Patrick Elliott wrote:
> gregjohn wrote:
>> Not everything immoral needs to be illegal, and the difficulty in making
>> something illegal is no indication of its morality.  That is where I 
>> think
>> you're headed on the wrong track with this.
>>
>> Of course, "posh" parents putting their kids into private schools is 
>> indeed a
>> direct cause of public schools deteriorating.  It's not a matter of 
>> jealousy but
>> of direct consequences, negative externalities if you will.
>>
>> In my county, there's two school districts side by side. The kids from 
>> one high
>> school earn all kinds of accolades, the other one has a 46% dropout rate.
>> Whenever I meet a decent, involved family who happens to move into the 
>> bad
>> district, sho 'nuff they send their kids to the private school.
>>
> Sadly, in the US, schools are part of the culture war going on. There 
> are people on boards, like the one in Texas, that **admit** to having 
> gotten elected so they can destroy the public system. The only 
> "standards" are set by the same state boards, who are often unqualified, 
> and make choices about what and how things are taught that have 
> *nothing* to do with what works. This is in contract to private schools, 
> which take on of two tacks - The ones that care at all have the teachers 
> work out what needs to be taught, and hire from a pool that is *noted* 
> for doing well. The ones that are ideology driven use the old school 
> "Rote" learning system, which sidesteps the need to understand the 
> ideas, by satisfying the only thing that can be easily tested, "Whether 
> or not the can give the right answers, whether they understand why they 
> are right or not, even even, sometimes *if* they are right or not (in 
> the case of those things that fall into the 'stuff we want them to take 
> as truth' category)."
> 
> There is a strong rise in the US of institutions like Liberty 
> University, and "home schooling", the former of which will let you turn 
> in dissertations on biology, which contain nothing but whining about 
> god, gods creation, and the vast global conspiracy of Darwinists. The 
> later.. You can buy specialized "pro-creationist" texts for, which 
> teach, "How to answer the questions the way other schools and the 
> government want you to, without corrupting yourself with belief in those 
> things." Its the #1 best selling "home schooler" kit in the country, 
> last I heard. Which should tell you, right off, who is doing 90% of the 
> home schooling in the US. Their reason for it? Most of them buy the kits 
> because they are a) not close enough to, b) can't afford, or c) don't 
> trust the *type* of private school closest to them (FSM forbid a 
> Protestant land in a Catholic school, and actually have to learn 
> something, for example), to teach the *truth (tm)*.
> 
> Their torpedoing the public schools via *intentional* sabotage, neglect, 
> and defunding, even as most of the new "private" schools have been fundi 
> in nature recently, and most of the people sinking the public schools 
> don't even **have** kids in the program, since they are busy teaching 
> them, at home, how Jesus invented toothpaste.
> 
> To the original question... I think we need stricter guidelines as to 
> what sort of BS happens, and not based on more "multiple choice" tests 
> to assess what is being taught, no matter what country is involved. The 
> moment you make something private, it creates a gap between what is 
> "intended" and what is actually happening, from the perspective of 
> anyone believing it should be "universal". But, whether or not they need 
> to be banned is **hugely** dependent one which country you are talking 
> about, or even, as in the US, which *state* its in. In some places, the 
> only difference between the public and private schools are that the 
> public ones could *theoretically* be sued for the things being taught in 
> them, if you ever got a federal judge to look at it, since the local 
> ones don't think there is a single thing wrong, and support what is 
> being taught in them. Its that bad, in some places.
> 
Wow.
I'd forgotten about this side of the question.  Good points you make!
And an interesting case demonstrating regional differences approaching 
this question.

Here in New York, where a huge public school system coexists with an 
extensive network of private schools, it is much, much more about class, 
ability, and race, and hardly at all about ideology affecting curriculum.

The private schools, especially on the HS level, are able to
be exclusive both in the sphere of money, and in the sphere of academic 
ability. What is not so clear to me is to what extent racial exclusion 
is masked by these criteria.  Common cynicism would lead me to expect 
that it is to a great extent but I just do not know.  But I am quite 
sure that ideology is off the table.  The other point I want to stress 
again is that it is not only money.  Students for elite private schools 
must compete in standardized aptitude tests, just as they do to get into 
elite public schools.

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