Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!caip!im4u!ut-sally!pyramid!voder!kontron!cramer
From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.sci
Subject: Re: privatization of education
Message-ID: <925@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Jul-86 18:58:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.925
Posted: Thu Jul 17 18:58:14 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 18-Jul-86 05:56:13 EDT
References: <3719@decwrl.DEC.COM> <136@cci632.UUCP>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Mt. View, CA
Lines: 59

> I have real problems dealing with the idea of privatization of education.  Let
> me explain my reasoning.  
> 
> 	In any area there are good students and bad students.  This should be
> self-evident.  The good students will do well [almost] anywhere, the bad ones
> will require a lot of special help to do "well."  Educators are still trying to
> find out what separates the two groups, but they have shown strong correlations
> with a students "intelligence" (*not* I.Q.), parents' attitude toward schooling,
> and parents' educational level.  (which is why BHS is so good -- it draws the
> college professors' kids.)  
> 	In other words, at least one of the reasons that private students do
> so well is the attitude of their parents.  A parent who is willing to pay the
> additional cost over and above property taxes probably has a good attitude about
> school.  A parent who is *able* to pay is probably wealthy[-ier] and therefore
> pays a disproportionate share of property taxes (which are the main income
> source for public schools.)  
> 	Now, by "privatizing" the school system, the children of parents who
> a) can't afford or b) don't want to pay for [expensive] private education can't
> are being punished, since the money is no longer there for the public schools.

False.  Private schooling is less expensive than public schooling.  It
appears that public schooling is cheaper because the money is collected
by taxation.  If public schooling were as cheap as private schooling,
only the very poorest of the poor would be unable to send their kids
to private schools.

> Yes, I admit, I'm talking about a subsidy.  I think education is a better reason
> to pay the government than ICBMs or welfare.  In an ideal universe, if everyone
> were well-enough educated, crime would drop to nil and unemployment would be
> minimal.   If you don't want to have to pay to educate other people, I don't
> want to pay to have the FBI protect your area.  There's a limit to how far we
> can take property rights aka. selfishness.

This is just plain nonsense.  *Real* unemployment is already near-nil.  A
lot of places are having problems hiring unskilled labor at rates above
minimum wage because of the enormous shortage of unskilled labor looking
for jobs.  (That's why we have to import Mexico's labor surplus to operate
restaurants in Southern California.)

The correlation with crime rates is just plain nonsense also.  Some people
are lazy, and refuse to seek regular employment.  Instead, they become
free-lance socialists, stealing anything that's not protected.

> 	One other argument about privatization.  Students also do "better" in
> a class/school where there are bright students.  If you skim off all the cream,
> so to speak, to the private schools, the schools will tend to become stratified
> (Everyone knows that A is a better school than B, which is better than C, which
> is better than P.S. 109), and everyone except the children in the best school
> will suffer for it.  The best teachers will tend to go to A rather than B, etc,
> so the weaker students will miss out on the teachers they really *need* to have.
> The best and the brightest will do well in any situation; it's the middle ground
> that need the help.
> 
>   seismo!umcp-cs \                      	Pat Juola

Yet you argue above that the poor are the ones who lose from private
education.  Now you say the "middle ground" needs the help.  Who are they?

Clayton E. Cramer