“Tax the externalities of the parents that care withdrawing their kids…”

I assume that you are talking about negative externalities, for why else would you want to tax them. So tell me, Mat, ‘cos I’m a wee bit confused: what are the negative externalities of parents putting their children into private education?

If it is true that those is private education are better educated than those who are not, it could be argued that it is likely that they contribute more to economic growth and that therefore the main externality is a positive one.

In which case, parents should be rewarded for putting their children through private education.

Well, it’s a point of view, no?

DK

One (which I’ll loosely label ‘leftist’) is the anti-clerical, French Revolutionary idea that we should keep those corrupting, regressive, myth-peddling Jesuits as far away from our budding citizens’ education as we can.

The other (which I’ll loosely label ‘liberal’) is to let the corrupting, regressive, myth-peddling Jesuits do what they want providing they don’t expect the rest of us to pay for it.

I have intellectual sympathy for the leftist argument, but having emerged relatively unscathed from a generally decent Catholic grammar school, I can’t drum up too much Jacobin fervour about banning faith schools outright.

I can however get bloody angry about the state paying for these schools and allowing them to discriminate on religious grounds. You might just be able to make a plausible case for this arrangement if there was genuine equality of choice between a range of equally good faith and non-faith schools. But that patently isn’t the case.

The reality in many areas is that children from families of no faith or the wrong faith are regularly denied access to the best local state-funded school because they don’t attend the right church, or (perhaps even more galling for those who choose to play the game) they don’t schmooze the priest successfully enough to get the right kind of reference. Whether you’re a leftist or liberal or both, this can’t be right.

It effectively gives the power of selection to individual priests. It encourages systematic hypocrisy, and it privileges children with parents who are able to network and devote time to the cause – whether they really believe in it or not.

BTW I am not “right” or “left”, but for freedom, Rule of Law and self-responsibility, i.e. against Authoritarianism. Maybe you classify me as “right” because I have a low toleration of collectivist ideas - to me, anyone who sees enforced collectivism as anything but a necessary evil pending a better way is not Libertarian, nor Liberal, come to that. Maybe I appear on the Right because I am just not on the Left! ;-)

As for schools, at least on this side of the point, going from public schools to vouchers would be more egalitarian than the current system. Our poor tend to be concentrated in inner cities. With high population density comes more shopping opportunities. Our system of city based schools boards was designed for small towns with a natural monopoly on education — a monopoly due to kids walking to school and low population density.

BTW, people need not get equal education in order to have equal incomes. All you have to do is saturate the market of those skills which currently make big bucks (and watch out for guild rules which grant rent-seeking privileges for those in early). For example, I come across many people with four year liberal arts educations who end up making less than plumbers or auto mechanics. There is a diminishing return for more people who can parse Shakespeare.

And Roger, I do understand the difference in logic; I still disagree that my stance makes me authoritarian; just progressive. What I’ve read from you and others is libertarianism - this is commonly considered the Right’s end of the liberal spectrum, am I not correct? I’m not a libertarian.

I’m not an authoritarian, either, as I wouldn’t throw people in gaol for disagreeing with me (well, I hope not, but I never expect to be in the position to do that :).

I do think that State schools should be secular, ideally. The issue of religious schools may have been simpler if it were not for the view of some that now, with Islamic schools in the frame, better to get (er, is that “bribe”?) them into the State system “where we can keep a better eye on them”. I am not suggesting that is the right attitude, btw.

The issues here are not so much “letting people do whatever they want” but to “NOT (make people do what I want)” - do you understand the difference in the logic? Libertarianism is not about letting people do whatever they want, for that is Anarchy.

I find it odd that you recoil at the thought of religious schools somehow forcing parents (due to the scarcity that often comes as a result of monopolistic State run education) to use them, yet you do not even blink when forcing them into the State system. I am not suggesting support for religious schools, btw!

Can I still say “I want to ban private education”, while being aware that a compromise in that direction would also be good? It’s like holding an ideal, but being realistic about getting there…

I can’t agree to just let faith schools exist because some people want them. If they were in the private sector, whatever, but in the state? That FORCES some parents (who can’t afford to move) to give their children to a religious institution with which they may not agree.
A non faith school, by the way, is not the opposite; it doesn’t force religious children to lose their faith or anything, it just doesn’t have a secret desire to tell kids that God did everything.
Secular educations give children a choice in what they believe. That’s liberal, not just “what I like” (I have a politics degree somewhere, so I should know what I’m on about).

Talking of faith, while I completely disagree with what you say, Carl @ number 44, your website is a garish rainbow of biblical fun.

A tax on ground-rents should be the first order of business. Then, work on lowering the real cost of capital and making it available to the less well connected. (All these ideas can be found in Smith.)

For expansions on these ideas and others, see my series The Balance of Wealth.

Remove charitable status and incentives them to move (back) into the public sector, and then start taxing the fees with VAT and use the money on other local schools.

Just banning them is a bad idea for a huge number of reasons, but if you want to support it, go ahead. Just don’t try and pretend it’s a liberal position, it isn’t, liberalism is about choice and personal responsibilities.

Tax the externalities of the parents that care withdrawing their kids, don’t just ban them from doing it, you’ll get an upsurge in home schooling instead, and that’d be worse–look at the States.

@Alix. Please get out of my head, it’s really disconcerting.

Considering that we live in a (relatively) free-market society, oppurtunity cannot be measured and therefore cannot be equalised by the state.

Aside from careers that require qualifications (doctors, architects, accountants), there is no force preventing a company from hiring anyone it likes. In theory, there is no connection between intelligence or qualifications and oppurtunity, employability, success, etc.

Intelligent people exist regardless of their social status. The fact that they have the oppurtunity to educate themselves at their own will, especially since the internet has become a dominant form of communication, means that institutional schooling is worthless if people don’t have the incentive to learn.

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Mark Twain

Nononono! [Throws toy at Jonathan]. Being anti-private schooling is a matter of opinion, and it’s an opinion I share. Deciding that the way forward is therefore to issue a dictat exterminating them - that IS authoritarian!

Echo Rob K, “‘liberal’ is not a synonym for ‘things I like’”.

Echo Roger Thornhill @ 36, “a number here seem to think “Liberal” means Authoritarian, collectivist and Statist”

The idea of faith schools personally gives me the screaming ab-dabs (far more so than private schools). Do I have trouble with the fact that they exist? You betcha. Do I nevertheless concede that they shouldn’t be banned because I am one person and the many people who support faith schools should not be deprived of what they want because I want something different? Yes. I’m a liberal. It’s what we do.

So in making what I concede is a personally tricksy decision that faith schools and private schools should be allowed to exist, in what way am I giving up on progressive politics and conceding that the way of getting on is by being rich?

“Over the past 15 years” - well that tells me you’re older than I am, and perhaps entering disillusionment territory. I’m sure it’s horrid and I’m not looking forward to it, but please don’t conclude that because you can’t make sense of what I’m saying on the tired old righty-lefty scale that there’s no hope for society!

I’m going to come back to what you say about local funding for schools because that feeds directly into the Lib Dem agenda. Need more info.

I find the acceptance of private schooling a little repugnant, and education policy in recent years has done little to address inequalities in the system.
Academies are a fudge, faith schools are abhorrent and anti-liberal, and ideas to let local communities fund their schools would serve to make schools in poor areas even worse off, relatively.
People seem to have given up on the idea of progressive politics, and accepted the mantra that the only way you can better yourself is by becoming rich. I have felt, over the past 15 years, increasingly alienated from this increasingly consumerist and competitive society. It seems a bit, well, shallow. I hope I’m wrong.

I enjoy arguing a lot, by the way, and a little anger is part of that. Don’t think I’m getting offended! Toys are always kept in the pram.

We can sit around and decry the unfairness of it all, but we cannot be honest if we don’t take into account the idea that fair is likely to be a subjective concept and note that a system that fails everyone a little can be worse than one that only fails some.

I don’t think (correct me if I’m wrong) anyone here is singing the praises of private schooling (dunno about their blogs). The main point of this site, as I see it, is getting people together to discuss the nitty-gritty of left and/or liberal policy, not sit around agreeing with each other and feeling fluffy (nice though that is).

So, of course I’m not defending private schooling, but what on earth makes you think that the two choices are (1) abolish them or (2) let them rampage unchecked over the socially disadvantaged? That doesn’t seem very rational to me.

The objection raised by me and others is to your use of the term liberal to cover an extremely authoritarian viewpoint.

The question is non-sequitur, as sending kids to public school is not “giving up on society”. It may be giving up on the (dysfunctional) State education system, but that is as far as it goes. I challenge anyone to honestly say they would put their kids willingly into a dysfunctional system/school in the hope it will somehow repair if they actually had any chance of avoiding doing so.

Anyhow, I suggest you look closer at my blog. To think it is something like Hitler is absurd in the extreme - I am very much anti Statist, anti Fascist and anti Authoritarian. To some it may seem “anti Liberal” but that is not surprising, as a number here seem to think “Liberal” means Authoritarian, collectivist and Statist! And yes, the name and colour scheme is in fact irony.