Private Schools, Equality, and Liberty

Swift writes:

“Like it or not, much of the value of education is competitive – what matters is not how good yours is absolutely, but how good it is relative to other people’s. ”

Much of the value of education flows beyond the student. The patient cared for by a better educated doctor, or who takes the medicine developed by the better educated chemist, benefits from the _absolute_ quality of the provider’s education. At the other end of the spectrum, the customer who gets correct change from the cash-register-operator at the local burger join benefits from that worker’s _absolute_ command of basic arithmetic, while the competitive best from a bunch of arithmetically incompetent graduates would afford that customer little benefit at all, (unless he received TOO MUCH change — there’s a Buck Henry/Steve Martin skit about that, I believe…)

“Add in the idea that operating alongside an elite private system depresses the absolute quality of state education”

Why? This is as odd as having the burger boy “Add in” the price of the french fries to the amount of cash tendered before making his change. (Lame joke/analogy, sorry)

There is a growing body of economic literature which indicates that allowing parental selection from among several neighboring schools spurs competition among those schools, to the improvement of all. This is true where students “shop” among several public (state supported) schools, and true again where state schools compete against several church-run or private schools.

I hesitate to reply to an argument not explicitly made, for fear of raising a “straw man”. But some commentors suggest that private schools “skim the cream” of good _students_ from state schools, increasing the proportion of stupid, lazy, ill-disciplined, or crazy students left behind. Stipulating, nonce, that dynamic, the quality of the education consumers (students) says nothing about the quality of the educational product (curriculum, teacher experience, lab resources)
purveyed. The absolute quality of a state-purchased textbook, say, is the same; regardless of another class using that text or another in a private classroom off-site.

” and it should be clear that abolition would not be about cutting down the tall poppies. It would lower the ceiling in order to raise the floor.”

Squishing the students in the middle, I suppose …

*sigh*. Is “Swift” a nom de plume, perhaps, referring to the author of “A Modest Proposal”?
If so, I wish he were funnier, and MORE outrageous. The temptation to take him at his word and detail the length and breadth of his errors is compelling.

I’m not sure Pouncer is entirely fair to Swift though I agree with some of what he says.

I agree that the value of education is not entirely relative, which is an important mistake in Swift’s argument. The following criticism I think is wrong, however. Elite private systems do depress the quality of state systems for several reasons. The wealthiest 10% would undoubtedly care more about the state system if they actually had to use it. More importantly, the influence of those children who can go to private schools on the others would be beneficial. They have often had more opportunities and involved upbringings and their influence on the rest would be welcome.

If anyone doubts the benefits of having only state schools they should just check out the schools in Scandinavia and Finland imparticularly. Finland does consistently better than the UK and US in international comparisons and it’s nothing to do with funding. If my wife is to be believed, the “cool crowd” at Finnish schools is the crowd who are interested and successful in their studies. In contrast, at most UK schools they are the ones considered square and uncool. I would guess this goes a long way to explaining the difference.

I live in Georgia, where the schools are generally poor. Despite our middle class income, my wife and I scrimp and save to send our children to a very expensive private school, which is considered one of the best in the country. My car has 150,000 miles on it and there are no plans for replacement anytime soon.

My second grade son is in a class of twelve wonderful children under the guidance of two teachers.

Although I did debate ‘abandoning’ the public schools, I have made the simple decision that my children are entitled to the very best education I can afford to provide for them. All the rest is really just far off noise, if you want to know the truth, and it’s not about ‘competitiveness’, at least not for me, but more about helping them gain a coherant picture of the world. I believe that a good basis in humanities and science will enrich their lives and improve the quality of their happiness as they grow.

One social benefit the school provides is that it does serve as a place for innovation. Several of the teachers, for example, have advocated changing to a different spelling curriculum, and they have been permitted to carry out a three year project to implement the change in their classrooms and track the results.

See, I try to rationalize the social benefit for what is, in fact, a very priviledged environment dedicated to the perpetuation of class advantage. I wish the school had greater emphasis on serving the community.

Mostly I wish the public schools were like my childrens’ private school, but society would then, I imagine, need to be prepared to do many things, among which is to spend $15,000 per student, but society refuses, and so I refuse to sacrifice the education of my children out of a misplaced communitarian idealism that says that the poor product offered up in the public schools is good enough for my children because it’s ‘public’. There are other ways I can help my community that doesn’t involve sacrificing the well-being of my children.

Actually, could someone please briefly blog about the political tendencies of British newspapers? I know about the Telegraph and the Guardian. How about the London Times, the Independent, etc., and the same with the major Canadian and Australian papers? I have had this question on my mind for a long time, and now that I read something about it in your blog, I’m hoping somebody can clear it up… Thanks!

JJ

Will this do, JJ?

Jim Hacker:
Don’t tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers:
– The Daily Mirror is read by people who think
they run the country;
– The Guardian is read by people who think they
ought to run the country;
– The Times is read by people who actually do run
the country;
– The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the
people who run the country;
– The Financial Times is read by people who own
the country;
– The Morning Star is read by people who think
the country ought to be run by another country;
– And the Daily Telegraph is read by people who
think it is.

Sir Humphrey:
Prime Minister, what about the people who read the Sun?

Bernard Woolley:
Sun readers don’t care who runs the country, as long as she’s got big tits.

From “Yes, Prime Minister” (1987)

Some hilarious responses there!

It is worth pointing out that many of the arguments about balancing different values (such as legitimate parental concen v justice) and the absolute good of education v the positional aspects are dealt with carefully and at length in the book. Those who shoot from the hip on the basis of reading a few hundred words from part of an exchange are bound to get what Swift says wrong.

Having said that, I was a little worried by what Swift said re the pluralist objection, viz

bq. Several of you see my urge to get rid of private schools as worryingly Stalinist. Talk about “private education” misses the point. What is really valuable about the schools in question is that they are independent – of state control. I have a good deal of sympathy with this idea. States can indeed be totalitarian, oppressive and dangerously single-minded. I just don’t believe that our state is, or would be, like that.

Really? Totalitarianism maybe difficult to imagine in the British context, but some pretty authoritarian meddling has been the norm (aspects of the national curriculum, Clause 28). Diversity of provision and genuine choice can surely be married to free access if we are creative enough about the mechanisms.

I’ll plead guilty to shooting from the hip, but Swift provided an inviting target.

Maybe the long form doesn’t seem so dunce-a-riffic, but he certainly gives the impression of:

a) regarding education basically as a zero-sum enterprise

b) overestimating naively the amount of inequality that derives from schooling,

c) thinking that person x’s children can largely be thought of as resources to be employed for the betterment of person y’s children.

If the book rejects these principles and still presents a strong argument against private schooling, I’m all ears. Although to be fair to us hip-shooters Harry didn’t phrase his introduction as “here’s a flawed op-ed by a subtle egalitarian thinker.” I remain puzzled by what he saw in this, and I mean really puzzled, not feigning puzzlement to make a point. Convince me.

Swift’s argument, based on this brief reading, ignores the right of free association (Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights) which some could argue is as fundamental a freedom as freedom of religion. Whether such association, whether paid for or not, is disapproved of should be immaterial.

Swift is basically trying to appropriate the positive externalities of better-off or better able students; their presence in state schools is better for the rest of British children who don’t have their advantages, but at little or even negative gain to themselves. This is an odd form of targeting: in order to help the worst off targe” [sic] the better off. (There are a number of papers on the microeconomics of social interactions that address this very question.)

The trouble in his short piece is that he does not address their parents; compulsion and the “greater social good” aside, why should they agree to do this? A lot of parents will invariably try to do the best for their children, be it by private schools or by moving house (a “postcode lottery” does exist in north London, for instance, with housing prices in Hampstead, for instance, going up around good state schools. What does he propose to do about this?

A more efficable solution (at the very minimum, from a transactions-cost standpoint) would be for most parents, if possible, to voluntarily accept the bargain. I have not read his book, so I don’t know if he addresses this, but he did not do a good job for his case here.

The comparison between the jokes about American and British newspapers are interesting. Is it really true that in Britain the “people who run the country” are different from the “people who own the country”?

Public school parent of 5 & 8 year-olds for the moment, here. A few discontinuous ideas:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” Harvard, however, is a different matter.

As a British-born American who’s tried (been subjected to, more like) public and private schools on both sides of the water, it seems to me things break down fairly simply. All four variants warehouse kids with varying degrees of cotton wool, spun to make parents less anxious about opportunity and about the practical fact of the “warehousing.”

UK Private schools: Talk equality and work for superiority.
UK Public schools: Talk superiority and work for equality.

US Private schools: Worry about about inferior education and pursue superior socialization.
US Public schools: Worry about superior socialization and pursue inferior education

I got my biggest ass-whipping at a UK Private school.
I made the deepest friends at a UK Public school.
I learned how to play “the game” and found the best drugs at a US Private school.
I lost my virginity and found my career-love of choice at a US public school.

What’s this mean? I dunno for others, but for me:
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”.

heya skip

“But remember that students themselves constitute part of the educational product. If you attend schools with bright well-motivated kids whose parents are contributing to the effectiveness of the school you are getting a different product than if you attend school with disruptive or lazy kids whose parents have no disposable income and are pressed for time because they both work more than full time. Why should poor kids be given the inferior product? Just because their parents don’t have the resources to buy the better one?”

Unfortuantely, it doesn’t really work that way. The presence of good students does not turn bad students into good ones.

The actual results of putting the good student and the bad student together is that the good student comes out of it with some (hopefully minor) injuries and a diminshed enthusiasm for performing at the top of his game, while the bad student gets a few minutes of sadistic entertainment in between flunking his classes.

Pouncer, sure I have a fundamental right to freedom of association. It allows me to decide a great deal about how I live my life. My children are not me (couldn’t be — logically impossible). My right to freedom of association does not give me rights to control my children. Read the rest of my comment and you’ll see that.

Ken, in fact you’re wrong. Of course, all sorts of caveats, but there’s pretty good evidence that the presence of advantaged and bright kids in a school benefit the other kids (whether those other kids are bright and advantaged or not). Why? Lots of reasons, one of which is that the presence of these kids acts as a magnet for talented teachers, whose skills can be used to benefit the other children. Since I have evidence on my side I’ll indulge in anecdote — my own experience at a school with very high proportions of disadvantaged kids was nothing like you describe — and nor was that of the handful of middle class kids I was friends with there.

Ken, can’t agree there. For lots of reasons, but mainly because your premise excludes the influence of discipline and guidance and of socialization and peer pressure inherent in education. Proximity does not ipso facto dictate bad into good. But the odds dramatically spike.

Don’t all posts here, from all angles, point to a question: What is education for? Once you decide an answer for that you can move on to execution. My far-too-nebulous earlier point was that unless there’s some meaningful shared definition of “private citizen” and “common weal”, including the rights and obligations of each defined entity, then all the rest is preference not fact, isn’t it?

Seems to me we tried to overcome this once, it was in all the papers in England at the time. It worked for a while, too, however imperfectly. Now, we have The Prisoner’s Dilemma approaching end-game. Which is sad: Considering what a cool Democratic thing we’ve created, we’re now reduced to being the great looking Blonde who frets endlessly about the zit on her ass.

In my experience working with companies that believe in exploration, and in helping lead an organization that builds identities and physical environments around elevating peoples’ expectations and self-belief, *physical* environment has little to do with motivation. Within the limits of talent (and, yes, often paradoxically beyond), you play to the level of your team not the stadium; you learn, at the speed of your peers whether it’s in a dumpster or a glassy new suburban cathedral to private education.

So the question remains: what is education for? Answer that and common solutions start to emerge.

Adam Swifts arguments in the Daily Telegraph against private education do not hold water.

Firstly, Swift is unclear about the right to education. Surely there is a right to education? If Swift were to speak to a farmer who sent his children out to work the fields from age six, surely Swift would say, ‘These children have a right to education.” If he responded, well they have a right to freedom of religion and sexual expression, but not to education, would Swift not be astounded, and disagree vehemently?

Perhaps Swift thinks we only have a right to a mediocre education (such as the one I received at my comprehensive school). But then how do you draw the line? Do children have a right to an education that Adam Swift deems good enough? Surely there is no way of non-arbitrarily drawing this line, and arbitrariness is anathema to rights.

More importantly, what is education, other than reading certain books, engaging in certain educational activities, listening to and talking to certain people (teachers), and (private education involves) giving one’s own money to people of one’s choosing (teachers and support staff)? Is there not a fundamental right to do all of these things? These are surely among the most fundamental rights that we have. How can Swift ride roughshod over these rights (by banning private education) without destroying any attempt to have a society where fundamental human rights are respected?

I cannot see that the aforementioned rights are less fundamental than the rights to freedom of religion and sexual expression. I do not know exactly what Swift means by sexual expression, but suppose Swift means, the right for homosexuals to not have to conceal their homosexuality on pain of punishment. But imagine Swift saved the life of a dictator, and in gratitude the dictator offered to change one law for Swift. In his country there were two central oppressive laws: the first making it illegal to be openly homosexual; the second making it illegal to read most books, illegal to engage in educational activities, illegal to talk to who one wishes, (such as teachers), illegal to give money to whom one chooses (such as teachers). Which law would Swift change? I know that I and the vast majority of people (whether homosexual or heterosexual) would change the second – for whilst both laws are terrible and oppressive, the second offends against more fundamental human rights.

A further point, is that in the field of rights there is no scope, no justification, for trade-offs. In other words, there is no justification for infringing the rights of one person, merely to benefit others (a classic example being, there is no justification for murdering one person in order to redistribute their organs to save the lives of five others). In the field of education, this means that one should not sacrifice the education of one child merely to benefit another. Those politicians who abolished grammar schools sacrificed the education of people like me, to benefit other children, and this is wrong. Secondary Modern schools were a disgrace, but rather than abolish Grammar schools and turn all schools into Secondary Moderns by another name (and harm children like me), the solution would have been to put far more money and staff into the secondary moderns (thereby benefiting the children in Secondary Moderns *without* simultaneously harming other children).

This brings me to the last point, which deals with what seems to be Swifts central assumption, which is that there is a fixed quantity of educational resources, with rich people buying the best. If the government increased the wages of teachers, and increased funds to provide more teachers, then more teachers, and better teachers, would be drawn into the profession. Standards in state schools would rise. If this were combined with a return to selective education, then pretty soon there would not be too much to choose between independent schools and grammar schools. Yes, independent schools would still have flashier facilities, and be able to poach some of the best teachers (though there are lots of reasons good teachers would stay with grammar schools) but nevertheless, the education in the grammar schools would be good enough for main determinant of achievement to be the ability of the pupils, rather than the wealth of their parents. Increasing state funding of education, and a return to selective education, therefore seems the best way forward, because it would largely eliminate competitive advantage brought by having wealthy parents, whilst not infringing any fundamental human rights. Do you agree?

harry writes:

“…there are lots of ways in which we properly limit parents from benefiting their children competitively, even with their money (no bribing judges, or soccer coaches; no buying needed organs, etc).”

But the reasons why we forbid bribery and the sale of organs have nothing to do with unfair competitive benefits. It’s not as if such things would suddenly become morally permissible if we could all equally afford them. What harry needs here is an example of a *morally permissible* benefit which we limit parents from conferring on their children unequally. I can’t think of any, myself.

Incidentally, I wonder if Swift would forbid parents to enroll their children in supplemental educational programs after school or on weekends, given that they had all been forced into the same public schools during regular hours. The same “arguments” would seem to apply.