New Evidence For 'Liberalism = Disaster' Hypothesis

Don't be shocked, but it looks like anyone who can get free of the state education system is doing so.

Yes, I was shocked too. Here's a profession where liberalism runs rampant and yet somehow it's collapsed into chaos. Say, is anyone else seeing a pattern here ?

On the plus side, there are signs that some folks in the industry are finally geting to grips with their problems.

No, just kidding!

John Trickett, the Labour MP for Hemsworth, said Mr Blair had "failed in his objective".

"What we need to do now is set firm targets to achieve the equivalent funding for private and state schools."

Yes, clearly, more funding is the answer:

Total education spending in England was £29bn in 1997 and is £60bn this year. Of the £74.4bn total promised for 2010, £10.2bn is capital spending.

Spending per pupil, which was £2,500 in 1997, would from now to 2010 rise by a further 10% in real terms to £6,600, Mr Brown said.

Hence why standards have improved so much over the last ten years.

Then there's this:

Mick Brookes, of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: "We have to consider what parents are buying when they opt for the independent sector.

"They are buying smaller class sizes and quite often enhanced resources. Some parents are buying the fact that their children are not going to be quite as pressured by the tables, targets and tests regime in the state sector.

Yes, they've fled the high-achieving culture of the public sector for the chilled-out vibe of the private sector. Also, you can run a car on water, providing you boil it first.

Besides, it turns out that if you're reluctant to have Junior sitting next to the keynoter speaker of Crackfest 2020, you're a Nazi:

In parts of inner London the figures are even more stark, fuelling fears of an emerging educational "apartheid" in the biggest cities.

As frequently where liberals are involved, the clue is in their own charge. When exactly did it become illegitimate for people not to want their kids to be forced to rub shoulders with the deranged or the depraved ? But no: liberals think education should be like the draft, and the middle classes are trying to cheat the system to get their kids a staff job instead of sending them to the Somme like they're supposed to. The best rebuttal to that lunacy comes from the Telegraph article's comment thread:

I agree with David Welch:

"It`s high time those attending private schools paid for the damage that the creaming-off does to the state system. And the subsequent social divisions."

He's absolutely right to remind us that there's only a certain amount of good education to go round and the private schools are hogging it all. It's time this good-education pie (of eternally fixed size) was shared out more evenly.

I remember when I was a teacher that if another teacher said they'd done a really good lesson we had to make sure this was compensated for by a poor lesson given by someone else in case the pie was put under undue strain and we were all covered in half-digested erudition.
Posted by novelPhenomena on November 10, 2007 12:57 PM