In response to the backlash over the Federal Labor Party’s education policy (where about $3billion in federal funding is taken from very rich independent and private schools and reallocated to poorer private schools) I saw this thought provoking article.

It suggests that what is lost in the debate is the fact that many of the private schools on the “hit list” are christian or denominational schools:

The truth is that Christianity is a religion of radical reciprocity. The elite schools are multimillion-dollar educational entrepreneurs, whose attachment to the religion is now simply a form of thematic branding, a bit of spiritual swoosh.

If they really believed their own mission statement they would be knocking back grants and sharing their facilities with state schools, but that would directly contradict their customer appeal, which is to provide what others do not get.

It is surprising and disappointing that more actual Christians have not broken ranks to condemn this state of affairs, when the arguments of the private school lobby more closely resemble the contribution to theology provided by the Borgias than that of the man of Galilee.

It is a good point. And if it doesn’t convince these schools to open their doors and share facilities with their poorer public colleagues, perhaps it will shut them up about their “politics of envy”.

Another interesting thing about this whole debate has been the response by the private school lobbyists, typically parents in letters to the editor etc. A common argument has been that these higher income earners actually contribute more to education (through higher income taxes) than those that send their kids to public schools and then choose to contribute again through paying for public school funding. Therefore, the reasoning goes, they should get more money for their schools from the government.

Well, no. And this represents an appalling misconception of the taxation system and the role of government. It suggests that taxation is kind of a “user pays” system where what I get from the government should be governed by how much I put in. In fact, government spending is (or should be) about what is most beneficial to the community as a whole - and this doesn’t necessarily line up with the immediate interests of those that are “contributing” the most money.

Secondly the argument suggests that those that pay the most in taxation should have a greater say how that money should be applied. Again, no. We work on a democratic system where one citizen equals one vote. The wealthy might be a fairly powerful voting bloc, but those parents who have kids at the “hit list schools” comprise a fairly small slice of the population (32 schools in Victoria - one of the highest numbers).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004 at 9:29 am by dan and is filed under campaign 2004. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.