Why Deceit is Being Employed
Sunday, February 22, 2004
The state school system gets over $8000 of taxpayers money every year for each student. Other schools average only $4000+. The electioneering propaganda, put out by the teacher unions, to the effect that private schools get more, is brazen deceit. It shows contempt for the many electors who will actually fall for it.
Why does this matter? Because parents are being denied the right to choose who will educate their children. Today's unequal funding system forces non-state schools to charge fees, even though most spend less than state schools (the propagandists always harp on about the minority "posh" schools that actually spend more).
Families that can't afford fees are financially coerced into state-run schools. This system cannot be justified in a democracy. That's why deceit is being employed.
Who is behind this push? As far as I can make out there are four types. There are of course the state system operators who want to retain their empire. There's a tribe of useful simpletons who will barrack for anything with the word "equity" in it. There are state teachers who fear (illogically) that teacher jobs will be lost if all schooling is exposed to parent choice.
Then there's the group I understand least, a rump of "true believers" whose religion is that a government-run, centrally controlled empire is the true mother of our well-being. Something like that. This religion is clung to, despite the well-established fact that other education providers, exposed to competition, consistently deliver more.
I am not proposing the end of the state system. Merely that it becomes revitalised by being exposed to parent choice. Through equal funding - or funding based on student's family means, regardless of school chosen.
Philip O'Carroll