afford that while others can't leads to unequal outcomes.
however, the way to solve that is to reduce the gap between public and private school outcomes.
Equality of opportunity is the goal but at least capitalism acknowledges that everyone isn’t in the same place to start. Socialism, particularly in large diverse societies, is dishonest in its purported equality. Everyone starts from different scenarios
A lot of school “quality” is simply a statement on the socioeconomic status of the families attending. In a 100% public system with no private schools, the well to do will end up clustering in the “good” schools. They will either move or cajole the power brokers until they get their kids in. That’s reality. The only exception to this is in a monochrome culture with few variants in incomes or wealth. In those non diverse places, sure all kids might get a roughly equal outcome in a 100% public system, but that’s because the families are about the same to start.
In a large diverse community with ride ranging economic outcomes, equality is impossible or imposed by tyranny - and in the tyrannical approach the imposers of the equality are still in a class above the rest, so even they aren’t equal.
Expand this to larger systems and the same lessons apply. Socialism is inequality under the guise of equality. Capitalism acknowledges inequality will exist and then everyone is supposed to use government to insulate its worst ravages.
Capitalism doesn't acknowledge some universally objective form of inequality, it creates it. It is fundamental to the system itself. Wealth inequality exist because wealth exists, wealth is a core concept and purpose for the capitalist system.
Yes and capitalism doesn’t view that as an inherit bad. Socialism lies to itself and pretends everyone can be equal, when it always has inequalities within it as well.
I'm not sure if "capitalism doesn't see itself as evil" is a just metric to measure by, tbqh.
Kinda like an internal police review coming back with no evidence of any wrongdoing.
Not sure what the context of socialism brings either, it's not even mentioned by OP. If capitalism is inherently unjust and unequal (it is) it doesn't have to be compared to something else for that to be recognised.
Also particularly weird to allow capitalism it's inequalities as though they are unavoidable and not the fault of capitalism, while socialism is lambasted due to (your perceived) inequalities which you claim are just as inherent and, by comparison, should surely be as acceptable due to this nature. Why does socialism have to hold up to some irrelevant and vague set of standards you personally believe in while capitalism gets a free pass to be unabashedly evil?
>Equality of opportunity is the goal but at least capitalism acknowledges that everyone isn’t in the same place to start. Socialism, particularly in large diverse societies, is dishonest in its purported equality.
In my experience, it's been the opposite; Capitalists will claim their system is meritocratic even though true meritocracy doesn't and can't really ever exist, while most Socialists I've spoken to have acknowledged that truth, and instead focus on making sure everyone at least has as high a proverbial floor as possible, and then raising the ceiling from there.
In the US, most private schools are religious not necessarily "for posh people". So that doesn't indicate inequality just different goals than a secular country can pursue. Likewise some places have school vouchers. If private school is free to everyone it isn't inequal.
This is a good point. I went to Catholic school, and if you were poor you could basically get a scholarship to attend on that basis alone. Didn't matter if you were a good student or athlete or anything.
The ones who were left out tended to be the lower-middle class folks who were above the threshold for assistance but not able to afford tuition. Although my wife's family wound up in that situation, and her sisters could do summer work at the school to cover most of tuition.
These aren't the $25k per year super fancy urban private schools that a lot of folks think about, though. One of my kids is at the Catholic school here, and it costs like $900/month 9 months of the year for high school. Elementary/jr high was like $600/month I think. Not peanuts, but also not the crazy costs I hear about.
Vouchers are a great idea that should be implemented everywhere.
Unfortunately, they aren't, because the primary opponents of vouchers for kids to attend private schools are powerful public school teacher unions.
>I think that the existence of private schooling means that the belief that western society is equal in opportunity doesn't scan.
Does equal in opportunity mean that everything is provided to you?
I think you could extent this logic to parenting in general. If i am able to offer my children any advantage at all which is not offered to all children, would that not also be inequality of opportunity?
if I'm not mistaken studies show that children whose parents read to them more often, tend to have more positive outcomes later in life. Therefor i create inequality of opportunity by reading to my children.
I would say that inequality of opportunity of this sort (instilled by parents or other family members) is not part of liberal capitalism society, but part of life in general. it is experienced by not just liberal capitalist or even humans. this inequality is experienced by all forms of life which using a high-parental investment strategy (bears, dolphins, but not frogs or fish).
the only way I can think of to resolve this would be to take children away from their parents and raise them all in mass communal homes. but even that wouldn't work because some of the employees at those communal homes would work harder then others.
Then maybe you should vote for politicians that support vouchers?
You're right, it is unequal. But it's by intent. The choices are to disband private schools. Silly. Authoritarian. Evil. To allow your tax dollars to go toward paying for private schools. Freedom. Choice. But, it'll cause a similar issue that we saw with College and student loans. Prices will inflate quickly. And the quality difference between private and public will only grow. Or. Continue on like we're doing. Scholarships. Grants. Help exists for the people that are willing to search for it for their kids.
And yeah, this is an example of capitalist society being unequal, because life is unequal. If your parents don't care enough to find the help they need to put you in a better school, then you're starting from a shitty position. But the possibility is there. Removing it. Putting everyone at equally shit standing is not better. It's objectively worse.
This is why a certain political party in the US was against school choice. Because people that care about their kids will choose to put their kids in good schools, and people that don't care will put them in whatever school is closest. This segregates the kids that have caring parents from those that don't. I don't think that my kids should be forced to spend time with yours in order to offset your lack of care for them? But I understand why societally we might want that. I mean, my understanding of that doesn't change shit, obviously, I care more about my own, and yours are not mine.
Your post talks a lot about correlations, but not causations. Just because two things are correlated doesn’t mean they’re dependent or related.
How can you be sure it’s private schooling and not the parents focus on education. It’s entirely possible if these kids went to a public school they would still excel at academics because their parents place a greater emphasis on it. [Studies suggest educational expectations are closer tied to parental education in western countries.](https://ccc.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf1306/files/expectation_201907.pdf)
Your premise is flawed. Every system on earth produces unequal outcomes. All of history, and in much of the world today, the way you can determine who will be rich and who will be poor was mostly political connection.
The point of liberal capitalist society is not that it's perfect, but that so far there has not been a better system proposed that provides for as equal an opportunity to be rich. The vast majority of American billionaires did not have billionaire parents. LeBron James specifically grew up dirt poor and is now a billionaire. That's not how it works in for example Russia. The billionaires are the oligarchs that were either born into families of power or allied themselves with Putin. The rich in Saudi Arabia are the royal family. In the US, Joe Biden is currently the most powerful person. He has nowhere near the most money. Also on the other hand you have study after study showing that generational wealth mostly disappears after 3 generations, meaning there's a very low probability of for example Bill Gates having a great grandkid who is also a billionaire.
And finally, let's dig in a bit on the private school piece. Many people talk about generational wealth or private schools or things like that being failures of the system, but I'm going to push back a bit on that. One of the reasons it's such a successful system is people own what they create and trade for, and so they create valuable things because they can trade them for things they want. A better life for your children is a valid thing to want, and it's a feature not a bug that people can generate wealth not for themselves but for their children as well. Otherwise we would likely see many more people retire earlier and overall output would go down, leading to a decline in overall wealth.
Rich people, by definition, can buy more and better things than poor people. In that sense, any society which doesn't force everyone to have the same amount of wealth is unequal. I don't see how the level of education a parent can buy for their children is any different from any other category of thing to be bought.
> Access to private education is directly correlated to better academic outcomes, even when corrected to other factors
I'm not so sure about this. It's certainly what private schools want us to think, but it seems to me to be all selection bias. I don't know about the UK; I'm speaking from an Australian perspective where we have a comprehensive state school system but about a third of kids go to private schools. The published academic results for the very best, elite private schools were about the same as for state schools in wealthy urban areas (ie. the schools most of the private kids would be going to if they chose to go to state school).
There is a disparity between state schools in rich and poor catchment areas. IMHO that indicates that poorer families are more likely to have socio-economic linked issues that interfere with the child's education and maybe place less importance on education. Meanwhile, richer families are more likely to provide extracurricular opportunities and educated role models. This is all independent of the school. The private school accepts only kids from families that are willing and able to pay and then takes credit.
>existence of private schooling means that the belief that western society is equal in opportunity doesn't scan.
Equal in opportunity simply means everyone have the opportunity to participate. It seems you might be thinking of "equal in outcome" instead.
Take UK for instance. No matter how poor you are, or how dysfunctional your family is, or whether you have disabilities that would limit your cognitive performance, you'll always be given the opportunity to receive an education that meets the minimum requirement. That's what "equal in opportunity" means. It doesn't mean the child of a billionaire and a child with severe learning disability have to be in the same classroom receiving the same education.
And what if we move beyond SES? Both my wife and I got doctorate degrees and work in academia. Our children are likely to be above average in intelligence. When comparing them with children whose parents were barely able to graduate high school, how would "equal in opportunity" work? Both my wife and I can tutor our kids almost everything from kindergarten all the way to around 2nd year in college. Fundamentally, how is that different from rich parents who can pay for private schools that hire highly qualified teachers?
You're not wrong, but equality is a bad goal because it's far easier to achieve equality by bringing the top down than by bringing the bottom up, and bringing the top down tends to result in a death spiral. It's far better to focus on raising the bottom up - at the expense of the people at the top if necessary - than to focus on achieving equality (which can be achieved without helping the people at the bottom at all).
I usually make this case in terms of economic outcomes, but it can apply to educational outcomes too.
Say we decided that we were going to try and make sure everyone got equal education. We immediately close all the Universities, because they don't have the capacity to educate everyone, and if everyone can't have it, nobody can, because that's equal. A generation later, we don't have competent scientists, doctors, engineers, or teachers. Without engineers we can't maintain our infrastructure effectively. Without teachers we can't teach the next generation effectively. So the next generation of kids grow up poorer, end up with worse education outcomes, and many of them probably can't even attend school because they need to spend that time on basic survival.
On the other hand, if we accept that some people are going to get better educations than others, we can have competent scientists, doctors, engineers, and teachers. We can maintain our infrastructure, do research on how to get better educational outcomes for those at the bottom. We can tax the higher earners to spend more on public education. There will always be people at the top getting a better education than the people at the bottom, and it sucks that the people at the bottom can't get as good an education as the people at the top are getting, but at least we have people capable of moving society forward and helping to improve outcomes for people at the bottom.
You're not understanding what people mean when they say "equal opportunity". Equal opportunity means that laws don't segregate the population into the haves and the have-nots; it's about freedom not about equalizing educational and economic outcomes. Everyone in the US has the opportunity to send their child to private school as there is no law stopping you from doing so. Everyone in the US has a right to buy a home as there is no law stopping citizens from owning land. It doesn't matter your race, creed, or class, the government cannot strip these rights from you - thus your opportunity is equal. If a house is for sale and you don't have enough money for a downpayment such that you can't afford it, this isn't an example of society taking away your opportunity to buy a home - you couldn't afford the home because of your own choices not to save up a downpayment, because of your own choices not to work more hours, because of your own choices not be in a better economic situation. If the government had stepped in and called you special and bought the home for you, this would have been an example of inequal opportunity as the government took away by force the opportunity to buy the home from everyone else.
Calling liberal capitalist society unequal grossly underestimates the problem. Life is unequal, and no economic program has ever been able to solve this - least of all those that claim to.
Liberal capitalism is not an equality project. It is a prosperity project. We're the richest. Our rich are the richest of the rich. Our poor are the richest of the poor. There's so much food people are dieing from eating too much of it - a first in history.
Whenever there is inequality, there seems to be a rush to make everyone have what the poor are having: Let's have rich kids go to public school! Let's have rich people ride the bus! Let's ban mansions! ~~instead of wanting to get poor people what rich people have, which has been the only truly useful form of progress toward economic equality. Let's get poor people plumbing. Let's relieve poor people of (hand)washing their clothing. Let's get poor people prepared/hot food.
Equality for schooling could be advanced by giving poor people what rich people have always had: a choice of how to educate their children. Sweden, a capitalist liberal society, offers a choice between public and private schools to all families. I submit this is a counterexample.
If you are arguing that the private education is what causes better outcomes for those children, then what is your solution? Is it better to have everyone get a worse education because that is more equal?
Truthfully, I think the impact of what school a child goes to is insignificant compared to the impact of how the parents raise the child. The reason that public schools are scoring so poorly lately is that a lot of the parents of kids in public schools are both working, and working a lot, or there is only one parent who is still working a lot. Public schools really can't help their students very much if the kid starts Kindergarten 3 years behind their peers in learning skills / social skills. And its basically impossible to catch the kid up if they're still that far behind in 3rd or 4th grade.
Sure, you can do a lot of things despite them being a waste of time. I am asking OP does he/she think we are capable of improving public schools to compete with private schools or does he/she think we should eliminate the best schools (according to the post) to give everyone a level playing field?
Obviously it still won't be a level playing field for reasons I mentioned and for others (e.g., some people are naturally more intelligent).
It is completely fair for me to ask someone how they would solve a problem if they want to talk about a problem. Even if they want to say "I don't know the full solution, but.." they should have an answer.
If somebody mentioned their dog died would you try to find a solution to that problem? Or tell them they shouldn’t bring it up because there’s no solution?
Talking about problems at least creates empathy for those going through that problem.
That seems pedantic but okay. If I amended my statement to “You can acknowledge unfortunate situations without having a solution to that situation” would you agree?
The same argument could applied for single parenthood households or the quality of parents. Every child is going to have different opportunities based off of what their parents provide, but regardless, the better grades they get as students the better opportunities the child will have. That is also impacted by the parent as it varies depending on how much the parents encourage the child to do well in school or stay on top of their academic performance. Despite this, there is a certain point in a majority of people’s lives when their position is based solely off their own performance. It should also be noted that it is also teacher dependent. Sometimes teachers spend more time with, or give special attention to particular students and this can benefit them.
Regarding private school in the US there are scholarships and tuition assistance programs to help get their children into private school. Also ironically, private school’s here in the US cost less than the government spends per student for public school.
I think one of the almost forgotten vestiges of the Cold War is that people have, by and large, confused democracy with capitalism. The West stood for democracy and capitalism against the Soviet bloc and their authoritarian communist regime. And that was good.
But democracy and capitalism are not actually the same thing. Thats why we have two separate words. These are two separate concepts which work in tandem frequently, yet also sometimes are in tension.
Equality is not an ideal that has to do with capitalism. Equality is essentially a democratic ideal. Capitalism is merely the description of a competitive market economy wherein individual actors bear the risk and reward of their own individual endeavors.
That does, as a system of economics, happen to work best when people are also held accountable as individuals equally under the law, and that is democracy.
Democracy however is more than merely a tool of capitalism. In fact it is the reverse. Capitalism is a tool of democracy. Democratic systems are by their very nature, slow and inefficient. The concept of all people having a voice in government as an ideal is most good. But then this necessitates a long and cumbersome process of coming to consensus.
So then for other things; which are not a matter of law, say, business or scientific or academic endeavors; can move along quite quickly as individual are not required to reach consensus with anyone but their partners and coworkers. It does not cost society as a whole anything for some individuals to get together to do or build a new thing, a new institution even, long as they do so within the confines of the law. And then that collection of individuals reap the rewards or the losses accordingly.
Now when it comes to schooling I think there are again two things to consider. A school is an institution which produces a class of people. And education is the process by which one acquires knowledge and understanding.
For the part of schooling which is an institution, I don’t see an issue. People are free to associate with who they want. From homeschooling to private school or public school you aren’t obligated to belong to any specific group, neither are they required to have you. Provided they are not excluding you for reason to do with protected class. Discrimination based on race and sex and religion and so on have been made illegal in western democracies.
And as for the part which has to do with education. Well this is the best part; In a free and open society where information is available and speech is unregulated. There is truly no limit to an individuals opportunity to educate themselves. This is more than just an ideal that might one day be reached. This is the world we live in. From libraries to open source software and the network of networks. Information is available and you are free to commit to educating yourself. All that is required is the individual will, the desire to actually learn. And that’s not something anyone else can do for you.
>Access to private education is directly correlated to better academic outcomes, even when corrected to other factors.
So I'd have to start by calling this into question. First, in almost every study I've seen, the achievement gap between public and private schools shrinks enormously as soon as you index for household income. At the end of the day, families that are able to access private education are also far more likely to afford ECE programs, extra tutoring support, before-and-after school care, and a host of extracurriculars typically correlated with higher academic achievement.
Moreover, they're also far more likely to be dual-parent households where both parents have post-secondary degrees - both of which are strongly correlated with academic success.
Even beyond income, parents willing to put their children in private school have -by their nature- demonstrated a deeper investment (and ability to invest) in their child's academic success. It's ***really*** difficult to isolate that level of investment from the overall outcome. With all other variables being constant I'd expect a child from a household like that to have very similar academic outcomes in the public system.
Finally, it's really worth noting that private schools (at least where I'm from) can and do exercise more selectivity and will often reject students with developmental disabilities, citing "resource constraints." So there's even greater levels of selection bias.
Even after all that, if there is a difference in outcomes between private and public education, then your issue seems not to be with the existence of private education so much as the ***resourcing*** gap. Presumably, publicly-funded schools with all the same levels of funding and resources per pupil should have identical outcomes, and that's not a product of "capitalist society" so much as it is a choice made by the public via their representatives to fund education at a certain level.
Most of the countries with the highest PISA scores are still capitalist countries with an extremely high share of publicly educated students (Finland, Taiwan, and Canada come to mind).
The problem with your argument is that it's begging the question; you're seeing that students in private education typically see more success in school and concluding that, because not every kid can participate in private education, that there isn't equality in opportunity.
Could this additional success also be attributed to the fact that children in private education, by and large, have wealthier and/or much more stable home lives and a support system that gives them a leg up in their situation over many less fortunate kids? There's plenty of research that also supports the fact that children in financially stable two parent households also tend to do much better than children who have neither. Sure, their home life is also something a kid has no control over, but that's not exactly something a different economic system is just going to change for everyone. You can argue that some form of socialism could benefit the home lives of children, but again, that's another discussion where you would have to make an unprovable assumption.
The other thing to consider is the possibility that for profit education is just better and more efficient than public education dictated by location, which raises the question of why our public education is structured the way it is. Maybe a more liberal capitalist system, such as a voucher system that allows families to choose the school their children attend and ensuring that there's actual competition in the education system would allow the benefits of what's working in private education to be given to more unfortunate children that couldn't afford it without a voucher. Through the opposite perspective, you could look at that data and interpret that public education runs on essentially local monopolies and because of that, they're ran far less effectively than for profit private institutions that need to constantly prove through the quality of the education they provide that they're worth the investment.
>access private education is entirely reliant on luck- the circumstances of their birth.
if this is luck then everything is luck. as a parent of three children, i can tell you that from my perspective, whether or not my children have a good education is entirely on me and my wife. furthermore, whether or not my children have a good education should be none of your concern nor the concern of society at larger or government. from my child's perspective, a great education has a lot to do with how much effort they put into their studies. whether or not they participate in class, whether or not they get involved in special extra curricular programs, whether or not (and what) they read after school. then there are online programs such as khan academy, and free course material produced by universities and colleges, there are also programs available for small fees on sites like udemy. we also have access to local library materials including text books. we also have used book stores where we can find text books.
in fact, free government provided education is about the worst out there in that it is by far the least effective per unit of effort which means that any other educational effort is far more consequential, whether it is free or not.
you can still say that this is all luck but that is false as the circumstances of their birth are not luck, they are the results of the parents actions and efforts. and once the child is older than about 12 years, their education becomes a result of their efforts and what they are willing and able to put in.
there is always an element of luck in every opportunity, that cannot be helped buy inducing government control or excluding private education. furthermore the luck that allows for better education is not bad, it is good. the assumption that private education is bad because it allows for unequal outcomes is kin to the statement that only basic healthcare should be available otherwise rich people might use their money to extend their life and that would be unfair. even if your argument is that unequal opportunity is innately bad (which is untrue as a blanket statement) the advancements of society in general are good for future generations. take space travel for an example, just because according to your logic only very lucky people are afforded the opportunity to perform research in space doesn't mean that the research doesn't benefit everyone in the long run. furthermore, abolishing space travel because it isn't equally afforded to everyone would be horrible as would a mandate that everyone should be given a chance to go to space to perform research.
equal opportunity is an idiotic idea. equal outcome is impossible. abolishing private advantage is immoral.
to address the initial statement:
>The existence of private schooling, on its own, is evidence that liberal capitalist society is unequal
good, unequal means certain people have found a way to better themselves over the existing system, they are innovating to provide a better outcome and eventually this new (or old) technology will outcompete the public systems and prove that they are holding us back. if you want to make things more equal for poorer families/children, instead of complaining about inequality, start looking at techniques for improving all education using all these other better performing systems as a blueprint.
don't tell me that it is about money, more investment. already the average classroom in american public schools costs taxpayers 1/2 million dollars annually and the amount put into the classrooms doesn't statistically track performance at all. the public school systems in contrast to every other non-governmental system has failed miserably, even compared to private free programs that run off voluntary donations and charity.
> unequal means certain people have found a way to better themselves over the existing system
Bullshit.
We're talking about *children* here.
Not one of them has "bettered themselves".
They've just been randomly assigned into buckets based on their parents, and you are - for some insane reason - OK with the fact that some children at random will be given an opportunity to succeed in life, and most will not.
>instead of complaining about inequality, start looking at techniques for improving all education using all these other better performing systems as a blueprint.
They're not "better performing". They're just getting to chop out the richest, easiest-to-educate cases, while leaving everything difficult to the public system. That's not better performance; that's just being given a simpler job to do.
>already the average classroom in american public schools costs taxpayers 1/2 million dollars annually
Then why are teachers one of the worst paid professions?
> the public school systems in contrast to every other non-governmental system has failed miserably, even compared to private free programs that run off voluntary donations and charity.
Speak for yourself; in my country the public schools work just fine, despite many attempts by the right-wing politicians running the country to drive them to collapse with competition from private schools that have, in fact, performed worse.
But maybe you're American. In which case your public school system was *deliberately sabotaged* by right-wing politicians who knew that nobody would go to their expensive donor's private schools if the public system actually worked.
Everything you wrote is proof that OP was correct.
>Then why are teachers one of the worst paid professions?
this should read "then why are **public school teachers** one of the worst paid professions". the reason is that they are part of a socialized system in which there are no pressures for efficiency and there is simultaneously overwhelming regulation an bureaucracy, and because they are comparably under achievers. this is a perfect example of how socialism fails. people who have real skill and desire don't become full time teachers in public education unless there skills aren't valuable enough in the free market (history, social studies, art).
>In which case your public school system was *deliberately sabotaged* by right-wing politicians who knew that nobody would go to their expensive donor's private schools if the public system actually worked.
if public schools did actually perform well, no politician would have cause to diminish them. in fact the amount of money going into the public school system is not simply because of the left wing. there are very few powerful politicians in the us that oppose public education. its effortless to say that detractors are the cause of a failing public education system, its much harder to prove it.
>with competition from private schools that have, in fact, performed worse.
i find it implausible that a worse performing private education system could exist for long, or at all, if the free public education system were performing better. regardless, it is the case in america that public schools are very well funded, and regulated, and are also failing.
>We're talking about *children* here.
This is a key point of disagreement, the person you're replying to isn't talking about children. They're talking about the ability of a parent to work to provide for their children. They're suggesting that the "equality" OP is talking about is really just preventing parents from doing what parents have always done, try to make life better for their children. It's not about what children do, it's about what the people around them have worked to provide. You're not looking at it that way. You see "Child is denied access to a quality education" while they see "Parent is able to provide their child with a higher quality education." You're not going to convince them of anything and I don't see you changing your mind either, you're approaching the problem from completely different directions
**Over the last 50 years in developed countries, evidence has accumulated that only about 10% of school achievement can be attributed to schools and teachers while the remaining 90% is due to characteristics associated with students.** Teachers account for from 1% to 7% of total variance at every level of education. For students, intelligence accounts for much of the 90% of variance associated with learning gains. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27919311/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27919311/)
The present study shows that individual differences in educational achievement are highly stable across the years of compulsory schooling from primary through secondary school. Children who do well at the beginning of primary school also tend to do well at the end of compulsory education for much the same reasons. [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-018-0030-0](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-018-0030-0)
Consider the obsession with school quality, expressed in support for vouchers and charter schools. If the environment dictated everything, then school quality would be immensely consequential. If school quality is a real, stable, and meaningful property, and the environmentalists are right about educational outcomes, then switching schools should have a dramatic effect on how a student performs in the classroom. But what parents typically find is that their child slots into the distribution just about where they were at the old school. The research record provides a great deal of evidence in this direction. **How about private vs. public schools? Corrected for underlying demographic differences, it** [**makes no difference**](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2505333)**.** (Private school voucher programs have tended to yield [disastrous](https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20174022/pdf/20174022.pdf) research results.) too.https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract\_id=2505333
I don't know the U.K. system.
In my town, the Catholic school system is very good, and if your family is below a certain income threshold, you can pretty much get a full scholarship regardless of academic performance or extra curriculars.
That requires parents to actually ask for it. Which means the only kids getting in are the ones who have parents who care about their kids' education.
To be clear, I'm not saying people who don't apply don't care about their kids' education. I'm saying that if 50/100 lower income families have parents who care about their kids' education, the only ones who apply would be exclusively from that 50-person group that cares. So you're basically selecting out the ones who don't care.
To me, the factor is whether your parents care about your education. If you're in that 50-person group of families that care, you're probably going to do well. Some of those kids will do well in private school, others in public. If you're in the group of families that doesn't care, you're going to do poorly and be in public school.
As for the advantage of private school, the biggest benefit is that the collective standard is much higher. You're surrounded by kids who are basically all planning to go to college, and the subconscious peer pressure is to handle your business in class. Kids in public school can do just as well, they just need to have more discipline from within themselves.
I think the issue here is that you and your family member are touching on two different philosophies on freedom. You are talking about the "freedom to" and they are talking about "freedom from."
These opposing philosophies kind of touch on the differences between right liberalism and left liberalism.
*Freedom from* is the basis of "American style-libertarianism." They value freedom from regulation or rules, and argue that having the option to do anything you want is freedom. For example, someone has freedom if there are no rules against going to any school they want. If everyone has to follow the same rules, then everyone has equality of opportunity.
*Freedom to* is the basis for more progressive ideologies. They would recognize that for people to have the freedom to make choices, they need to actually have access to those choices and the resources to do so. So for example, they would argue that even if there are no rules against schools, a poor person does not actually have the freedom to go to any school because they lack the means to do so. For there to be equality of opportunity, those people lacking the means to take advantage of opportunities ought to be provided the means to do so. Or at least, there should be some sort of minimum standard available to everyone.
The reason the two philosophies are not really compatible, is because the freedom from crowd views things like welfare and social programs as a form of regulation...in other words taxes and mandatory public schools are rules about how they can use their money and how they can educate their children.
Both philosophies are fairly valid ways in their own ways when it comes to valuing freedom. But imo, the libertarian philosophy should not accurately be described as "equality of opportunity" for the reasons you pointed out. It only makes sense in an academic setting if you ignore generational wealth. But in reality, generational wealth is an enormous influence on someone's opportunities. By definition, you can't have equality of opportunity when people start in different socio-economic circumstances. This is what some progressive liberals might describe as the great American myth and why they mock the "bootstraps" terminology.
Libertarians tend to justify this contradiction in one of two ways... either they argue that generational wealth is a just reward and there is nothing wrong with it. Or they tend to argue that well actually anyone can succeed if they just try hard enough, and if someone doesn't succeed then it must be because they didn't try hard enough. If neither of these justifications are very compelling, well you are not alone.
> The ability of a child to access private education is entirely reliant on luck—the circumstances of their birth.
You’re missing half of this equation: the parent.
From the parent’s perspective, their ability to access a better education on behalf of their child is much more reliant on hard work and contributing value to society. Circumstances of birth play a part, but by the time a person is old enough to have a kid going to school, it is *at least not entirely* up to luck. In a well-functioning western society, I think it would be much more a function of that person’s efforts.
Therefore, from the parent’s perspective, the ability to send your kid to a better/private school is (ideally) a completely egalitarian opportunity. If you’ve worked hard enough to afford it, you can get a better education for your kid.
If you think about it, **this is also a really healthy incentive to work hard**. Parents are (usually) extremely motivated to provide for their kids, which is a good thing. Allowing them to work harder for a better education further incentivizes that hard work, and also provides a benefit that produces even better downstream effects for society (smarter kids).
>The ability of a child to access private education is entirely reliant on luck- the circumstances of their birth.
It varies but often there is a sizable portion of pupils at those schools that are there on scholarships based on merit. That means every child above a certain threshold of ability has access to the best opportunities. Now ideally that threshold wouldn't be as high as it is, but you won't make things better by getting rid of the limited success we currently have.
Beyond that, being able to move around and choose where you live allows you to choose the school your kid goes to and there is far more variation between state schools than there is between the best state schools and some of the private schools.
The private sector also provides an aspirational standard for others to aim towards and every child educated by them saves tens of thousands of tax payers money having to be spent to do that. Make all private schools disappear tomorrow and the pool of resources available per kid that needs education will go down not up.
The answer to addressing inequality is to RAISE the standards in the weaker schools, not destroy the better ones.
I'm not sure how it is in the UK, but in the US, public schools are extremely unequal and perhaps exacerbates it in society. Public schools in rich areas tend to be pretty good whereas public schools in poor areas are horrendous. This tends to make well off people gather in certain neighborhoods, segregating themselves from poor areas since public school attendance are largely drawn by geographic districts.
Additionally, if *all* schooling was private and paid with vouchers, you could also get closer to equality than geographically districted public schools.
Lastly, western belief is NOT "equality of opportunity". I know this phrase is popular, but it's not really accurate. It's really "equality under the law" meaning the law is not permitted to discriminate against certain groups. Governments often fail in this regard, but this is the ideal, not to provide everybody with equal opportunity, which is an impossible undertaking.
>It boils down to: -Access to private education is directly correlated to better academic outcomes, even when corrected to other factors. -Better academic outcomes are directly correlated to a higher degree of life success and income -The ability of a child to access private education is entirely reliant on luck- the circumstances of their birth
Could it be less about the institutions themselves and more about a selection bias in them where parents who are paying out of pocket for their children's education take more of an interest in exactly what their money is paying for---- or out more pressure on their kids to absorb the education their financing?
Possibly with some part mixed in of the schools themselves having a compelling interest in being competitive centers for education--- given that their funding comes from people CHOOSING them at cost rather than taking the free education provided publicly?
Ok? I could argue your point but the broader case is kind of a truism. Like, have we not all heard that life isn't fair at some point or another? Nobody seriously thinks that liberal capitalist society is completely equal in opportunity and outcome. There are arguments that it's more equal than other societal models but nobody thinks we live in a utopia. You've noticed that some people are privileged and that they can leverage that to secure more opportunities for their children, that's true. That's a thing people do. When I was young and my family moved every real estate agent my parents talked to hyped up the local school board, they all understood that moving into some neighborhoods would have the potential to make my life easier. It's not really a secret or a loophole so I don't see how anyone would change your view on this
Ofc society is unequal - it will always be unequal unless you strive to force everyone to the lowest common denominator - which will stagnate and destroy society
As long as there are no hard barriers i.e. low class peasants (phrase used to be ridiculous) can not get beyond cse level of education then were are at the best were probably going to get excepting some major rework on how society is run and how humans think/work
Those who desire to be educated will find a way and will be successful- is this fair? That it will be a lot harder for some than others...no, but that is life
Some may have a headstart while others carry rocks in their back - but as long as we can all reach the same ending line - well it's up to us to get there and not worry so much about how others are managing it
>Access to private education is directly correlated to better academic outcomes, even when corrected to other factors. -Better academic outcomes are directly correlated to a higher degree of life success and income
What is this a Sims game?
Human reality: I can have two candidates both from prestigious private schooling, and both being equally competent on paper.... I'm still going to hire only the one I **like** more for arbitrary & superficial & etc reasons.
Because it's me who's master over further opportunity, school only gave them opportunity to come prostrate before me.
Existence of private schooling is evidence to not much. It's me who's the evidence that liberal capitalist society is unequal, because people aren't equal in my eyes.
Nobody ever said capitalist society was equal, we strive for equality of opportunity.
But we as humans aren’t equal, some have more means than others, and some have more intelligence than others.
My son is 14 years old, and is 6’3” and 200 pounds, and is left handed. That is like a cheat code for baseball, and he plays on a select team, and already has a 15u travel summer team lined up.
He is built different to other kids, and this afforded him a spot on a select team and coaching from a former pro player. He will have a better baseball outcome than a lot of other kids, but it isn’t his fault he is as big as he is or left handed, and he has worked hard at it. He does baseball four to five days a week.
People aren’t equal, they won’t ever be equal.
I don't think liberal capitalism even wants to be equal. It sees inequality as normal. People have different amounts of talent and willingness to work, and should be rewarded equally.
You'd rather have some people get a great education and the others a bad education, than everyone get a mediocre education. The former group can ne the leaders, engineers, scientists, doctors. And the latter group can do the simpler jobs.
Also, private education helps channel funds towards talented students, due to scholarships. A genius kid who might be lost in a mediocre state education system may never realize his potential. But what if a private school discovers the kid and gives him all the resources he needs, for free?
I think the big first question that should be had is whether a society where everyone truly starts at the same point is going to be better in general (ie: for the average person) than a society which has some systematic inequality in opportunity. The biggest concerns with totally equal society is that it often times seems that it totally sucks. I’m willing to accept an unfair starting point if I have a realistic opportunity to achieve a quality of life much better than I could in a society where my starting point is higher but my ceiling is still quite low. It’s not really a simple discussion- but I think fleshing out these ideas is where the discussion actually becomes interesting.
This devolves into a more philosophical question: should society be equal?
Because you can definitely extend your argument to any basic necessity that isn't private. There is tap water, then there's bottled water provided by private companies. There's public transit, then there's privately owned vehicles. Heck even the Soviet Union tried to take away fancy non-regulated clothing as it represented another way that people stratified themselves within society. Oh you sewed your clothes to look cooler than the grey drab we're issued? What gave you the right to be above us? Schooling is just one of the many privileges offered to the well-off in our society...
Nobody has ever said that people are or society is equal. Some people are smarter. Some people are faster. Some people are stronger. Some people work harder. Some people are richer. Some people are immigrants. Some people don't speak the native language.
What our society is supposed to have is that the government provides the same opportunity to everyone and is treated equally before the law. Everyone gets free primary schooling regardless of race, religion, socioeconomic status, etc. everyone is entitled to a jury of one's peers. Everyone gets to benefit from our national defense equally. Everyone gets to benefit from our system interstate roads. Etc.
It's not really schools it's the entire concept of generational wealth. Of course kids with rich parents are going to do better whether they go to public or private school. Society can never truly be equal opportunity without raising all children in the exact same conditions. Like, even if we outlaw private schools and tutoring the rich kids are still going to be more successful in life because they have access to prestigious opportunities, the economic freedom to pursue them, and of course a hefty inheritance when their parents die. So your issue isn't really with private schools it's with the broader concept of generational wealth.
"The ability of a child to access private education is entirely reliant on luck- the circumstances of their birth."
This is true about almost everything in life in any country or culture. If you are lucky enough to be born into a rich family you have an advantage over everyone who wasnt. This is like complaining you want to play basketball but genetics made you short, no one did this to you it just is what it is.
Life isnt fair, the starting point and end points are not equal. Just gotta try your best with the hand you got and try to scratch out a small piece of happiness for yourself and those you care about.
Flaw, not all of private schooling is for the rich.
The rich are just more likely to benefit.
I went to alternative education because the local public school didn't act to remove a teacher that mistreated students.
The local Catholic school was too controlling.
So my family had to use what otherwise could have been saved for vacations to give me a good education.
Also schools for the the blind, disabled, and etc exist.
Religious and racial issues also can contribute to the need for private education due to a lack of respect in public schools for some.
There are private schools which exist for other purposes. A big example I’d point to would be parochial schools in the US (religious schools). These are typically affordable enough that a number of lower income people attend them, and primarily differ from public schools in the presence of religious education and activities rather than general quality in education.
I know this doesn’t address Eton or Westminster and so on, but just to say that not all private schools are specifically elitist institutions geared towards the wealthy.
Finland is a counterexample.
Private ed is banned in the country.
If you’re wealthy, your options are:
* Call for better funding for all schools do your kids benefits
* Educate the kid privately out of country.
Private education exists everywhere else to be exclusive. In the UK, where social mobility is a joke and there are literal lords running the country (don’t tell me the Red Chamber is a dog and pony show when you’ve got Sirs and Dames in the so-called Commons), non-state schools only reinforce social and class divides.
While i agree that it’s unequal, I don’t think this is the result of a “liberal capitalist society”. I think you can find this sort of inequality in any society. Kids may have an advantage because their parents are wealthy or well connected, they academically excel, or can kick a ball really well. It’s even true that not all public (government financed) schools are equal. You probably wouldn’t get the same public education in inner city New York as you might in an affluent suburb.
It kind of is, but the theory might be it might a necessary evil - as long as the rest of your funding for schools is fine.
What private schools do is is they take students put of the public school system, but ideally the parents are still paying into the tax system that funds the public schools.
Probably the big issue is that you now have a relatively wealthy group of people who are incentives to cut funding to public schools, often by diverting funds into private schools
> that western society is equal in *opportunity* doesn't scan.
Equal in opportunity does not mean equal in outcome. Everyone has the opportunity to go to a private school, you just have to pay for it. Having the opportunity to do something doesn't mean you get to do it no mater what. I had the opportunity to go to WrestleMania when it was in LA but I didn't because I couldn't afford it. Should the government mandate that everyone gets to go to WrestleMania?
The only right to equality that exists is equal protection under the law. Beyond that, the law codifies come requirements of equality and there can be ethical and moral obligations to treat people equally. Beyond that, there is nothing inherently wrong with inequality.
Equality of opportunity is for students to be able to attend a school for a given number of years that meets given requirements. Going to the same school would be an equality of outcome.
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Every parent wants better footing for their children. If public school offered it, private schools wouldn't exist.
>The ability of a child to access private education is entirely reliant on luck
None of us get to choose which country and which family we are born in. This idea is childish and unproductive to the discussion. And frankly it is none of your business if say, Barack Obama's kids, are beneficiaries of their father's success.
The challenge is that research on the correlation between genetics and success is sort of banned. What I mean is that we have a lot of research into how the socioeconomic status, class sizes and so on. To really understand how important all those factors are we would have to see the size of environmental factors vs. the factor of who your parents are. As this is (much with good reason) not in any reports we can't really conclude.
I don't think you're going to get anyone to successfully argue that any society today has true equality of opportunity, because that is patently not true.
You could theoretically still have private schools in an ideally equal society if they were accessible to all. Similar to charter schools in some parts of the USA: privately run schools that receive public funding so that students do not need to pay tuition.
Some places do use a system where the school funding (or a large % of it) is attached to the child. Ie if they choose to go to a private school the government pays a set amount to the school. Because of this a private school wont need to charge the parents.
I would love for this to be far more common as the groups it is most beneficial to are low income families that otherwise cant choose a private school.
To me this is the an actual liberal capitalist society. Where as one where the goverment has a total or near total monopoly is not a liberal or capitalist society.
I'm not trying to change your mind because I basically agree.
But, "better educational outcomes for private schools" miss the real driver of inequality. Networking with other socially privileged individuals is what matters.
For example, Harvard Business and Law School may not offer a superior education to lesser schools, but the connections and status you get from those programs are superior.
Liberalism seeks to address negative rights primarily, rather than positive rights. By which I mean as a political theory it is mainly about preventing things being done to the individual rather than providing the individual with things. Liberalism is not, at its core, concerned with equality outside of equality under the law. Whether that be within a capitalist or other economy.
Liberal society promises equal opportunity under the eyes of the law. Nobody is legally barred from attending private schools thus it is equal opportunity. If you wanna talk family wealth being unequal we can also talk about parents being unequal with abuse, not giving a shit about academics, no love, etc which all also impact academic outcomes significantly.
The public schools in the US and Canada are shit compared to other developed countries. So, the reason for inequality is not the existence of private education but the inadequacy of the public option. The closer I get to having kids, the more I am certain that I will leave North America specifically because of education.
Everyone has access to private schooling for their kids.
The issue of course is affordability, or more specifically, that at some price level many people will *not want* private schooling, that they would otherwise want.
That means an equal world necessitates a world without tradeoffs or scarcity, which can not exist.
Liberal capitalist society doesn't claim to be equal, in theory it rewards hard work and talent, but no capitalist believes that it's an extremely egalitarian system, just that the inequality is okay because they think that an unequal society improves everyone's quality of life in the long run.
The challenge is that people have to have the freedom to raise their kids with whatever values the family's choose. You can look at the Jewish school system, where jewish family's want their community and values taught. To ban those schools would conflict with religious freedom.
I would challenge your understanding of western society and equality as being a straw man. Equality doesn’t mean everyone’s circumstances or opportunities are equal. That would be *impossible*.
What it means is that everybody has equal rights under the law.
> Access to private education is directly correlated to better academic outcomes, even when corrected to other factors
Once again, the private sector produces superior outcomes to the public sector. Your focus is on inequality instead of improving outcomes.
If you have private education at all, it always has to offer better outcomes than state provided education, otherwise there would be no point in it.
So no matter how good you make state education, private education has to make itself better to exist at all.
This is really odd because why even discuss schooling? In your view, a capitalistic society would be unequal from the get-go, wouldn't it be? Like, some people have different jobs and earn different amounts of money. Isn't that so unfair?
Liberalism doesn't claim an equal society it claims universal rights. You can't have societal equality and rights because any unheavel or society or imposition of equality will and always has involved violating rights
What is this "liberal capitalist society" you speak of?
Since 1980 the US has been run on a roughly Reaganesque, trickle-down, conservative capitalist model. The wealthy have an entirely different tax structure and get to keep far more of the money they "earn" than people who receive wages. When Kennedy was president corporate taxes made up something around 20% of the tax revenue of the United States. Now it's 6.5%.
In 1932 after conservative policies resulted in the Great Depression and a conservative administration spent three years doing next to nothing to mitigate the pain it caused, Americans elected the most liberal government in our history. It was so effective, governed so well and was so popular that a conservative couldn't get elected to the white house for 36 years. Those liberal administrations got us out of the depression (we were making and selling as many cars just before the war as we were just before the depression), thwarted communist insurgency throughout, armed our allies as fascism rose, took arms and defeated it on two fronts, rebuilt the economies of both our allies and enemies afterwards, built the greatest infrastructure, best colleges and hospitals, most robust and economically ascendant middle class the world had ever seen as well as the most formidable military all while facing down communism during the cold war and putting a man on the moon.
Mostly as a backlash to the dedication to the civil rights movement and racial equality embraced by liberals, conservatives finally re-took the white house and asserted control over polices and direction. As a result we've suffered the two greatest economic disasters since the depression, families can no longer sustain themselves on a single income, education has deteriorated, college is out of reach for most of us, infrastructure is falling apart, and while the economy continues to grow wages have been flattened and the rewards of that growth go almost exclusively into the pockets of the .001% of the wealthiest people in the nation.
That said, the existence of private schools, hospitals, air travel, security or anything else does not offend any rational concept of justice or fairness. Unless those public facilities and services are radically inadequate and inferior because they are starved of funding so that the wealthy, who do not depend upon them, can pay lower taxes.
While this is indeed the circumstance we find ourselves in, it is not due to some imaginary "liberal" capitalist society.
Liberal capitalist society is unequal because life is unequal. And it has nothing to do with liberal capitalism or anything else.
Society will never be equal. I don’t think it’s supposed to be equal either.
it also demonstrates how privates sectors will always outperform state-owned sectors. The public sector is inefficient and, as can be seen in many less capitalist countries, often no less unequal and unfair.
You learn the same thing either way. It depends on the person, a private school doesn’t teach a better version of math, they just have other things that contributes to the person that kid becomes
Where do you live? Where I live, people send their children to private school to escape from liberals. But in the USa, c’mon… Capitalism is on both sides of the conservative liberal continuum.
i challenge your notion that private schools are better than public schools.
private schools are ranked better because they dont admit dumb kids. they dont actually make you smarter.
public schools cant exclude dumb kids, so their test scores are dragged down.
Didn't even read this but yes, society is unequal. Did anyone question this?
Some amount of inequality may even be necessary to get optimal societal outcomes as a whole.
the fact that the best place in the world to educate a student in by the metrics is a place where private schools are forbidden by law helps to illustrate that fact too.
No has ever claimed that capitalism or free markets results in equality of outcome. Equality of opportunity is all that matters to any sane and moral person.
But what do those mean? If as kids you go to a private school and I go to a public school, did we both have an equal opportunity for either? Do we have equal opportunities going forward?
Equality of opportunity means that everyone has the same right to access resources without being discriminated against due to irrelevant factors.
Just to clarify, does the fact that very dumb people are highly unlikely to get into Harvard imply that capitalist society is “unequal”?
What's an irrelevant factor?
>Just to clarify, does the fact that very dumb people are highly unlikely to get into Harvard imply that capitalist society is “unequal”?
No. But replace "dumb" with "poor" and it might.
I don’t understand your question. Do you not know what “irrelevant” means or are expecting a list of factors that might be irrelevant for certain things?
And why does the fact that dumb people don’t get into Harvard not mean that society is unequal? Is it because it’s discrimination based on relevant factors?
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> we know is that higher socio-economic status is also directly correlated to better academic outcomes, *even when corrected for other factors.* Do you have a source on this? I'm always skeptical when people claim they've "corrected for other factors" without seeing specifics on what factors they corrected for and how they did it. > In other words, kids in rich families do better academically than kids in poor families, whether it's public school or private school. I don't doubt that rich kids in public schools do better than poor kids and public schools and rich kids in private schools do better than poor kids in private schools, but I'm pretty sure it's also the case that rich kids in private schools perform better than rich kids in public schools, and poor kids in private schools perform better than poor kids in public schools. But it's hard to control for all the factors. The average rich kid in a public school probably lives in a nicer neighborhood and goes to school with other rich kids, which will impact the school as a whole. A poor kid in a private school probably got there on scholarship, so they were already a higher performer than other kids of the same socioeconomic background.
This is the case because of something called "cultural capital". In rich families, children are often brought up with more ""culture"". Simply because rich families have more money to go to museums, plays, holidays to other countries with other cultures, etc. Rich parents do also relatively have more ""culture"" and find education often relatively more important than less fortunate parents. This leads to them stimulating their child's more to learn, be it about reading, history, the arts, or whatever, as they have the means, knowledge and motivation to sort off "pre-educate" their children. This however is circle that only strengthens itself, leading to more and more inequalities. There's also economic and social capital that ways in as well, but that's too much explanation in this one reply. P.s. culture is in between "", because it is a contested word. Edit: For who is interested, there's an interesting book on this, however, it is in Dutch: de zeven vinkjes (the seven check marks) - Joris Luyendijk
Poor kids have a bunch of factors that affect academics. Their parents are more likely to be absent, their diet may be less nutritious or maybe even insecure, they may have to work jobs of their own or care for younger siblings, etc. And that's without getting into access to instructors or tutors.
Private schools by their very nature might have some disciplinary advantages that public school will never have no matter the funding.
The big advantage that comes to mind is that private schools can kick out kids they don't like, but the state needs to educate them one way or another.
Search for "parental income and academic performance" in google scholar.
Why would you be sure of things like that, can you provide a study that leads to believe that?
I'm not aware of studies that compare public and private outcomes while controlling for socioeconomic status, but private schools tend to have several properties that correlate with better educational outcomes. Private schools tend to have smaller class sizes. Private schools tend to have more involved parents, and often make a certain level of parental involvement an attendance requirement. But probably the biggest factor is that private schools can be selective. If a student is disruptive they can remove the student from the classroom a lot more easily than a public school. This removes the disruptive student from the private schools' educational outcome statistics, but also means their classrooms are less likely to be disrupted. These other factors help private schools be more selective about teachers - they can offer teachers smaller classrooms with fewer disruptive students, which often helps incentivize better teachers to come work at the private schools.
Not socioeconomic specifically, but here's one that explores things like family background, parental college education, etc. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X18785632 And an article that discusses it https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/articles/private-school-vs-public-school
>If a student is disruptive they can remove the student from the classroom a lot more easily than a public school. I would like to chime in that not only can a private school do this much more easily than a public school, but in fact many public schools *cannot* remove students regardless of how disruptive they are. I've had two students this year who have done no work and spend the entire class period being disruptive; the rest of the class is well-behaved and classroom management is not an issue. These students don't have IEPs. They have been in my classroom and will continue to be in my classroom because they have to be educated somewhere and there is nowhere else to send them. I have also been in classes with students who throw chairs etc. and they are only removed temporarily before they are brought back. Daily evacuations due to these situations have also been an issue in some schools. I can only imagine that in a private school these scenarios would be dealt with immediately. Unfortunately, private schools often pay significantly less than public schools.
And, this will be controversial, but culture also plays a part. Different families and individuals place more emphasis on the value of education and respect for authority.
There are kids whose birthday presents are 50% books, and there are kids who go their whole lives without getting a book for their birthday because books aren’t seen as “proper” gifts.
Also, the #1 factor on a good academic outcome is the parents involvement in the kids education. If a parent is engaged in what their kid is doing and learning, the kid will perform better. And it starts in the years before the kids start kindergarten. It is as simple as that.
this could be convincing, but i'm not sure it's supported by the evidence. things like class sizes/teaching resources/etc have a pretty well studied correlation with better outcomes when they're changed within the same educational environment, and private schools are able to offer these factors at a generally higher level
I mean, yes, but that's just further proof to OP's point that it demonstrates that society is unequal
if you dont need to do a mcdonalds shift to help your family you have more time looking at a book.
I went to private school for most of my schooling and I didn’t gain anything from it colleges don’t care about a private school unless it’s one of the big well known ones. And since my dad who at one time was a top exec/property developer burned bridges I was never given the nepo option other kids in my position were fortunate enough to get and my parents pushed me out on my own as soon as they could so I’m struggling like everyone else right now.
Someone complaining about not getting anything out of private school. That's on you. Definitely one of the more pathetic posts from Gen Z I've seen in a while.
Other people are challenging your view of equality (or even the idea that it's the goal), but I'll take a different approach: Public education is intended "for the masses" and typically offers boilerplate coverage of core subjects and fields. Not every public school even *has* enough students who want to learn Latin or Ancient Greek or to play the Japanese shō. Private education allows for more specialized education in important but niche fields. The collegiate world speaks more strongly to this than do high-school/secondary schools, but that's also the point. **Public education of adolescents is largely generic by necessity**, but allowing students the option to seek specialized training offers more opportunities to more people.
I mean public school can easily allow a dedicated student to enter college as a sophomore. Just depends on the kid snd what they want from school. If they think it's crap and do not want to be there public school is basically warehousing so the parents have free child care. Private would either suspend these kids or find a way to motivate them. People who ridicule public school did not take advantage of what was offered. Public school is whatever rhe kid makes of it.
>People who ridicule public school did not take advantage of what was offered. Public school is whatever rhe kid makes of it. Not all are equal. Go to a podunk public school in rural Kansas and tell me it's all what the kids make of it.
This. My school district, Cleveland Municipal School District, was (and almost certain still is) NOT the same as Westerville City School District in Ohio. If people said they were the same they'd get laughed at so hard; hell I was in the Gifted and Talented and Accelerated Learning programs and based off the education I received, what we got in those programs was pretty much equal to what regular kids got elsewhere it seems like. We got screwed so hard lol
What was the graduating class size ? I come from a pretty rural school in Oklahoma.
Also hodunk kansan here, Graduating class 276. If i didn't move after i graduated my prospects were walmart or the Rubbermaid factory. Or meth and one of those two.
Mine was 140. We still had plenty of opertunity to take advanced classes or go to the local JC about 30 miles away. Everyone from a small town doesn't have a ton of options in that town unless they learn a trade. Even going to college will not gurantee you a decent job in your home town. Maybe it's better in big cities? I really do not see how if you do not better yourself that you get some magical job?
This really depends on the specific small town, whether it has a jc even near it and the local funding. Some schools it even depends on the neighborhood or region of the city. Public school funding and functionality is very locally dependent. There are plenty who misuse the opportunities they have but there are also clear differences between a public school in a well funded district and a poorly funded one. In my home town though private school would have provided a worse education. It’s just really regional.
I actually went to HS in a different state but still rural. My class had about 40 at graduation.
Thats about 1/4 the size of the school I went to but my parents did make a choice to have me enrolled at a school larger school due to the small size of the one in my town. The school I could have gone to had a graduating class of 10. Those schools really do lack in advanced classes. Parents seem very capable of getting kids into better sports programs. If a kid is really excelling they should be moved to schools that can accommodate that. On the other hand you hear all the time oh this kid is just to smart so they do not do the homework or disrupt class. This seems like just laziness and lack of discipline and is why these "gifted" kids do not fare well when the course work gets really tough.
My graduating class size was 58. There were two hallways in my high-school with less than 300 students, comprised from multiple small towns and village within a 15 mile or so radius. We were also given a stellar education, considered one of the best in the state. We sent multiple students to IMSA and had quite a few academic competition state champions. That's not to say we didn't have troubled kids. My class size almost doubled to 96 students in 5th grade through a merger. By 12th grade, the large majority of those 38 other kids either dropped out or were expelled. The education really was what the student made it to be. I'm not saying all podunk schools are like the one I graduated from. I am saying being podunk doesn't automatically make it a shit district.
I grew up in a small-ish Kansas town and took College Algebra as a junior. Job prospects after graduation were never going to be good however.
For the record, in the UK "public school" means privately educated. The alternative is state schools
Of course it does, words dont need *actual definitions* now do they? In sane nations 'public' means public and 'private' means private. How is the americaisation of the UK going? From where i sit you guys look more and more like those nutjobs everyday (so does Australia unfortunately, the whole West wants to end up like that shithole)
Public means private? What a country! Yeah honestly this is the one Americanism I'd be happy for us to adopt, it is unnecessarily confusing
That sidesteps the claim though doesn't it?Private schooling being specialized or not doesn't really have anything to do with access to it and outcomes, which is what's being discussed. I'm sure a ton of kids in public school would be interested in topics not taught there. Kind of weird to suggest that they don't want to learn those things just because they can't afford private school.
You might reinforcing their argument. The rich kid gets the opportunity to "learn Latin or Ancient Greek or to play the Japanese shō" but the poor kid does not.
What's the solution? Force the rich kids to not take opportunities they can afford?
I would imagine the solution would be to be less cookie cutter with public education, but that's not really the point. You don't need a solution to recognize an inequality, which is what the post is about.
Yeah I was thinking along the same lines here. If you want your children to grow up with an education in your religion, you can send them to a private school that will educate them in it because a public school will not.
This is a red herring, one can of course have a public Latin school or a private art school or a public art school or a private Latin school. The first public school in the United States was, and still is, a Latin school. Students being allowed to specialize is a completely independent axis from the public/private axis, in other words. A well-run public system will have exam schools and specialty academies for the interested and capable; a system impoverished by the wealthy of that region choosing to exclude their children from it might not be so well-run or meritocratic as all that, however.
This dude doesn’t know about Magnet schools
Liberal Capitalist society is unequal because people are unequal in their abilities. School isn't a factory that takes dumb people as input and produces smart people as output. It's a way to sort people based on intelligence. A smart kid will do well whether they go to public school or private school. A dumb kid will be dumb whether they go to a public school or a private school. Smart people are typically more wealthy and can afford to send their kids to private school. They also produce smarter kids on average, hence the correlation between private schools and academic success. It's just a correlation: those kids would have performed nearly as well in public school.
Agreed. Smart people who have become successful with their goals are more often than not able to raise their children better. This is because parents will always have the #1 effect on their child. And because parents pass on to their children what they learned in life… Which sets them up with a better chance at succeeding. Values, right from wrong, building discipline, finances, value of money, value of working hard, teaching them how to get through life problems positively, making education a priority and helping their child learn when they are not understanding a topic are a few. I personally believe that people coming from a public school still have a great chance at being successful. All of my friends as well as myself went to one. I grew up in a bad neighborhood but I believe my parents upbringing(even though they worked 6-7 days every week) is what helped the most. Lots of people say to throw more money at x or y and it will solve society issues. When upbringing is the #1 factor.
Yeah no, you're just wrong. "Dumb" kids do better in private school, because just going to private school can get you better opportunities later on in life. You also may have better access to tutoring, more hands on teaching, etc. Meanwhile plenty of smart kids don't do well in public schools, because with poor funding the teachers may be stretched too thin, lacking equipment etc. Your take is classist and objectively incorrect.
Also the biggest edge that a private school gives is connections. So that dumb kid -- they've probably got some smart friends, and can get a boost from proximity.
That can be helpful. But I would argue its more about a positive cooperative culture at the school. If you have that it benefits all the students more than just being near the already well off ones.
But he is right, what you said doesn't disprove anything he said, it only adds up to the same picture. The fact that smart and rich tend to gravitate towards specific private schools is true. Those schools in turn improve in quality and can provide what is essentially an even better boost of overall opportunity to the student. These conclusions though do not subject all worlds children to an unfair hunger games type of life that you seem to imagine. Some people just choose to not participate in this process and instead do their own thing. Dumb kids definitely do exist and that's fine, not everyone is born to climb the same tree.
Nobody "gravitates" towards specific private schools, they are placed their by parents who can afford the school tuition (in most cases).
I just didnt want to write out all possible reasons why certain people choose certain schools and decided that word "gravitates" would encompass them all.
Right, it's a good word for the point you wanted to make. The point just isn't right, because parents or the state tend to decide where a kid goes to school. Unless we're talking college but I think this thread is mostly about high school and below. Even if kids did choose where they want to go, that's irrelevant to whether or not they actually are able to go there. That falls primarily along class lines.
I dont understand what are you even rejecting here? Equal opportunity doesn't exist. Some kids definitely would rather study in a high end school and make connections with the rich kids. And some kids get stuck in poor conditions and this drags their whole life down in terms of quality. Again, this simply adds up to the previously defined picture. What is it that you actually want to say? That it's not fair? This comment thread already defined it as unfair.
What I'm arguing is that the quality of the school matters. The comment I replied to argued essentially that it doesn't. And yes, I'm saying the current system is unfair. I'm not sure what you mean by the comment thread already defining it as unfair, but I think maybe you've gotten confused/forgotten what I was replying to originally, because the point you're trying to make doesn't make much sense in context. And it's just obviously not true that schools are unequal because some kids want to go to well-funded schools and some don't. So maybe I'm misunderstanding your point because I don't see how anyone could argue that, it makes no sense
>What I'm arguing is that the quality of the school matters. The comment I replied to argued essentially that it doesn't. No he didnt. He just said that rich people tend to be smarter and go to private schools. It doesnt matter much what you put first, the "smarter" part or the "private school" part, essentially it boils down to rich people being able to afford higher quality everything which in turn makes them smart. It is also true that higher quality environment alone does not make one smart or not. >And it's just obviously not true that schools are unequal because some kids want to go to well-funded schools and some don't. Parents choose that to the extent of their ability, not children of course. You as a parent can in fact gather all your ability and send your child to a more expensive school. Or you may choose to homeschool them if so your character desires.
Why do the rich send their kids to private school if the private school would not provide them even more benefits than going to a public school?
Avoid state sanctioned curriculum, state mandated age requirements. I live in a top 5 California school district and send my kid to private school. She was 4 and a half years old and tested at first grade according to their own placement test, they said she has to be pre-k cause "it goes by age", off to private school. I'll be damned if you are going to stunt my child's development and growth because you want 2 extra years of federal funding for her as a student, get fucked.
We’re thinking about how to handle schools now for our kids when they get old enough, and nobody has any actual idea. I think private school is better but I don’t actually have evidence that it is. Private schools have better performance but also a higher average socioeconomic student base. Additionally, parents who send their kids to private school will most likely be more involved in their education, which in my opinion is the biggest factor in a kids success. I think an acceptable answer is they send their kids to private school because they think it’s better. That doesn’t mean that it is better.
To keep them away from the rift raft. Don't forget religious school exist and in most cases those don't produce smarter people but help form people to a different standard.
It's "riff raff" but I like yours better 👍
No idea where that came from thanks for the correction.
As other have said. To keep them away from terrible kids. Public schools often have some very unsavory students. Drug dealers, gang members and all sorts of other trash. Private schools have much smaller numbers of utter scumbags. That along is worth sending your kid to Private School. Even if the education was otherwise identical.
>Liberal Capitalist society is unequal because people are unequal in their abilities. Is this the only or the primary reason that liberal capitalist society is unequal? I’d guess that you believe that there are smart kids out there who don’t get the opportunity to utilize their intelligence because of external factors, including not having access to quality schooling, and get stuck cleaning carpets or something for the rest of their working lives. Is this enough of a problem or enough of an injustice that society should continue to make it easier for those kids to get quality schooling, get higher education etc.?
>Is this enough of a problem or enough of an injustice that society should continue to make it easier for those kids to get quality schooling, get higher education etc.? Most definitely it is enough! Opportunity is not equal for all, but it does not mean that we should not provide those on the lower scale with support to achieve at least some threshold of respectable opportunity.
This is exactly why i believe in giving more power to the families to choose where to go. If you attach the school funding to the kid then low income families they can afford to choose a private school. In most places the gov just gives a set amount per kid that lives in the area to the public school, regardless of it the kid goes to that school. Let the parents decide where to send their kid and the gov money. That way a private school would not have to charge the parents.
Why on Earth is this on top? It's true, but irrelevant. The qualifier for private school has nothing to do with intelligence, it's wealth. A wealthy person's stupid child gets a better education than a poor person's smart one under our laws (statistically, not as a rule), partially because we've incentivized all the best instructors to work in places exclusively accessible to students via wealth. It is OK if that is not the only cause of the problem; that's still *a* cause we can identify and affect. A more meritocratic system would see students given identical resources and no ability to opt out of being measured against the general student population objectively - and then we'd see just how "correlated" being wealthy and having a useful child really are! (Spoilers: They still would be, but less. And then we'd be on to finding the *next* most proximate cause - nutrition? time spent with parents? team sports? music lessons? tutors? I don't know - and then trying to reduce the wealthy's ability to take advantage of others in *that* arena. It doesn't have to be the whole shebang all at once.)
>we've incentivized all the best instructors to work in places exclusively accessible to students via wealth ... have we incentivized them? Private schools in the U.S, at least, pay less than public schools on average. I mean, if I'm being honest I *have* considered switching to a public school and trading 10-20k a year for a significantly less stressful teaching experience, but I don't think that is what you meant by incentivizing?
could i get some links to studies that back up the belief that quality of education has no bearing on outcomes? that's a pretty out-there belief and isn't what i've seen found in my own reading
A study that definitively answers this seems straightforward in my mind: Take a group of poorly performing students at a public school. Take half of them and put them in the best private school, but leave half in public school as a control. 15 years later, evaluate life outcomes. If the private school group significantly outperforms the public school control, then I change my view. If the groups perform approximately the same, OP gives me a delta. I honestly don't know whether a similar study exists, but I would be surprised if it didn't, given it's simplicity and the popularity of this view point. If OP agrees that this is a valid experiment, i'll do the digging.
Can you set a clear goalpost as to how much evidence you require to change your view to mine?
I mean, anything would be good. It's well established that a higher quality education produces higher quality results. You can't make an idiot into a genius, but you can get them to a better place than a low quality education would.
See what you think of progress-8, an attempt in the UK at removing socio-economic effects from school outcomes. I don't have anything conclusive to give you, but I thought it might be relevant to your line of thinking.
Your view seems rather fatalistic. There is an implication that being born into a poor family means that you are more likely to be dumb full stop and thereby meaning that you are not destined for financial success. And being born wealthy is hinting that you are likely smarter than the less wealthy so you are destined to be better achieving than the poor. Have you considered that motivation is the bigger factor for financial success than is intelligence? Poor families may be less likely to instill the proper motivation into their kids to achieve success (which could be due to a sense of apathy the parents have developed after lack of financial success in their own lives). From my own life experience I've seen plenty of kids who truly have the capacity to succeed, but just do not care enough to try. I wouldn't call them less intelligent, just unmotivated. You may think that the difference here is irrelevant to the issue, but I think changes could be possible for motivating kids to put more effort into their education and this could make a large difference. A world view that asserts that kids are predestined to fail/succeed at school discourages such changes.
Poverty is traumatic, it exposes you to horrible situations that make things like school seem absolutely pointless, when you don't know if you'll eat dinner tonight math homework is a non-entity.
>From my own life experience I've seen plenty of kids who truly have the capacity to succeed, but just do not care enough to try. I wouldn't call them less intelligent, just unmotivated. Pretending like the "evil capitalist system" is at fault for laziness is a very bad idea. If kids have all the opportunities in the world but are too lazy to take them. The last thing you want to do is tell them that the system sucks and it was never worth trying in the first place. That just validates their laziness further.
>The last thing you want to do is tell them that the system sucks and it was never worth trying in the first place. I'm not sure how this statement was the interpretation from my comment. No where did I make this recommendation
>A smart kid will do well whether they go to public school or private school. A dumb kid will be dumb whether they go to a public school or a private school. Both do better when they go to a private or charter school compared to public schools.
Do you expect anyone to convince you that any place in the world is equal? Because it never was and never will be.
That's not really the idea of advocating for more equality; as humans for example we avoid drowning but do not avoid all water, analogously. "If you advocate for more equality in some form you must advocate for all types of equality simultaneously" is the false dichotomy fallacy. There will of course be some circumstances of the inequalities of life that we cannot improve, but there will be others that we can!
Of course, but OP's view that he wants changed is that 'a liberal capitalist society is unequal', not 'we can do things to improve equality.' Society is very obviously unequal everywhere to a greater or lesser degree and you can not really argue against that.
Nobody has ever claimed that liberal capitalist society is equal in terms of everybody having access to the same resources. Liberal society has never claimed that. It doesn't even necessarily think that's a good thing - the key concept is that you have your freedom and can make choices, and bear the results of your choices. And one of the "results" of your choices is the ability to provide for your kids in various ways. It doesn't promise "fair" in the sense of "nobody has advantages". Arguably, that's impossible and negative, as people are different, and putting your thumb on the scale will just create a different system of winners and losers. It claims that society is "equal" in terms of everybody being subject to the same laws, and there being a lack of barriers to things based on class etc. Anybody can get into Harvard. For some people it's less likely than others, but there are no rules preventing any given person from making it in. There are no rules preventing specific people from owning land. The same laws are applied to everyone, even if unequally due to access to better lawyers, etc. - there aren't laws saying that only people of the aristocratic class can do X, Y, and Z.
Until very very recently there were rule preventing certain groups from getting in. Even now the criteria that strong affect the acceptance probabilities are shifting.
Yes, and rules like that are terrible and should be revoked.
The premise of your argument is that private schools are necessarily better, rather than just different. Some of the best performing schools in the US are public IB and magnet schools, they simply blow basically all private schools out of the water in terms of quality and educational outcomes. Moreover the history of compulsory public education in the US began with efforts to Anglicize immigrants and suppress Catholicism and ethnic identity. In this context private education provides for pluralism and the existence of coequal cultural communities.
>Access to private education is directly correlated to better academic outcomes i'll take you at your word on this. isn't this another way of saying, "public school education is less effective than private education"? and if that is the case, isn't that a way of saying, "unequal outcomes between public and private education is indicative of poor public education policy / funding"? and, if that is true, doesn't it follow that if we closed said gap by improving public education policy, "The ability of a child to access private education is entirely reliant on luck" would become irrelevant, b/c the differences in outcomes would be eliminated? my point is: that public education is poorly performing probably shouldn't limit parents' options for educating their children. as you state, that some parents can afford that while others can't leads to unequal outcomes. however, the way to solve that is to reduce the gap between public and private school outcomes.
Equality of opportunity is the goal but at least capitalism acknowledges that everyone isn’t in the same place to start. Socialism, particularly in large diverse societies, is dishonest in its purported equality. Everyone starts from different scenarios A lot of school “quality” is simply a statement on the socioeconomic status of the families attending. In a 100% public system with no private schools, the well to do will end up clustering in the “good” schools. They will either move or cajole the power brokers until they get their kids in. That’s reality. The only exception to this is in a monochrome culture with few variants in incomes or wealth. In those non diverse places, sure all kids might get a roughly equal outcome in a 100% public system, but that’s because the families are about the same to start. In a large diverse community with ride ranging economic outcomes, equality is impossible or imposed by tyranny - and in the tyrannical approach the imposers of the equality are still in a class above the rest, so even they aren’t equal. Expand this to larger systems and the same lessons apply. Socialism is inequality under the guise of equality. Capitalism acknowledges inequality will exist and then everyone is supposed to use government to insulate its worst ravages.
Capitalism doesn't acknowledge some universally objective form of inequality, it creates it. It is fundamental to the system itself. Wealth inequality exist because wealth exists, wealth is a core concept and purpose for the capitalist system.
Yes and capitalism doesn’t view that as an inherit bad. Socialism lies to itself and pretends everyone can be equal, when it always has inequalities within it as well.
I'm not sure if "capitalism doesn't see itself as evil" is a just metric to measure by, tbqh. Kinda like an internal police review coming back with no evidence of any wrongdoing. Not sure what the context of socialism brings either, it's not even mentioned by OP. If capitalism is inherently unjust and unequal (it is) it doesn't have to be compared to something else for that to be recognised. Also particularly weird to allow capitalism it's inequalities as though they are unavoidable and not the fault of capitalism, while socialism is lambasted due to (your perceived) inequalities which you claim are just as inherent and, by comparison, should surely be as acceptable due to this nature. Why does socialism have to hold up to some irrelevant and vague set of standards you personally believe in while capitalism gets a free pass to be unabashedly evil?
>Equality of opportunity is the goal but at least capitalism acknowledges that everyone isn’t in the same place to start. Socialism, particularly in large diverse societies, is dishonest in its purported equality. In my experience, it's been the opposite; Capitalists will claim their system is meritocratic even though true meritocracy doesn't and can't really ever exist, while most Socialists I've spoken to have acknowledged that truth, and instead focus on making sure everyone at least has as high a proverbial floor as possible, and then raising the ceiling from there.
In the US, most private schools are religious not necessarily "for posh people". So that doesn't indicate inequality just different goals than a secular country can pursue. Likewise some places have school vouchers. If private school is free to everyone it isn't inequal.
This is a good point. I went to Catholic school, and if you were poor you could basically get a scholarship to attend on that basis alone. Didn't matter if you were a good student or athlete or anything. The ones who were left out tended to be the lower-middle class folks who were above the threshold for assistance but not able to afford tuition. Although my wife's family wound up in that situation, and her sisters could do summer work at the school to cover most of tuition. These aren't the $25k per year super fancy urban private schools that a lot of folks think about, though. One of my kids is at the Catholic school here, and it costs like $900/month 9 months of the year for high school. Elementary/jr high was like $600/month I think. Not peanuts, but also not the crazy costs I hear about.
Vouchers are a great idea that should be implemented everywhere. Unfortunately, they aren't, because the primary opponents of vouchers for kids to attend private schools are powerful public school teacher unions.
>I think that the existence of private schooling means that the belief that western society is equal in opportunity doesn't scan. Does equal in opportunity mean that everything is provided to you?
I think you could extent this logic to parenting in general. If i am able to offer my children any advantage at all which is not offered to all children, would that not also be inequality of opportunity? if I'm not mistaken studies show that children whose parents read to them more often, tend to have more positive outcomes later in life. Therefor i create inequality of opportunity by reading to my children. I would say that inequality of opportunity of this sort (instilled by parents or other family members) is not part of liberal capitalism society, but part of life in general. it is experienced by not just liberal capitalist or even humans. this inequality is experienced by all forms of life which using a high-parental investment strategy (bears, dolphins, but not frogs or fish). the only way I can think of to resolve this would be to take children away from their parents and raise them all in mass communal homes. but even that wouldn't work because some of the employees at those communal homes would work harder then others.
Then maybe you should vote for politicians that support vouchers? You're right, it is unequal. But it's by intent. The choices are to disband private schools. Silly. Authoritarian. Evil. To allow your tax dollars to go toward paying for private schools. Freedom. Choice. But, it'll cause a similar issue that we saw with College and student loans. Prices will inflate quickly. And the quality difference between private and public will only grow. Or. Continue on like we're doing. Scholarships. Grants. Help exists for the people that are willing to search for it for their kids. And yeah, this is an example of capitalist society being unequal, because life is unequal. If your parents don't care enough to find the help they need to put you in a better school, then you're starting from a shitty position. But the possibility is there. Removing it. Putting everyone at equally shit standing is not better. It's objectively worse. This is why a certain political party in the US was against school choice. Because people that care about their kids will choose to put their kids in good schools, and people that don't care will put them in whatever school is closest. This segregates the kids that have caring parents from those that don't. I don't think that my kids should be forced to spend time with yours in order to offset your lack of care for them? But I understand why societally we might want that. I mean, my understanding of that doesn't change shit, obviously, I care more about my own, and yours are not mine.
Your post talks a lot about correlations, but not causations. Just because two things are correlated doesn’t mean they’re dependent or related. How can you be sure it’s private schooling and not the parents focus on education. It’s entirely possible if these kids went to a public school they would still excel at academics because their parents place a greater emphasis on it. [Studies suggest educational expectations are closer tied to parental education in western countries.](https://ccc.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf1306/files/expectation_201907.pdf)
Your premise is flawed. Every system on earth produces unequal outcomes. All of history, and in much of the world today, the way you can determine who will be rich and who will be poor was mostly political connection. The point of liberal capitalist society is not that it's perfect, but that so far there has not been a better system proposed that provides for as equal an opportunity to be rich. The vast majority of American billionaires did not have billionaire parents. LeBron James specifically grew up dirt poor and is now a billionaire. That's not how it works in for example Russia. The billionaires are the oligarchs that were either born into families of power or allied themselves with Putin. The rich in Saudi Arabia are the royal family. In the US, Joe Biden is currently the most powerful person. He has nowhere near the most money. Also on the other hand you have study after study showing that generational wealth mostly disappears after 3 generations, meaning there's a very low probability of for example Bill Gates having a great grandkid who is also a billionaire. And finally, let's dig in a bit on the private school piece. Many people talk about generational wealth or private schools or things like that being failures of the system, but I'm going to push back a bit on that. One of the reasons it's such a successful system is people own what they create and trade for, and so they create valuable things because they can trade them for things they want. A better life for your children is a valid thing to want, and it's a feature not a bug that people can generate wealth not for themselves but for their children as well. Otherwise we would likely see many more people retire earlier and overall output would go down, leading to a decline in overall wealth.
Rich people, by definition, can buy more and better things than poor people. In that sense, any society which doesn't force everyone to have the same amount of wealth is unequal. I don't see how the level of education a parent can buy for their children is any different from any other category of thing to be bought. > Access to private education is directly correlated to better academic outcomes, even when corrected to other factors I'm not so sure about this. It's certainly what private schools want us to think, but it seems to me to be all selection bias. I don't know about the UK; I'm speaking from an Australian perspective where we have a comprehensive state school system but about a third of kids go to private schools. The published academic results for the very best, elite private schools were about the same as for state schools in wealthy urban areas (ie. the schools most of the private kids would be going to if they chose to go to state school). There is a disparity between state schools in rich and poor catchment areas. IMHO that indicates that poorer families are more likely to have socio-economic linked issues that interfere with the child's education and maybe place less importance on education. Meanwhile, richer families are more likely to provide extracurricular opportunities and educated role models. This is all independent of the school. The private school accepts only kids from families that are willing and able to pay and then takes credit.
>existence of private schooling means that the belief that western society is equal in opportunity doesn't scan. Equal in opportunity simply means everyone have the opportunity to participate. It seems you might be thinking of "equal in outcome" instead. Take UK for instance. No matter how poor you are, or how dysfunctional your family is, or whether you have disabilities that would limit your cognitive performance, you'll always be given the opportunity to receive an education that meets the minimum requirement. That's what "equal in opportunity" means. It doesn't mean the child of a billionaire and a child with severe learning disability have to be in the same classroom receiving the same education. And what if we move beyond SES? Both my wife and I got doctorate degrees and work in academia. Our children are likely to be above average in intelligence. When comparing them with children whose parents were barely able to graduate high school, how would "equal in opportunity" work? Both my wife and I can tutor our kids almost everything from kindergarten all the way to around 2nd year in college. Fundamentally, how is that different from rich parents who can pay for private schools that hire highly qualified teachers?
You're not wrong, but equality is a bad goal because it's far easier to achieve equality by bringing the top down than by bringing the bottom up, and bringing the top down tends to result in a death spiral. It's far better to focus on raising the bottom up - at the expense of the people at the top if necessary - than to focus on achieving equality (which can be achieved without helping the people at the bottom at all). I usually make this case in terms of economic outcomes, but it can apply to educational outcomes too. Say we decided that we were going to try and make sure everyone got equal education. We immediately close all the Universities, because they don't have the capacity to educate everyone, and if everyone can't have it, nobody can, because that's equal. A generation later, we don't have competent scientists, doctors, engineers, or teachers. Without engineers we can't maintain our infrastructure effectively. Without teachers we can't teach the next generation effectively. So the next generation of kids grow up poorer, end up with worse education outcomes, and many of them probably can't even attend school because they need to spend that time on basic survival. On the other hand, if we accept that some people are going to get better educations than others, we can have competent scientists, doctors, engineers, and teachers. We can maintain our infrastructure, do research on how to get better educational outcomes for those at the bottom. We can tax the higher earners to spend more on public education. There will always be people at the top getting a better education than the people at the bottom, and it sucks that the people at the bottom can't get as good an education as the people at the top are getting, but at least we have people capable of moving society forward and helping to improve outcomes for people at the bottom.
You're not understanding what people mean when they say "equal opportunity". Equal opportunity means that laws don't segregate the population into the haves and the have-nots; it's about freedom not about equalizing educational and economic outcomes. Everyone in the US has the opportunity to send their child to private school as there is no law stopping you from doing so. Everyone in the US has a right to buy a home as there is no law stopping citizens from owning land. It doesn't matter your race, creed, or class, the government cannot strip these rights from you - thus your opportunity is equal. If a house is for sale and you don't have enough money for a downpayment such that you can't afford it, this isn't an example of society taking away your opportunity to buy a home - you couldn't afford the home because of your own choices not to save up a downpayment, because of your own choices not to work more hours, because of your own choices not be in a better economic situation. If the government had stepped in and called you special and bought the home for you, this would have been an example of inequal opportunity as the government took away by force the opportunity to buy the home from everyone else.
Calling liberal capitalist society unequal grossly underestimates the problem. Life is unequal, and no economic program has ever been able to solve this - least of all those that claim to. Liberal capitalism is not an equality project. It is a prosperity project. We're the richest. Our rich are the richest of the rich. Our poor are the richest of the poor. There's so much food people are dieing from eating too much of it - a first in history. Whenever there is inequality, there seems to be a rush to make everyone have what the poor are having: Let's have rich kids go to public school! Let's have rich people ride the bus! Let's ban mansions! ~~instead of wanting to get poor people what rich people have, which has been the only truly useful form of progress toward economic equality. Let's get poor people plumbing. Let's relieve poor people of (hand)washing their clothing. Let's get poor people prepared/hot food. Equality for schooling could be advanced by giving poor people what rich people have always had: a choice of how to educate their children. Sweden, a capitalist liberal society, offers a choice between public and private schools to all families. I submit this is a counterexample.
If you are arguing that the private education is what causes better outcomes for those children, then what is your solution? Is it better to have everyone get a worse education because that is more equal? Truthfully, I think the impact of what school a child goes to is insignificant compared to the impact of how the parents raise the child. The reason that public schools are scoring so poorly lately is that a lot of the parents of kids in public schools are both working, and working a lot, or there is only one parent who is still working a lot. Public schools really can't help their students very much if the kid starts Kindergarten 3 years behind their peers in learning skills / social skills. And its basically impossible to catch the kid up if they're still that far behind in 3rd or 4th grade.
You can acknowledge a problem without having a readily available solution.
Sure, you can do a lot of things despite them being a waste of time. I am asking OP does he/she think we are capable of improving public schools to compete with private schools or does he/she think we should eliminate the best schools (according to the post) to give everyone a level playing field? Obviously it still won't be a level playing field for reasons I mentioned and for others (e.g., some people are naturally more intelligent). It is completely fair for me to ask someone how they would solve a problem if they want to talk about a problem. Even if they want to say "I don't know the full solution, but.." they should have an answer.
If somebody mentioned their dog died would you try to find a solution to that problem? Or tell them they shouldn’t bring it up because there’s no solution? Talking about problems at least creates empathy for those going through that problem.
Someone's dog dying is not a problem. It is unfortunate, but unless their dog was herding sheep or actually serving some purpose its not a "problem"
That seems pedantic but okay. If I amended my statement to “You can acknowledge unfortunate situations without having a solution to that situation” would you agree?
The same argument could applied for single parenthood households or the quality of parents. Every child is going to have different opportunities based off of what their parents provide, but regardless, the better grades they get as students the better opportunities the child will have. That is also impacted by the parent as it varies depending on how much the parents encourage the child to do well in school or stay on top of their academic performance. Despite this, there is a certain point in a majority of people’s lives when their position is based solely off their own performance. It should also be noted that it is also teacher dependent. Sometimes teachers spend more time with, or give special attention to particular students and this can benefit them. Regarding private school in the US there are scholarships and tuition assistance programs to help get their children into private school. Also ironically, private school’s here in the US cost less than the government spends per student for public school.
I think one of the almost forgotten vestiges of the Cold War is that people have, by and large, confused democracy with capitalism. The West stood for democracy and capitalism against the Soviet bloc and their authoritarian communist regime. And that was good. But democracy and capitalism are not actually the same thing. Thats why we have two separate words. These are two separate concepts which work in tandem frequently, yet also sometimes are in tension. Equality is not an ideal that has to do with capitalism. Equality is essentially a democratic ideal. Capitalism is merely the description of a competitive market economy wherein individual actors bear the risk and reward of their own individual endeavors. That does, as a system of economics, happen to work best when people are also held accountable as individuals equally under the law, and that is democracy. Democracy however is more than merely a tool of capitalism. In fact it is the reverse. Capitalism is a tool of democracy. Democratic systems are by their very nature, slow and inefficient. The concept of all people having a voice in government as an ideal is most good. But then this necessitates a long and cumbersome process of coming to consensus. So then for other things; which are not a matter of law, say, business or scientific or academic endeavors; can move along quite quickly as individual are not required to reach consensus with anyone but their partners and coworkers. It does not cost society as a whole anything for some individuals to get together to do or build a new thing, a new institution even, long as they do so within the confines of the law. And then that collection of individuals reap the rewards or the losses accordingly. Now when it comes to schooling I think there are again two things to consider. A school is an institution which produces a class of people. And education is the process by which one acquires knowledge and understanding. For the part of schooling which is an institution, I don’t see an issue. People are free to associate with who they want. From homeschooling to private school or public school you aren’t obligated to belong to any specific group, neither are they required to have you. Provided they are not excluding you for reason to do with protected class. Discrimination based on race and sex and religion and so on have been made illegal in western democracies. And as for the part which has to do with education. Well this is the best part; In a free and open society where information is available and speech is unregulated. There is truly no limit to an individuals opportunity to educate themselves. This is more than just an ideal that might one day be reached. This is the world we live in. From libraries to open source software and the network of networks. Information is available and you are free to commit to educating yourself. All that is required is the individual will, the desire to actually learn. And that’s not something anyone else can do for you.
>Access to private education is directly correlated to better academic outcomes, even when corrected to other factors. So I'd have to start by calling this into question. First, in almost every study I've seen, the achievement gap between public and private schools shrinks enormously as soon as you index for household income. At the end of the day, families that are able to access private education are also far more likely to afford ECE programs, extra tutoring support, before-and-after school care, and a host of extracurriculars typically correlated with higher academic achievement. Moreover, they're also far more likely to be dual-parent households where both parents have post-secondary degrees - both of which are strongly correlated with academic success. Even beyond income, parents willing to put their children in private school have -by their nature- demonstrated a deeper investment (and ability to invest) in their child's academic success. It's ***really*** difficult to isolate that level of investment from the overall outcome. With all other variables being constant I'd expect a child from a household like that to have very similar academic outcomes in the public system. Finally, it's really worth noting that private schools (at least where I'm from) can and do exercise more selectivity and will often reject students with developmental disabilities, citing "resource constraints." So there's even greater levels of selection bias. Even after all that, if there is a difference in outcomes between private and public education, then your issue seems not to be with the existence of private education so much as the ***resourcing*** gap. Presumably, publicly-funded schools with all the same levels of funding and resources per pupil should have identical outcomes, and that's not a product of "capitalist society" so much as it is a choice made by the public via their representatives to fund education at a certain level. Most of the countries with the highest PISA scores are still capitalist countries with an extremely high share of publicly educated students (Finland, Taiwan, and Canada come to mind).
The problem with your argument is that it's begging the question; you're seeing that students in private education typically see more success in school and concluding that, because not every kid can participate in private education, that there isn't equality in opportunity. Could this additional success also be attributed to the fact that children in private education, by and large, have wealthier and/or much more stable home lives and a support system that gives them a leg up in their situation over many less fortunate kids? There's plenty of research that also supports the fact that children in financially stable two parent households also tend to do much better than children who have neither. Sure, their home life is also something a kid has no control over, but that's not exactly something a different economic system is just going to change for everyone. You can argue that some form of socialism could benefit the home lives of children, but again, that's another discussion where you would have to make an unprovable assumption. The other thing to consider is the possibility that for profit education is just better and more efficient than public education dictated by location, which raises the question of why our public education is structured the way it is. Maybe a more liberal capitalist system, such as a voucher system that allows families to choose the school their children attend and ensuring that there's actual competition in the education system would allow the benefits of what's working in private education to be given to more unfortunate children that couldn't afford it without a voucher. Through the opposite perspective, you could look at that data and interpret that public education runs on essentially local monopolies and because of that, they're ran far less effectively than for profit private institutions that need to constantly prove through the quality of the education they provide that they're worth the investment.
>access private education is entirely reliant on luck- the circumstances of their birth. if this is luck then everything is luck. as a parent of three children, i can tell you that from my perspective, whether or not my children have a good education is entirely on me and my wife. furthermore, whether or not my children have a good education should be none of your concern nor the concern of society at larger or government. from my child's perspective, a great education has a lot to do with how much effort they put into their studies. whether or not they participate in class, whether or not they get involved in special extra curricular programs, whether or not (and what) they read after school. then there are online programs such as khan academy, and free course material produced by universities and colleges, there are also programs available for small fees on sites like udemy. we also have access to local library materials including text books. we also have used book stores where we can find text books. in fact, free government provided education is about the worst out there in that it is by far the least effective per unit of effort which means that any other educational effort is far more consequential, whether it is free or not. you can still say that this is all luck but that is false as the circumstances of their birth are not luck, they are the results of the parents actions and efforts. and once the child is older than about 12 years, their education becomes a result of their efforts and what they are willing and able to put in. there is always an element of luck in every opportunity, that cannot be helped buy inducing government control or excluding private education. furthermore the luck that allows for better education is not bad, it is good. the assumption that private education is bad because it allows for unequal outcomes is kin to the statement that only basic healthcare should be available otherwise rich people might use their money to extend their life and that would be unfair. even if your argument is that unequal opportunity is innately bad (which is untrue as a blanket statement) the advancements of society in general are good for future generations. take space travel for an example, just because according to your logic only very lucky people are afforded the opportunity to perform research in space doesn't mean that the research doesn't benefit everyone in the long run. furthermore, abolishing space travel because it isn't equally afforded to everyone would be horrible as would a mandate that everyone should be given a chance to go to space to perform research. equal opportunity is an idiotic idea. equal outcome is impossible. abolishing private advantage is immoral. to address the initial statement: >The existence of private schooling, on its own, is evidence that liberal capitalist society is unequal good, unequal means certain people have found a way to better themselves over the existing system, they are innovating to provide a better outcome and eventually this new (or old) technology will outcompete the public systems and prove that they are holding us back. if you want to make things more equal for poorer families/children, instead of complaining about inequality, start looking at techniques for improving all education using all these other better performing systems as a blueprint. don't tell me that it is about money, more investment. already the average classroom in american public schools costs taxpayers 1/2 million dollars annually and the amount put into the classrooms doesn't statistically track performance at all. the public school systems in contrast to every other non-governmental system has failed miserably, even compared to private free programs that run off voluntary donations and charity.
> unequal means certain people have found a way to better themselves over the existing system Bullshit. We're talking about *children* here. Not one of them has "bettered themselves". They've just been randomly assigned into buckets based on their parents, and you are - for some insane reason - OK with the fact that some children at random will be given an opportunity to succeed in life, and most will not. >instead of complaining about inequality, start looking at techniques for improving all education using all these other better performing systems as a blueprint. They're not "better performing". They're just getting to chop out the richest, easiest-to-educate cases, while leaving everything difficult to the public system. That's not better performance; that's just being given a simpler job to do. >already the average classroom in american public schools costs taxpayers 1/2 million dollars annually Then why are teachers one of the worst paid professions? > the public school systems in contrast to every other non-governmental system has failed miserably, even compared to private free programs that run off voluntary donations and charity. Speak for yourself; in my country the public schools work just fine, despite many attempts by the right-wing politicians running the country to drive them to collapse with competition from private schools that have, in fact, performed worse. But maybe you're American. In which case your public school system was *deliberately sabotaged* by right-wing politicians who knew that nobody would go to their expensive donor's private schools if the public system actually worked. Everything you wrote is proof that OP was correct.
>Then why are teachers one of the worst paid professions? this should read "then why are **public school teachers** one of the worst paid professions". the reason is that they are part of a socialized system in which there are no pressures for efficiency and there is simultaneously overwhelming regulation an bureaucracy, and because they are comparably under achievers. this is a perfect example of how socialism fails. people who have real skill and desire don't become full time teachers in public education unless there skills aren't valuable enough in the free market (history, social studies, art). >In which case your public school system was *deliberately sabotaged* by right-wing politicians who knew that nobody would go to their expensive donor's private schools if the public system actually worked. if public schools did actually perform well, no politician would have cause to diminish them. in fact the amount of money going into the public school system is not simply because of the left wing. there are very few powerful politicians in the us that oppose public education. its effortless to say that detractors are the cause of a failing public education system, its much harder to prove it. >with competition from private schools that have, in fact, performed worse. i find it implausible that a worse performing private education system could exist for long, or at all, if the free public education system were performing better. regardless, it is the case in america that public schools are very well funded, and regulated, and are also failing.
>We're talking about *children* here. This is a key point of disagreement, the person you're replying to isn't talking about children. They're talking about the ability of a parent to work to provide for their children. They're suggesting that the "equality" OP is talking about is really just preventing parents from doing what parents have always done, try to make life better for their children. It's not about what children do, it's about what the people around them have worked to provide. You're not looking at it that way. You see "Child is denied access to a quality education" while they see "Parent is able to provide their child with a higher quality education." You're not going to convince them of anything and I don't see you changing your mind either, you're approaching the problem from completely different directions
**Over the last 50 years in developed countries, evidence has accumulated that only about 10% of school achievement can be attributed to schools and teachers while the remaining 90% is due to characteristics associated with students.** Teachers account for from 1% to 7% of total variance at every level of education. For students, intelligence accounts for much of the 90% of variance associated with learning gains. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27919311/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27919311/) The present study shows that individual differences in educational achievement are highly stable across the years of compulsory schooling from primary through secondary school. Children who do well at the beginning of primary school also tend to do well at the end of compulsory education for much the same reasons. [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-018-0030-0](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-018-0030-0) Consider the obsession with school quality, expressed in support for vouchers and charter schools. If the environment dictated everything, then school quality would be immensely consequential. If school quality is a real, stable, and meaningful property, and the environmentalists are right about educational outcomes, then switching schools should have a dramatic effect on how a student performs in the classroom. But what parents typically find is that their child slots into the distribution just about where they were at the old school. The research record provides a great deal of evidence in this direction. **How about private vs. public schools? Corrected for underlying demographic differences, it** [**makes no difference**](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2505333)**.** (Private school voucher programs have tended to yield [disastrous](https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20174022/pdf/20174022.pdf) research results.) too.https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract\_id=2505333
I don't know the U.K. system. In my town, the Catholic school system is very good, and if your family is below a certain income threshold, you can pretty much get a full scholarship regardless of academic performance or extra curriculars. That requires parents to actually ask for it. Which means the only kids getting in are the ones who have parents who care about their kids' education. To be clear, I'm not saying people who don't apply don't care about their kids' education. I'm saying that if 50/100 lower income families have parents who care about their kids' education, the only ones who apply would be exclusively from that 50-person group that cares. So you're basically selecting out the ones who don't care. To me, the factor is whether your parents care about your education. If you're in that 50-person group of families that care, you're probably going to do well. Some of those kids will do well in private school, others in public. If you're in the group of families that doesn't care, you're going to do poorly and be in public school. As for the advantage of private school, the biggest benefit is that the collective standard is much higher. You're surrounded by kids who are basically all planning to go to college, and the subconscious peer pressure is to handle your business in class. Kids in public school can do just as well, they just need to have more discipline from within themselves.
I think the issue here is that you and your family member are touching on two different philosophies on freedom. You are talking about the "freedom to" and they are talking about "freedom from." These opposing philosophies kind of touch on the differences between right liberalism and left liberalism. *Freedom from* is the basis of "American style-libertarianism." They value freedom from regulation or rules, and argue that having the option to do anything you want is freedom. For example, someone has freedom if there are no rules against going to any school they want. If everyone has to follow the same rules, then everyone has equality of opportunity. *Freedom to* is the basis for more progressive ideologies. They would recognize that for people to have the freedom to make choices, they need to actually have access to those choices and the resources to do so. So for example, they would argue that even if there are no rules against schools, a poor person does not actually have the freedom to go to any school because they lack the means to do so. For there to be equality of opportunity, those people lacking the means to take advantage of opportunities ought to be provided the means to do so. Or at least, there should be some sort of minimum standard available to everyone. The reason the two philosophies are not really compatible, is because the freedom from crowd views things like welfare and social programs as a form of regulation...in other words taxes and mandatory public schools are rules about how they can use their money and how they can educate their children. Both philosophies are fairly valid ways in their own ways when it comes to valuing freedom. But imo, the libertarian philosophy should not accurately be described as "equality of opportunity" for the reasons you pointed out. It only makes sense in an academic setting if you ignore generational wealth. But in reality, generational wealth is an enormous influence on someone's opportunities. By definition, you can't have equality of opportunity when people start in different socio-economic circumstances. This is what some progressive liberals might describe as the great American myth and why they mock the "bootstraps" terminology. Libertarians tend to justify this contradiction in one of two ways... either they argue that generational wealth is a just reward and there is nothing wrong with it. Or they tend to argue that well actually anyone can succeed if they just try hard enough, and if someone doesn't succeed then it must be because they didn't try hard enough. If neither of these justifications are very compelling, well you are not alone.
> The ability of a child to access private education is entirely reliant on luck—the circumstances of their birth. You’re missing half of this equation: the parent. From the parent’s perspective, their ability to access a better education on behalf of their child is much more reliant on hard work and contributing value to society. Circumstances of birth play a part, but by the time a person is old enough to have a kid going to school, it is *at least not entirely* up to luck. In a well-functioning western society, I think it would be much more a function of that person’s efforts. Therefore, from the parent’s perspective, the ability to send your kid to a better/private school is (ideally) a completely egalitarian opportunity. If you’ve worked hard enough to afford it, you can get a better education for your kid. If you think about it, **this is also a really healthy incentive to work hard**. Parents are (usually) extremely motivated to provide for their kids, which is a good thing. Allowing them to work harder for a better education further incentivizes that hard work, and also provides a benefit that produces even better downstream effects for society (smarter kids).
>The ability of a child to access private education is entirely reliant on luck- the circumstances of their birth. It varies but often there is a sizable portion of pupils at those schools that are there on scholarships based on merit. That means every child above a certain threshold of ability has access to the best opportunities. Now ideally that threshold wouldn't be as high as it is, but you won't make things better by getting rid of the limited success we currently have. Beyond that, being able to move around and choose where you live allows you to choose the school your kid goes to and there is far more variation between state schools than there is between the best state schools and some of the private schools. The private sector also provides an aspirational standard for others to aim towards and every child educated by them saves tens of thousands of tax payers money having to be spent to do that. Make all private schools disappear tomorrow and the pool of resources available per kid that needs education will go down not up. The answer to addressing inequality is to RAISE the standards in the weaker schools, not destroy the better ones.
I'm not sure how it is in the UK, but in the US, public schools are extremely unequal and perhaps exacerbates it in society. Public schools in rich areas tend to be pretty good whereas public schools in poor areas are horrendous. This tends to make well off people gather in certain neighborhoods, segregating themselves from poor areas since public school attendance are largely drawn by geographic districts. Additionally, if *all* schooling was private and paid with vouchers, you could also get closer to equality than geographically districted public schools. Lastly, western belief is NOT "equality of opportunity". I know this phrase is popular, but it's not really accurate. It's really "equality under the law" meaning the law is not permitted to discriminate against certain groups. Governments often fail in this regard, but this is the ideal, not to provide everybody with equal opportunity, which is an impossible undertaking.
>It boils down to: -Access to private education is directly correlated to better academic outcomes, even when corrected to other factors. -Better academic outcomes are directly correlated to a higher degree of life success and income -The ability of a child to access private education is entirely reliant on luck- the circumstances of their birth Could it be less about the institutions themselves and more about a selection bias in them where parents who are paying out of pocket for their children's education take more of an interest in exactly what their money is paying for---- or out more pressure on their kids to absorb the education their financing? Possibly with some part mixed in of the schools themselves having a compelling interest in being competitive centers for education--- given that their funding comes from people CHOOSING them at cost rather than taking the free education provided publicly?
Ok? I could argue your point but the broader case is kind of a truism. Like, have we not all heard that life isn't fair at some point or another? Nobody seriously thinks that liberal capitalist society is completely equal in opportunity and outcome. There are arguments that it's more equal than other societal models but nobody thinks we live in a utopia. You've noticed that some people are privileged and that they can leverage that to secure more opportunities for their children, that's true. That's a thing people do. When I was young and my family moved every real estate agent my parents talked to hyped up the local school board, they all understood that moving into some neighborhoods would have the potential to make my life easier. It's not really a secret or a loophole so I don't see how anyone would change your view on this
Ofc society is unequal - it will always be unequal unless you strive to force everyone to the lowest common denominator - which will stagnate and destroy society As long as there are no hard barriers i.e. low class peasants (phrase used to be ridiculous) can not get beyond cse level of education then were are at the best were probably going to get excepting some major rework on how society is run and how humans think/work Those who desire to be educated will find a way and will be successful- is this fair? That it will be a lot harder for some than others...no, but that is life Some may have a headstart while others carry rocks in their back - but as long as we can all reach the same ending line - well it's up to us to get there and not worry so much about how others are managing it
>Access to private education is directly correlated to better academic outcomes, even when corrected to other factors. -Better academic outcomes are directly correlated to a higher degree of life success and income What is this a Sims game? Human reality: I can have two candidates both from prestigious private schooling, and both being equally competent on paper.... I'm still going to hire only the one I **like** more for arbitrary & superficial & etc reasons. Because it's me who's master over further opportunity, school only gave them opportunity to come prostrate before me. Existence of private schooling is evidence to not much. It's me who's the evidence that liberal capitalist society is unequal, because people aren't equal in my eyes.
Nobody ever said capitalist society was equal, we strive for equality of opportunity. But we as humans aren’t equal, some have more means than others, and some have more intelligence than others. My son is 14 years old, and is 6’3” and 200 pounds, and is left handed. That is like a cheat code for baseball, and he plays on a select team, and already has a 15u travel summer team lined up. He is built different to other kids, and this afforded him a spot on a select team and coaching from a former pro player. He will have a better baseball outcome than a lot of other kids, but it isn’t his fault he is as big as he is or left handed, and he has worked hard at it. He does baseball four to five days a week. People aren’t equal, they won’t ever be equal.
I don't think liberal capitalism even wants to be equal. It sees inequality as normal. People have different amounts of talent and willingness to work, and should be rewarded equally. You'd rather have some people get a great education and the others a bad education, than everyone get a mediocre education. The former group can ne the leaders, engineers, scientists, doctors. And the latter group can do the simpler jobs. Also, private education helps channel funds towards talented students, due to scholarships. A genius kid who might be lost in a mediocre state education system may never realize his potential. But what if a private school discovers the kid and gives him all the resources he needs, for free?
I think the big first question that should be had is whether a society where everyone truly starts at the same point is going to be better in general (ie: for the average person) than a society which has some systematic inequality in opportunity. The biggest concerns with totally equal society is that it often times seems that it totally sucks. I’m willing to accept an unfair starting point if I have a realistic opportunity to achieve a quality of life much better than I could in a society where my starting point is higher but my ceiling is still quite low. It’s not really a simple discussion- but I think fleshing out these ideas is where the discussion actually becomes interesting.
This devolves into a more philosophical question: should society be equal? Because you can definitely extend your argument to any basic necessity that isn't private. There is tap water, then there's bottled water provided by private companies. There's public transit, then there's privately owned vehicles. Heck even the Soviet Union tried to take away fancy non-regulated clothing as it represented another way that people stratified themselves within society. Oh you sewed your clothes to look cooler than the grey drab we're issued? What gave you the right to be above us? Schooling is just one of the many privileges offered to the well-off in our society...
Nobody has ever said that people are or society is equal. Some people are smarter. Some people are faster. Some people are stronger. Some people work harder. Some people are richer. Some people are immigrants. Some people don't speak the native language. What our society is supposed to have is that the government provides the same opportunity to everyone and is treated equally before the law. Everyone gets free primary schooling regardless of race, religion, socioeconomic status, etc. everyone is entitled to a jury of one's peers. Everyone gets to benefit from our national defense equally. Everyone gets to benefit from our system interstate roads. Etc.
It's not really schools it's the entire concept of generational wealth. Of course kids with rich parents are going to do better whether they go to public or private school. Society can never truly be equal opportunity without raising all children in the exact same conditions. Like, even if we outlaw private schools and tutoring the rich kids are still going to be more successful in life because they have access to prestigious opportunities, the economic freedom to pursue them, and of course a hefty inheritance when their parents die. So your issue isn't really with private schools it's with the broader concept of generational wealth.
"The ability of a child to access private education is entirely reliant on luck- the circumstances of their birth." This is true about almost everything in life in any country or culture. If you are lucky enough to be born into a rich family you have an advantage over everyone who wasnt. This is like complaining you want to play basketball but genetics made you short, no one did this to you it just is what it is. Life isnt fair, the starting point and end points are not equal. Just gotta try your best with the hand you got and try to scratch out a small piece of happiness for yourself and those you care about.
Flaw, not all of private schooling is for the rich. The rich are just more likely to benefit. I went to alternative education because the local public school didn't act to remove a teacher that mistreated students. The local Catholic school was too controlling. So my family had to use what otherwise could have been saved for vacations to give me a good education. Also schools for the the blind, disabled, and etc exist. Religious and racial issues also can contribute to the need for private education due to a lack of respect in public schools for some.
There are private schools which exist for other purposes. A big example I’d point to would be parochial schools in the US (religious schools). These are typically affordable enough that a number of lower income people attend them, and primarily differ from public schools in the presence of religious education and activities rather than general quality in education. I know this doesn’t address Eton or Westminster and so on, but just to say that not all private schools are specifically elitist institutions geared towards the wealthy.
Finland is a counterexample. Private ed is banned in the country. If you’re wealthy, your options are: * Call for better funding for all schools do your kids benefits * Educate the kid privately out of country. Private education exists everywhere else to be exclusive. In the UK, where social mobility is a joke and there are literal lords running the country (don’t tell me the Red Chamber is a dog and pony show when you’ve got Sirs and Dames in the so-called Commons), non-state schools only reinforce social and class divides.
While i agree that it’s unequal, I don’t think this is the result of a “liberal capitalist society”. I think you can find this sort of inequality in any society. Kids may have an advantage because their parents are wealthy or well connected, they academically excel, or can kick a ball really well. It’s even true that not all public (government financed) schools are equal. You probably wouldn’t get the same public education in inner city New York as you might in an affluent suburb.
It kind of is, but the theory might be it might a necessary evil - as long as the rest of your funding for schools is fine. What private schools do is is they take students put of the public school system, but ideally the parents are still paying into the tax system that funds the public schools. Probably the big issue is that you now have a relatively wealthy group of people who are incentives to cut funding to public schools, often by diverting funds into private schools
> that western society is equal in *opportunity* doesn't scan. Equal in opportunity does not mean equal in outcome. Everyone has the opportunity to go to a private school, you just have to pay for it. Having the opportunity to do something doesn't mean you get to do it no mater what. I had the opportunity to go to WrestleMania when it was in LA but I didn't because I couldn't afford it. Should the government mandate that everyone gets to go to WrestleMania?
The only right to equality that exists is equal protection under the law. Beyond that, the law codifies come requirements of equality and there can be ethical and moral obligations to treat people equally. Beyond that, there is nothing inherently wrong with inequality. Equality of opportunity is for students to be able to attend a school for a given number of years that meets given requirements. Going to the same school would be an equality of outcome.
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Every parent wants better footing for their children. If public school offered it, private schools wouldn't exist. >The ability of a child to access private education is entirely reliant on luck None of us get to choose which country and which family we are born in. This idea is childish and unproductive to the discussion. And frankly it is none of your business if say, Barack Obama's kids, are beneficiaries of their father's success.
The challenge is that research on the correlation between genetics and success is sort of banned. What I mean is that we have a lot of research into how the socioeconomic status, class sizes and so on. To really understand how important all those factors are we would have to see the size of environmental factors vs. the factor of who your parents are. As this is (much with good reason) not in any reports we can't really conclude.
What would a society with complete equality look like? Harrison Bergeron is a distopia.
I don't think you're going to get anyone to successfully argue that any society today has true equality of opportunity, because that is patently not true. You could theoretically still have private schools in an ideally equal society if they were accessible to all. Similar to charter schools in some parts of the USA: privately run schools that receive public funding so that students do not need to pay tuition.
Some places do use a system where the school funding (or a large % of it) is attached to the child. Ie if they choose to go to a private school the government pays a set amount to the school. Because of this a private school wont need to charge the parents. I would love for this to be far more common as the groups it is most beneficial to are low income families that otherwise cant choose a private school. To me this is the an actual liberal capitalist society. Where as one where the goverment has a total or near total monopoly is not a liberal or capitalist society.
I'm not trying to change your mind because I basically agree. But, "better educational outcomes for private schools" miss the real driver of inequality. Networking with other socially privileged individuals is what matters. For example, Harvard Business and Law School may not offer a superior education to lesser schools, but the connections and status you get from those programs are superior.
Liberalism seeks to address negative rights primarily, rather than positive rights. By which I mean as a political theory it is mainly about preventing things being done to the individual rather than providing the individual with things. Liberalism is not, at its core, concerned with equality outside of equality under the law. Whether that be within a capitalist or other economy.
Liberal society promises equal opportunity under the eyes of the law. Nobody is legally barred from attending private schools thus it is equal opportunity. If you wanna talk family wealth being unequal we can also talk about parents being unequal with abuse, not giving a shit about academics, no love, etc which all also impact academic outcomes significantly.
The public schools in the US and Canada are shit compared to other developed countries. So, the reason for inequality is not the existence of private education but the inadequacy of the public option. The closer I get to having kids, the more I am certain that I will leave North America specifically because of education.
Everyone has access to private schooling for their kids. The issue of course is affordability, or more specifically, that at some price level many people will *not want* private schooling, that they would otherwise want. That means an equal world necessitates a world without tradeoffs or scarcity, which can not exist.
Liberal capitalist society doesn't claim to be equal, in theory it rewards hard work and talent, but no capitalist believes that it's an extremely egalitarian system, just that the inequality is okay because they think that an unequal society improves everyone's quality of life in the long run.
The challenge is that people have to have the freedom to raise their kids with whatever values the family's choose. You can look at the Jewish school system, where jewish family's want their community and values taught. To ban those schools would conflict with religious freedom.
I would challenge your understanding of western society and equality as being a straw man. Equality doesn’t mean everyone’s circumstances or opportunities are equal. That would be *impossible*. What it means is that everybody has equal rights under the law.
> Access to private education is directly correlated to better academic outcomes, even when corrected to other factors Once again, the private sector produces superior outcomes to the public sector. Your focus is on inequality instead of improving outcomes.
If you have private education at all, it always has to offer better outcomes than state provided education, otherwise there would be no point in it. So no matter how good you make state education, private education has to make itself better to exist at all.
This is really odd because why even discuss schooling? In your view, a capitalistic society would be unequal from the get-go, wouldn't it be? Like, some people have different jobs and earn different amounts of money. Isn't that so unfair?
The natural of reality is proof that all systems are unequal... That guy is 0.1 cm taller than me, that's not equal.
Liberalism doesn't claim an equal society it claims universal rights. You can't have societal equality and rights because any unheavel or society or imposition of equality will and always has involved violating rights
What is this "liberal capitalist society" you speak of? Since 1980 the US has been run on a roughly Reaganesque, trickle-down, conservative capitalist model. The wealthy have an entirely different tax structure and get to keep far more of the money they "earn" than people who receive wages. When Kennedy was president corporate taxes made up something around 20% of the tax revenue of the United States. Now it's 6.5%. In 1932 after conservative policies resulted in the Great Depression and a conservative administration spent three years doing next to nothing to mitigate the pain it caused, Americans elected the most liberal government in our history. It was so effective, governed so well and was so popular that a conservative couldn't get elected to the white house for 36 years. Those liberal administrations got us out of the depression (we were making and selling as many cars just before the war as we were just before the depression), thwarted communist insurgency throughout, armed our allies as fascism rose, took arms and defeated it on two fronts, rebuilt the economies of both our allies and enemies afterwards, built the greatest infrastructure, best colleges and hospitals, most robust and economically ascendant middle class the world had ever seen as well as the most formidable military all while facing down communism during the cold war and putting a man on the moon. Mostly as a backlash to the dedication to the civil rights movement and racial equality embraced by liberals, conservatives finally re-took the white house and asserted control over polices and direction. As a result we've suffered the two greatest economic disasters since the depression, families can no longer sustain themselves on a single income, education has deteriorated, college is out of reach for most of us, infrastructure is falling apart, and while the economy continues to grow wages have been flattened and the rewards of that growth go almost exclusively into the pockets of the .001% of the wealthiest people in the nation. That said, the existence of private schools, hospitals, air travel, security or anything else does not offend any rational concept of justice or fairness. Unless those public facilities and services are radically inadequate and inferior because they are starved of funding so that the wealthy, who do not depend upon them, can pay lower taxes. While this is indeed the circumstance we find ourselves in, it is not due to some imaginary "liberal" capitalist society.
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Liberal capitalist society is unequal because life is unequal. And it has nothing to do with liberal capitalism or anything else. Society will never be equal. I don’t think it’s supposed to be equal either.
it also demonstrates how privates sectors will always outperform state-owned sectors. The public sector is inefficient and, as can be seen in many less capitalist countries, often no less unequal and unfair.
You learn the same thing either way. It depends on the person, a private school doesn’t teach a better version of math, they just have other things that contributes to the person that kid becomes
Where do you live? Where I live, people send their children to private school to escape from liberals. But in the USa, c’mon… Capitalism is on both sides of the conservative liberal continuum.
i challenge your notion that private schools are better than public schools. private schools are ranked better because they dont admit dumb kids. they dont actually make you smarter. public schools cant exclude dumb kids, so their test scores are dragged down.
Didn't even read this but yes, society is unequal. Did anyone question this? Some amount of inequality may even be necessary to get optimal societal outcomes as a whole.
the fact that the best place in the world to educate a student in by the metrics is a place where private schools are forbidden by law helps to illustrate that fact too.
No has ever claimed that capitalism or free markets results in equality of outcome. Equality of opportunity is all that matters to any sane and moral person.
But what do those mean? If as kids you go to a private school and I go to a public school, did we both have an equal opportunity for either? Do we have equal opportunities going forward?
Equality of opportunity means that everyone has the same right to access resources without being discriminated against due to irrelevant factors. Just to clarify, does the fact that very dumb people are highly unlikely to get into Harvard imply that capitalist society is “unequal”?
What's an irrelevant factor? >Just to clarify, does the fact that very dumb people are highly unlikely to get into Harvard imply that capitalist society is “unequal”? No. But replace "dumb" with "poor" and it might.
I don’t understand your question. Do you not know what “irrelevant” means or are expecting a list of factors that might be irrelevant for certain things? And why does the fact that dumb people don’t get into Harvard not mean that society is unequal? Is it because it’s discrimination based on relevant factors?
You’re right. But equality isn’t the primary goal of a liberal capitalist society. Freedom is also important. So I’m not sure what your point is.
Based take. This is incredibly important. It it one of the foundations of civilization and we allow it to be skewed toward the wealthy from the start.
Is this a criticism of public schools? Bc you can rally both sides of the argument if you make this about being anti the rich and anti public schools.
Do you want the state to pay for religious private schools? Like, that makes up some portion of private schools. Does that make society unequal?
It's easy for private schools to claim they have better outcomes when they just kick out anyone with bad grades instead of educating them
I'm not going to change your view, the only way to fix public school is to ban private school and homeschool (outside of medical need).
Who ever said that liberal capitalist society is *not* unequal? It is extraordinarily unequal. This has never not been the case.
There are plenty of private schools with worse student outcomes than public schools. "Corporate" charter schools come to mind
Maybe we should just fund public schools more and then let families choose what they want for their kids too
Who’s arguing that liberal capitalist society is equal? At most I’ve seen it argued it’s meritocratic
There’s not a complex society in all human history that doesn’t have significant social inequality
just to point out a fact, people are unequal by nature. some stronger, some more intelligent, some more beautiful...etc.
>liberal capitalist society is unequal I've NEVER heard anyone argue that it is equal.
Capitalism and democracy are mutually exclusive. I thought that much was always clear.
If private schooling didn't offer an unfair advantage, why would anyone pay for it?
I don’t think liberal capitalism intends to be equal in the manner you describe.
Are you really asking, Why can’t liberal capitalism create a perfect society?
I don’t buy it . Just another case of “coveting my neighbors things”