I was reading a newspaper article written by a British teacher whose
opinion is that private schools in the UK should be banned. When all the
wordy argumentation is distilled down to its very basics, it comes down
to be, basically, "it's unfair that some children are getting a better
education solely because their parents happen to be rich; this kind of
elitist snobbery is completely inappropriate to the modern world we are
living in".

  This got me thinking: *Why* shouldn't at least some children get a better
education, if their parents can afford it? What's so wrong with that?

  The complaint would make sense if *all* children could be given a much
higher level of education if the private vs. public schooling system was
dismantled and replaced with a public-schooling-only system. However, given
that children in private schools form a very small minority, and the reason
why they get a better education is because these private schools have better
funding (because the rich parents are funding them), banning the private
schools is not going to increase the funding of public schools in any
significant way. (In other words, even if the funding/student which now
goes to private schools was distributed among public schools, the overall
funding/student in public schools would not increase significantly.)

  So basically what this teacher wants is to deny a better education from
these children and force them to go to public schools which have lower
funding for the sole reason that it's more "fair", basically forcing *all*
children to the same lower level of education, insted of having at least
*some* of them in better schools.

  Given that a significant majority of children who go to private schools
end up going to Universities and becoming university-level professionals
(such as teachers, doctors, surgeons, etc.), deliberately dumbing down
their basic education just for the sake of "fairness" feels completely
counter-productive.

  Ok, it might not be "fair" that all children are not given the same
opportunities, but do you really want to lower the overall education level
of your entire country just in the name of "fairness"?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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