Keith,
I appreciate your reply to my posting of a couple of days ago. However, I
don't think our argument is about the relative merits of private and public
schools, but rather about the respective general roles of the public and
private sectors. Personally, I believe these roles are very different.
While self-interest plays a role in both, it is far more dominant in the
private sector, where fundamental concerns must be the profitability,
efficiency and the sustainability of an enterprise. I recognize that factors
such as efficiency are also important in the public sector, but I would
argue that the good of society as a whole, not the good of the individual,
must drive its institutions. The dominant concern must not be how to
maximize profits from given inputs, but how to maximize a public benefit
with given inputs.
Given this, a public institution should not be expected to operate
competitively, as though in a market. However, if it is to operate
effectively, two things must be established. One is a thorough definition
of what the institution is expected to do. The other is continuous
evaluation of the extent to which it is doing what is expected of it.
I would include health, the environment, education and a variety of social
services as properly belonging in the public sector, and that provincial
governments in Canada, which operate such services, have drifted into a
state of muddle by attempting to intrude the market into them. They have
done so partly out of a confused political philosophy, but also because of
pressures on resources and a temptation to score political points by holding
the line on, or reducing, taxes.
There is no question but that our health, education and social institutions
can operate more efficiently than they have in the past. Nor is there any
question that they need to be reorganized from time to time to make them
more effective and responsive to emergent public needs. However, to move
them into the market (or the market into them) suggests a failure to
understand the difference between public and private interests.
Attempts to hold the line on taxes are understandable, as are cuts in public
services which have become redundant. People are working harder and feel
they are being rewarded less. Productivity and income are not rising as
rapidly as they once were. Nevertheless, there are some things that simply
must be afforded if society is to remain viable. Quality education, health
and social services are foremost among them. Cuts in such functions can
engender problems ranging from the difficult to the disastrous. In Canada,
we are currently experiencing teacher burnout and declining morale in our
education system, and labour turmoil and long waits for treatment in our
health system. We have had recent examples of how neglect of the
environment because of fiscal restraint and the devolution of
responsibilities from senior to junior governments has impinged on public
health. Because provincial governments have failed in their
responsibilities, many communities now have drinking water of questionable
quality. Walkerton, Ontario, is a tragic example. A number of people in
that community have died because of contaminated water and many others
became ill.
So, Keith, you can see where I'm coming from. It's much broader than
education, and has a lot to do with allowing the various things we need to
access in our lives their proper place. Even when the questions are
enormously complex, politicians favour simple answers and, rather sadly, so
does the voting public. For the past several years, simple answers have
been applied in Ontario under what the government termed a "common sense
revolution" which has not, it would now seem, made much sense at all. The
end result is that many of our public institutions are in danger of coming
apart at the seams.
Regards,
Ed Weick
> At 20:32 26/06/01 -0400, Ed Weick wrote:
>
> ---> cut to
> (course planning)
> (EW)
> >OK, I concede some of this. But I do believe that we can some pretty
good
> >forecasting based on current and recent trends. We may not get it right,
> >but getting it even reasonably close to right would be a big forward
step.
> >I would venture that, while catering to the demands of their students,
> >universities continually forecast. Because appropriate teaching staff
takes
> >a long time to develop and capital facilities take a long time to plan,
they
> >would not be working in their interests or continuity if they did not do
so.
>
> Yes, I agree that it's in the interests of universities to try and
forecast
> future skill trends and that it takes long term preparation. Even so,
> demands for new skills appear very quickly in the modern world and they're
> really only met by "sitting next to Nellie" within the firms that needs
them.
>
> >It is our secondary school level that is currently messed up. It's
become
> >underfunded, downgraded in the eyes of the public, and something of a
> >pitched battle between government and the teachers. Neither it nor
> >government appears to be in a position to do any forward thinking.
>
> I am very doubtful that throwing more money at schools will do very much
at
> all, except swell the ranks of the planners and bureaucrats at
intermediate
> government levels. Only a proportion of the finance ever gets down to the
> coal face. (Much the same applies applies to ever-increasing spending on
> the National Health Service in England.)
>
> (EW)
> >I'm not an advocate of the abolition of private schools, but I want to
see a
> >strong public system which provides kids with an education comparable in
> >quality to private schools. I don't want to public system sacrificed to
the
> >benefit of the private system.
>
> It seems to me that the essential difference between state schools and
> private schools is not the money. (There *is* a huge difference I grant
> you, but that is mainly due to historical reasons and, if there was a real
> will on the part of governments and civil services, then this could be
> corrected over a period of time.) The real difference is that state
> schooling involves a large degree of central control. State teachers have
> little more influence over their schools than factory workers have. (It's
> no wonder that teachers have now almost totally lost the respect that they
> used to have.) However, an independent private school depends mainly on
> good leadership by the head-teacher and supportive staff. By and large
> they're not answerable to anybody else other than the parents and
children.
>
> (KH)
> >> (It is very interesting that the accounts I've been reading recently of
the
> >> new voucher-driven charter schools in America, even of those in the
worst
> >> run-down school districts of the large cities, all say the same thing.
The
> >> teachers work the children hard. The children enjoy it. The parents
support
> >> it. Most of the children are at least two years ahead in reading and
> >> arithmetic than the state-run schools. The motivation behind these new
> >> charter schools is really recapitulating the early decades of the new
> >> schools in the industrial cities of England when working class parents,
> >> themselves miserably poor, actually paid for the education of their
> >> children -- and almost all went. Both parents and children were
motivated.)
>
> (EW)
> >I'll simply have to take your word on this. I haven't done any reading
on
> >voucher systems recently. However, I would argue that a well funded,
> >peaceful, respected public system would also produce good results. Our
> >local high school, one of the most reputable older schools in Ottawa,
> >continues to turn out very good students in increasingly difficult
> >circumstance.
>
> My evidence is mainly anecdotal -- gleaned from articles in the American
> press over the past year or so. I don't think there's enough hard evidence
> yet overall and there are many stories of ineptitude and financial
> chicanery among charter schools. The balance of the evidence so far seems
> to be very positive, however, particularly when one considers that almost
> all these new experiments are taking place in districts where the state
> system had pretty well broken down and the children almost totally
> demotivated.
>
> (EW)
> >Markets are based on self-interest, not on the interests of society as a
> >whole. As well as inferior goods and services, they can eliminate a
whole
> >lot of things. What apalls me about present trends in our society is
that
> >we can no longer distinguish between what belongs in the private sector,
and
> >is therefore of interest to particular members of society, and what
belongs
> >in the public domain, and therefore of interest to us all -- to our
> >continuity as a good society if you like. The Ontario government
> >notwithstanding, I don't see education as a marketable commodity. I see
it
> >as a responsibility of society as a whole. Unfortunately, however, I may
be
> >going the way of the dinosaurs, or perhaps it's the dinosaurs that are
> >returning.
>
> We're back to the selfishness question that's arisen before. I don't like
> the word "selfish" at all because it has so many moral connotations. As I
> see it, the fact is that each of us is ineradicably selfish. (And
"equally"
> so, too, in the sense that each of us is "equally" hungry on occasion or
> "equally" wants sex.) I think in terms of what is "sensibly selfish" and
> what is not. If I am sensibly selfish, then I look after myself, but also
> care for my family, neighbours and community. I "invest" in altruistic
> efforts for others because I know that I will obtain returns on that
> investment when I need help myself. If I am not sensibly selfish then the
> chances are that I will not be helped by others when the need arises.
>
> So I see no variance between "sensible selfishness" and a wholesome,
> caring, sustainable society. Mrs Thatcher was famously misquoted as saying
> "there is no society". Well, there isn't in the sense that there is a
> uniform mass of other people out there that we're able to help or with
> equal claims upon us. For each of us our "society" has a span that tails
> off with varying degrees of remoteness according to the function that
we're
> talking about. If I am blind and want to cross a busy road I can't expect
> "society" to help me, but I can reasonably expect one or two nearby
> individuals to. For the moment, they are my society and they know that if
> they were blind the chances would be high that I would help them.
>
> The task of modern government, as I see it, is to more clearly define what
> the various "spans" of society are, according to the function that are
> involved. Problems arise when governments define the span as stretching
out
> over the whole country (the span of which was determined by military and
> transport functions more than anything else.) rather than truly functional
> spans. And, getting back to education, this is the trap that most modern
> governments have fallen into. They treat education as though it was a
> similar activity as providing an army, for example.
>
> So I see no fundamental difference between the economic market and the
> social market. They both exist by means of exchange. The practical
> difference is that economic exchange takes place by means of instantaneous
> transactions, and the social market by means of transactions which are
> difficult to quantify and take time to balance out in a way which is felt
> to be reasonable and just.
>
> The irony is that our present "egalitarian" approach (by all political
> parties) in the field of education is increasingly producing a set of
> outcomes between the best and the worst schools which is far, far wider
> than the varied outcomes of independent schools. Education is a wonderful
> candidate for almost complete decentralisation of its functions.
>
> Keith Hudson
>
> ___________________________________________________________________
>
> Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
> 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
> Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
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