If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Options
The free market and education
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Shouldn't the private sector have a greater role in education? Why can't schools (without government funding) compete for students in a true free market?
0
Comments
Anyway, what worries me about (pardon my paraphrasing) 'privatizing' education is that I'm a firm believer in equal opportunity education. Call me idealistic, but I think it's something worth striving for, even if it will never be fully realized. Bringing the free market into it would completely disrupt this process. The theory of gov't funded education is that it aleviates some of the discrepancies that come from trying to learn while growing up in a lower income home, i.e. the rich usually have more free time to grant their children for a better, less stressful learning process, therefore the children in upper-class schools, to some extent, get better grades by default. If funding were granted exclusively through competition of student populations, we would once again be faced with the scenario that "it takes money/success to make money/success. We're surrounded by enough of that junk already. It seems like we'd be taking a step backward, not forward.
*shudder*
Prior to the 1970 Education Act (and the implementation of state run education in the UK) the poorer elements of society were educated by charities and the churches. Why can't that continue?
Also, take into account the free market. If one schools prices are too high, do you think they will attract custom if other schools have lower fees?
Now, I don't know how the system works in the UK, but here in Denmark it's all down to priorities.
It would be a terrible thing to delegate education for the poorest to charities and the church. The standard would be much worse, and the god-botherers would try to implement their religious agenda on the kids whether they like it or not.
Why? Charity is a better means of helping the poor than any governmental welfare.
Which is why some church run private schools in the UK teach creationism as fact then is it?
Why not? Is evolution a 'fact'?
no. and it shouldn't be presented as such.
However, you claimed that the state set the curriculum, this proves that they don't. Not when it comes to private schooling.
Unless you want a large portion of the UK population to believe that creationsim is fact then church run schools aren't the way forward...
No it's not, it is precisely the point.
Education is all about preparing out children for the future. It is the foundation on which this country will be laid. We need to ensure that our children get a rounded education and not one purely based on the religious teaching of a particular sect.
Or hasn't Aisha taught you anything?
YES Aladdin, and YES MoK!!!
Also, perhaps I should clarify what I meant by "objective education". I mean that a universal, state run program encourages dialogue, and therefore encourages objectivism in the learning/thought processes of students. It encourages students to ask questions, and not to internalize every idea as dogma. Schools run by a charity or church simply cannot do that, because they have a inflexible "party line" to preach in order for their rules to make sense.