Someone’s said to me that private schools are for rich and stupid and public schools are for poor and smart.

muso wrote on Jan 7^th, 2010 at 8:19am:


I note the caveat of 'usually' but that is still debatable whether private schools are a higher standard, and each case would truly have to be judged on its merit.  I accept that is what is usually considered the case but that does not make it so.

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Some parents expect teachers to be parents, that is not what they are there for.  It depends upon the parenting of the child in the school on how good a teacher is or isn't.  It is not the role of the teacher to parent though they are often forced into this situation.

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Agreed the current system is not ideal or the be all and end all.  There are other forms of education beyond formal schooling but having the knowledge or being educated enough to understand that has to come first, even before an individual's determination.

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Or suffer a long life mental illness if not handled appropriately.

People put far too much emphasis on education and what it provides in general. It's been well shown-- repeatedly-- that when education pushes a person beyond their own potential the gains involved essentially vanish as to become non-existent once you take that person out of their educational environment. The gaps between public and private schools are not made manifest by what the systems provide, but the types of children parents are providing for the systems. As awful as our public schools are (and no, my objections are not because every little s hit doesn't have a fancy new 3 gig RAM laptop on their desk or whatever), you will find, amazingly enough, that if you replaced all of them with schools equivalent in quality to the best of our private schools, the differences would in the long run be absolutely negligble.

This post is probably off-topic but I don't care.

Senexx wrote on Jan 7^th, 2010 at 11:12am:


I think you're reducing the concept of a good teacher to one variable. A good teacher will be an inspiration. A good teacher is one who believes in teaching and actually wants to be there. It's not just about 'parenting', although role model does come into it.  I remember an English teacher who was definitely in that category. I met up with him recently, even after so many years, because he shone like a beacon over some of the others. He is still memorable even today.

- and I've experienced plenty of bad teachers.

So you want to deny people the opportunity to provide a better education for their chuildren, while bankrupting the country with some "whatever the cost" revolution?

Don't you think cost should come into it? It's all well and good to want the best for every child, but surely a reality check will be needed at some stage.

For some people, cost really is no issue. But to imnpose that same standard on the entire country is ludicrous.

How much does the Finnish system cost?

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How do you measure a person's potential?

Hello Megalodon, and welcome to the forum, I hope you enjoy engaging in something infuriating, amusing, and occasionally interesting, when it comes to seeing just how diverse a range of opinions we humans can attach ourselves to.

The usual form we go for here is to boldly state an ill considered opinion, then google like crazy to try and find evidence to validate our prejudices, lol.

I have been doing just that myself, in search of the figures for Finland's expenditure on education, to answer Freediver's assertion that only our current two tiered education system is a viable economic option for our country.

SO FD, here are some figures pertinent to our argument, but bear in mind that the figures alone do not tell the whole tale, for what is provided, and how it is provided, is also of the utmost importance in this matter of our childrens' education.

(All amounts are in US dollars, as they are obtained from an international report on education in the OECD from 2008)
So the OECD average for public expenditure on education, is just over 13%
(that is the percentage of the total government expenditure across all areas of public spending)
and Finland comes in just a little below that with 12.5% of it's budget devoted to education, of which the Tertiary level uses the most, by a significant margin.

Now for our purposes, we need to know the broad public costs for a child's education, and the figures supplied in the report I read are that the OECD average total cost, for the period of the ten years from 6 to 15 years old is, USD67,895.
Finland has a lower spend rate than the OECD average, and they spend, USD64,363 per child for the same period.

The breakdown for per child spending in each area in Finland is as follows;
Primary spending is USD5,557,
Secondary spending is, USD7,324,
both of which are a little below the OECD average.

Here is the link to the report I have obtained these figures from.

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/31/46/41277828.pdf

If you read it you will see that they do not place total importance on spending costs alone, education has so many variable influences that no single indicator will give a true picture of the quality of education supplied, and I am certainly not an expert in the field of education, but I do believe that we are going down the wrong path as a society, with the system we have now, and would certainly welcome suggestions on how we could improve the education system so that all kids get the best possible start in life that we can provide for them.

Personally, I believe that concentrating our efforts into providing absolutely top class Public Education is the way we should go, and if that means we direct our public expenditure solely into public education systems, to acheive that goal, then I think that is what we should do.