<p>Is this guy is being serious?
[Private</a> school vs. public school: Only bad people send their kids to private school. - Slate Magazine](<a href=“http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/private_school_vs_public_school_only_bad_people_send_their_kids_to_private.html]Private”>Private school vs. public school: Only bad people send their kids to private school.)
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<p>Whenever some demagogue decides that children should serve the collective, it ends badly </p>
<p>Yeah, we’ll usually they’re spouting off about this while still sending their OWN kids to the best school they can find. I guess we must be truly rotten parents, 15 years of private schools including college for one, 16 for another. I want a property tax refund, dang it.</p>
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<p>I think I see the problem with his argument.</p>
<p>I am a big supporter of community (public) schools but I think this article is ridiculous.</p>
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<li><p>does she have kids? I usually find attitudes changes when there is an actual human being, especially one’s own child, involved.</p></li>
<li><p>does she live in NYC? I often find articles written by New Yorkers about life choices skewed toward the to 1%-ers.</p></li>
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<p>I’m sorry, I thought this was America and not some communist country. Excuse me if I’m not interested in selling my child short on a quality education for the “common good” especially when that “common good” might take generations to achieve. This does not make me a bad person, nor should I feel any guilt over it. </p>
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<p>I’m sorry this was the authors experience with the education system and that the system failed her. But why should one offer up their child to the same failure of a system in the hopes it may one day down the road get better thanks your uneducated child’s sacrifice.</p>
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<p>Where was this authors parents? if the quote stating that author only read one book in high school is true, what happened? You cant state that fact and then back up your argument that parents can pick up the slack of a lacking public school. Not to mention actual studies and statistics refute this claim.</p>
<p>My gut feeling about this author is that she’s bitter, she’s bitter her parents and more importantly the public school system failed her. She is woefully under educated and couldn’t even maximize her potential in college. That’s a terrible shame. </p>
<p>Yes the public school system is broken and uneven and disadvantaged. Yes it needs a dramatic overhaul. But that does not mean that we need to throwing more kids into to it to receive substandard educations in some sort of misguided experiment is hopes it will fix the system is the solution. I don’t believe educating kids should be used as an experiment to see what works and what doesn’t at the risk of the child’s learning potential.</p>
<p>Theres nothing wrong with public schools…</p>
<p>Or, here’s an idea, vouchers so that everyone has school choice.</p>
<p>Actually, you are a bad person if your have the opportunity to send your kids to a better private school but instead send them to a public school.</p>
<p>Schools often reflect the quality of the students attending the school as much as the quality of the teachers there. If it is garbage in with respect to students, it is garbage out with respect to students. You have to hope teachers can convert some of the garbage in to something better than garbage out.</p>
<p>The consensus seems to be that this writer is serious. Stupid, maybe, but serious.</p>
<p>^That’s pretty offensive, razorsharp. People are not “garbage,” nor are some of them born with less inherent quality.</p>
<p>The level of contempt for those of different backgrounds and circumstances in this country amazes me sometimes.</p>
<p>People make the decision to send their kids to private schools for so many reasons that it is impossible generalize. Mine went private ( the first after 10 years in public and the second after 9 years, both including kindergarten) for different reasons, but both were because of decisions made by our local public schools.</p>
<p>No school is perfect, but think how much money is saved by public school districts where many of the school-age children attend private schools. The private schools around here are not filled to the brink with the best and brightest although that is what they might like you you to think.</p>
<p>I grew up in a town where the only option was public school. It did unify the town in many ways.</p>
<p>The author certainly got people’s attention, but without impeaching anyone’s personal choices, it is true that if all, or even many more, people sent their kids to public schools everyone would benefit. </p>
<p>One of the best predictors of a school’s success is the educational level of the students’ parents. My kids attended an inner city public school many of whose parents were grad students or professors at the local uni. It leads the city and state on many measures. But before they transferred into that school, they attended a magnet school, which was exceedingly diverse both ethnically and socioeconomically. Their high school is similar, and it regularly sends students to the Ivys and the Williams of the world. </p>
<p>Having well-educated and involved parents at a school means there is a built-in advocacy group for the school, something for which less savvy parents–who may be more concerned where the next meal is coming from–don’t have the time or skills.</p>
<p>I’ll admit there is tracking, not everyone can take all the APs offered, and there are the dropouts and non-achievement endemic to the inner city. But the culturally fluency and social intelligence acquired is something that no amount of private school money can buy.</p>
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Having well-educated and involved parents at a school means there is a built-in advocacy group for the school, something for which less savvy parents–who may be more concerned where the next meal is coming from–don’t have the time or skills.[\quote]</p>
<p>This is something that is difficult to measure but is often underestimated. We have a parent in this community who was the catalyst for a new school. She is not my favorite person, but I do not think we would have our new high school without her early pushing. </p>
<p>I did a lot more work in the public schools my children attended than I did for their private schools.</p>
<p>Having gone to both “crappy” public high schools and elite schools, if i could do it all over again, i would only go to the crappy public.</p>
<p>It is almost always true that these elite schools are filled with the most self entitled and arrogant students who think they are above everyone else because daddy was rich enough to get them a nice car and several internships at his company. There is no compassion, just competition in a cycle that just makes the rich richer and poor poorer. Good luck making true friends in this environment. Everyone asks what the other person is doing for collefe, SAT, etc., not, for example, what they are doing for fun. Also if u think it is a safe environment, i have never seen drugs more prolific than i have seen among private high school.</p>
<p>The education argument is ridiculous, you are in charge of your own education and you should learn some independence and self guidance that is present at public schools.</p>
<p>Ultimately it is your choice, but look at some numbers. In Finland, private education is non existent and in South Korea, private education is all there is. Guess which one is #1 and #2 on national tests.</p>
<p>This also happens in public schools, but not nearly in the</p>
<p>Oh, great. So the author wants to sacrifice a significant portion of students for the public good? That’s real smart. A better solution would simply be to increase funding to impoverished public schools to bring them up to par with private schools - as best they can, anyway. </p>
<p>I went to a public school. I knew kids who went to private schools. I never looked at them and thought since they had better resources, private schools shouldn’t exist in order to level the playing field. This is all just a moron who is envious of what he never had as a kid, or what his kids don’t have.</p>
<p>So now public schools are the bane of smart students^? Please.</p>
<p>Your “suggestion” of simply increasing funding is about as intuitive as simply getting rid of thr poor…</p>
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Putting a smart kid in an impoverished public school, which is what the author is systematically suggesting, is the bane of smart kids. You can only take advantage of opportunities that are available to you and in those public schools, advantages are fewer. If you want to improve public education, fine. But don’t set other kids back by compelling integration. The author’s “suggestion” works just about as well as No Child Left Behind. It is not sound public policy. </p>
<p>Don’t talk down to me. I went to a public school. I had no AP classes, for chrissakes. I would want nothing more but to improve the public school system. But there are ways to do it that are better than making everybody go to public school. For instance, the curriculum would be broader and enriched if we got rid of some of the standardized tests mandated by No Child Left Behind. Teachers teach to the test and limit the curriculum. Further, the standards are so high that only two schools in my entire tri-county area met or exceeded the standards. So, since the Act dictates how much federal funding school districts get, the worse are only getting worse. </p>
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Don’t see how your analogy works here, buddy.</p>
<p>In the Matt Damon thread, someone suggested that it would have benefited the kids in his public school if he had sent his own kids there. The public school didn’t offer his kids what he wanted for them. But he was supposed to ignore that in the interest of the collective good.</p>
<p>I am a bad person, I guess. I’m going to do what I feel is in my kids’ best interest as it relates to their education. I don’t really give a flip what some anonymous person on the internet or an author who doesn’t know them thinks.</p>
<p>I think parents should decide for themselves how best to educate their own children. Personally, I couldn’t afford a private K-12 education for my kids and in our area there are no private schools that I would want my kids to attend. My kids made the most of our local public schools.</p>
<p>I do have an issue, however, with people who send their kids to private schools messing around with the education policies of the public schools. I’m talking about Bill Gates and President Obama along with others who have a stake (profit-wise) in public education. They have no clue about the problems in education today and contribute to the problem with their education policies (they have become test-prep factories with not much useful education). </p>
<p>Regarding Matt Damon, he actually understands the real problems with public education (the education policies) and I’m glad he has the means to pay for a better education for them.</p>