My short answer: No, there should always be a choice, but public schools should be better funded and private schools should be properly audited.
Longer answer:
I attended a private school from 5th (before doesn’t really matter) to 9th grade, and a public one from 10th to 12th (last grade here). Overall, I much preferred the latter.
With private school, after you leave it, you can clearly feel how toxic and elitist the environment can be. This has been my and my colleagues’ experiences, switching from private to public, and from what I gather, seems to be a generalized idea. The extreme drive for maximum results (which is essential for the businesses part of it to work) may sound alright at first, however it almost always leads to unequal treatment of students and substantial grade inflation, which, naturally, is completely unfair to everyone else.
Another issue I have, which may not be the case elsewhere, is that private schools are very often associated with Catholic church (dominant religion here), which I don’t support and is oftentimes perverted.
All the while, we’re partially helping these instituitions financially (yes the government provides some help funds for these), to the detriment of public schools, which frequently lack proper funding.
I was fortunate enough to attend one of the best public schools in the country, which easily “outperforms” most private schools, but unfortunately, that is not the reality of a lot of people. If funding was properly directed towards improving public institutions in need, we could have way higher quality education for everybody, which is crucial for a nation that actually wants to develop.
We’re still suffering from a long period of dictatorship where, despite basic education levels having gone up quite a lot, everything beyond that (and possibly revolution-enabling) was tightly controlled. This had major repercussions, even still affecting today’s elections, for example.
In essence, I believe we should make it so this becomes a non-question, with public schools being the dominant spaces for the high quality education of our younger generations.
The problem with private schools is that they, at least in the country I live in, seem to run havoc and actually collect more public funding than public schools do (which I find perverse, really).
I’m really torn about this. I could imagine a case for private schools, but just the example I see in this anglo country I’m in makes me really cautious about them.
It’s a good question.
My short answer: No, there should always be a choice, but public schools should be better funded and private schools should be properly audited.
Longer answer:
I attended a private school from 5th (before doesn’t really matter) to 9th grade, and a public one from 10th to 12th (last grade here). Overall, I much preferred the latter.
With private school, after you leave it, you can clearly feel how toxic and elitist the environment can be. This has been my and my colleagues’ experiences, switching from private to public, and from what I gather, seems to be a generalized idea. The extreme drive for maximum results (which is essential for the businesses part of it to work) may sound alright at first, however it almost always leads to unequal treatment of students and substantial grade inflation, which, naturally, is completely unfair to everyone else.
Another issue I have, which may not be the case elsewhere, is that private schools are very often associated with Catholic church (dominant religion here), which I don’t support and is oftentimes perverted.
All the while, we’re partially helping these instituitions financially (yes the government provides some help funds for these), to the detriment of public schools, which frequently lack proper funding.
I was fortunate enough to attend one of the best public schools in the country, which easily “outperforms” most private schools, but unfortunately, that is not the reality of a lot of people. If funding was properly directed towards improving public institutions in need, we could have way higher quality education for everybody, which is crucial for a nation that actually wants to develop.
We’re still suffering from a long period of dictatorship where, despite basic education levels having gone up quite a lot, everything beyond that (and possibly revolution-enabling) was tightly controlled. This had major repercussions, even still affecting today’s elections, for example.
In essence, I believe we should make it so this becomes a non-question, with public schools being the dominant spaces for the high quality education of our younger generations.
The problem with private schools is that they, at least in the country I live in, seem to run havoc and actually collect more public funding than public schools do (which I find perverse, really).
I’m really torn about this. I could imagine a case for private schools, but just the example I see in this anglo country I’m in makes me really cautious about them.
I wouldn’t say they collect more public funding than public schools here, but they do collect quite a bit. It is really sad this is the case :/