Emlyn said:
I>I think I'm proposing something different to James, which is that I think
>the public school system should probably be privatised, while government
>funding remains intact. But what we are both saying is that the decision to
>fund only a single style of school, "public schools", makes it very
>difficult for alternatives to exist, unless the target market of those
>alternatives are not sensitive to price (or in fact use the price as a
>status symbol).
It's easy. Education is a public good. I have no difficulty with public
funding for it. If we're all that worried about competition, okay, let's
make it competitive and set up a voucher system. In practice, public higher
education institutions are operating in an environment damn close to this
already.
That said, my observation is that private schools are good at spoonfeeding
kids for exams but don't necessarily teach them the important skills of how
to teach themselves. Once they get to university, the brighter public school
kids cream 'em.
Russell
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:12 MDT