Are Private Schools Immoral?

[WhiskeyGrinder]

Public schools in gentrifying neighborhoods seem on the cusp of becoming truly diverse, as historically underserved neighborhoods fill up with younger, whiter families. But the schools remain stubbornly segregated. Nikole Hannah-Jones has chronicled this phenomenon around the country, and seen it firsthand in her neighborhood in Brooklyn.

“White communities want neighborhood schools if their neighborhood school is white,” she says. “If their neighborhood school is black, they want choice.” Charter schools and magnet schools spring up in place of neighborhood schools, where white students can be in the majority. We have a system where white people control the outcomes, and the outcome that most white Americans want is segregation,” she says.

(snip)

“If one were to believe that having people who are different from you makes you smarter, that you engage in a higher level of thinking, that you solve problems better, there are higher-level ways that integration is good for white folks,” Jones says.

For black children, the benefits of attending an integrated school are much more drastic. “It’s literally, will you receive a quality education or not? Will you be a full citizen in the country of your birth?”

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/12/progressives-are-undermining-public-schools/548084/

Excellent interview and a lot to chew on.

[RandySF]

1. My son's parochial school is 30% Black, 30% Latino and 24% Asian

with white making up the rest. Please tell me how that's immoral.

[Sneederbunk]

2. No.

[Hoyt]

3. White wing racists who send their kids to private mostly white schools are immoral, not the schools

themselves.

[tonyt53]

10. BINGO!!!!!

[EL34x4]

33. The article uses the example of schools in Brooklyn.

Is Brooklyn a hotbed of "White wing" racism?

I honestly don't know. I've never been there.

[Hoyt]

34. Well, almost 20% there voted for Trump.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. Lol at these first three answers.

Truth hurts, I guess.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. You asked a question; don't have a go at people for answering it

rather than conforming to your own idea.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

24. I didn't; the headline of the article did.

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. You posted it, and GD doesn't demand that the thread title is that of an article

Don't be surprised if people answer. Especially if you've used a provocative headline. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines is a bit of a cliche, because lazy journalists do ask questions that should probably have the answer "no", to get attention.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

26. Fair enough!

[IluvPitties]

5. I went to a private school, and it was a great experience for me.

By the way, I am a black Puerto Rican.

[brooklynite]

6. I serve on the Board of a Private School...my mother serves on the Board of another.

She just got back from teaching a workshop at a Friends-sponsored Private School...in Ramallah.

So, I'm saying "no".

[WhiskeyGrinder]

7. I ask people to read the article rather than reacting to the headline.

This isn't about your individual experience. This is about inequalities baked into our school systems and how we manage those inequalities.

[brooklynite]

8. In that case, I ask you to change your title...

...the article does not address the broad topic of ALL Private schools. It focuses on magnets and charter schools in NYC as specific alternatives to the New York public school system.

[Demsrule86]

20. Magnet schools and charter schools are public schools.

Now, the Magnet Schools in New York are quite good and if you have a kid into science or math...phenomenal. I don't know much about their charter schools, but here in Ohio, the Charter schools are a mixed bag. But most are better than any of the city public schools.

[JHB]

16. brooklnite has it right. If you want people to react to the article...

...change the subject line to one that better reflects its contents.

[Demsrule86]

17. The inequalities found in public school have nothing to do with private school...they have to do

with funding. Also, there is a notion that a one size fits all education will suffice. This is not the case. Schools in poor areas need more funding and more support. Private schools often take kids who would be forced to attend really bad schools. My husband went to school at Mount St. Michael's in the Bronx. His school was so scary in Middle School, he carried a knife. You can't educate kids in that environment. His older sisters pooled their money and sent him to Mount St. Michael's for High School. He thrived there and won scholarships. Hubs is an engineer and I seriously doubt he would have made it out of public school in the Bronx...he would have quit. Mount St. Michael's is a diverse school...all nationalities and colors...great school and they do a great job. Parent want to send their kids to the best schools they can...and that is certainly not racist.

[Demsrule86]

21. You don't manage inequality by forcing parents to send their kids to bad schools with the idea that

this will somehow improve the bad schools...never happens. We need a massive amount of money to fix these schools so that parents want to send their kids there. Most parent (me included) want to send their kid to local schools.

[Sophia4]

9. Where are the schools the article describes?

Ahhhh! New York.

In my area of Los Angeles, the schools are mostly Hispanic.

My oldest daughter was the only blonde in her class. The other children teased her about being a dumb blonde. She was probably the best student in the class.

Los Angeles is a pretty racially mixed city. That's all I can say. The schools reflect the mix. Especially the magnet classes.

[meadowlander]

11. Where they replace public schools, yes.

Everyone should be required to go to public school at least 4 days a week and then if their parents want them to have religious ed, STEM enrichment, networking at some country club, working on the farm, online classes etc. they can do that on the fifth day.

Every child is entitled to a high quality education at their local public school. To the extent that any other kind of school drains resources and funding out of local public schools they are undermining democracy and reinforcing inequality in our society.

[Demsrule86]

18. This is the United States. No parent should be forced to send their kids to school anywhere.

I will say, homeschool kids need to take state tests to monitor their progress.

[CanSocDem]

22. Yes, "the United States"....

...where public education has been controlled by corporate America with absolutely stunning success.


.

[Demsrule86]

23. I won't argue with that ...but we need to make education a priority. And any party that advocates

sending kids to bad schools as a method to improve schools is going to lose and deservedly.

[meadowlander]

40. There is no method to improve bad schools that will work

if all the parents who give a shit can easily send their kids somewhere else.

The reason they are bad schools is because all the parents in the district who are really invested in their kids educations have sent their kids to a different school.

Good schools or bad schools result from the communities that support them. When parents walk away from that community and don't hold administrators or teachers accountable, then you get bad schools.

[Loki Liesmith]

29. My kids come before ideology

Sorry.

[meadowlander]

37. They already are in almost every state.

And part of the reason we're in the situation we're in is because of a generation of fundamentalist megafamilies refusing to send their kids to school and brainwashing them to believe that voting for Trump will trigger the rapture.

Democracy crumbles without an educated electorate. If you want to have a United States, this is the price.

[crazycatlady]

28. There are many reasons a kid might go to private school

What if the school offers a program that the public school does not?
What if the kid is bullied to the point where they're not safe at public school?

ETA on this forum, I remember people giving the Obamas a hard time for sending their kids to private school as opposed to public school. The DC public schools are not set up to handle the security needs that a high profile kid comes with.

[meadowlander]

38. Only because we have gutted our public schools.

It's a downward spiral, like taking the public transport. The more people do it, the better and more cost effective the service. If you cut funding for it, service declines and then even fewer people do it so there's more of an excuse to cut funding.

Like I said, talented kids can easily go to their local public school for 90% of their education and go to a magnate school for enrichment classes once a week.

If a kid is bullied at one public school, put them in a different class or, in extreme cases, send them to a different local public school.

We don't need an entire parallel education system to accommodate the one kid in a thousand who is bullied to the point where they can't stay in the mainstream education system. Public schools have special ed programs, programs for teen mothers, etc. They can have programs for kids who are bullied if we fund them to do so, although really it's the bullies who should end up being taken out of the mainstream.

The point is we're never going to be able to find that funding if there's an easy "eject" option for every parent who thinks their kid is special and unique.

[crazycatlady]

41. I was that kid that was bullied

I went to a nationally recognized public school system that let me slip through the cracks. I was scared to go to school from 4th grade to high school graduation. Because I was at a small school, the chances of reinventing yourself are as high as Donald Trump respecting women. Mistakes you made in kindergarten were still talked about in high school.

I would have given my left arm to be able to go to a different school (public or private) just to get away from kids who wanted to make my life miserable.

The school's solution to me was to put me in counseling with girls who were drug addicts. If I fought back, it was me that would get in trouble. Never the (popular) bullies. My parents also didn't do anything.

(This was in the 80s and 90s, before anti bullying legislation).

[Codeine]

35. Screw that. My little girl was bullied

for having the unmitigated audacity to be openly gay. I put her in a charter performing arts school and she's accepted. Our little boy, on the other hand, is doing quite well in regular public school.

Different solutions for different kids, and the safety, well-being, and education of my children trumps whatever ideological biases I may have about the issue.

[Dreamer Tatum]

42. horseshit nt

[dembotoz]

12. Blanket statements r bad

[Doodley]

13. The faith-based private schools are immoral IMO. They churn out lots of self-righteous spoiled brats

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

14. No. Especially if you are assuming that all private schools are the same

and exist only to enforce racial segregation.

I sent my sons to a private school for very personal reasons. My older son, who was mildly autistic but VERY smart, was being bullied in the public school. Which, because this was Kansas, was pretty much lily white. The school district did k-6 elementary, 7 & 8 middle school, 9-12 high school. When the son was in 6th grade another mom, whose son was a year older, told me I could not send him to the middle school. Her son, who was not autistic, but who'd been bullied at that same elementary school, was being bullied so unmercifully that they wound up transferring him to a different middle school in that district. In the new school no one knew him and he wasn't bullied.

We were in a position to consider a private school and enrolled him to start 7th grade at an excellent secular independent school. Where the academics were amazing. While he did not get the most stellar grades there (the autism got in the way) he learned a great deal, did knowledge bowl and science bowl, helping his team from this very small school to go to Nationals two years. Right now he's in a PhD program in physics and astronomy.

What I learned most of all from the private schools experience is that public schools should be better funded. Smaller classrooms. Better support for kids who need extra support. Oh, and I have never believed I should ever be exempt from paying school taxes, whether or not I currently have a kid in a public school. We all benefit from good public schools. But there are times when a private school is the right choice for a particular child.

[Demsrule86]

19. That is exactly it...Private schools are not 'immoral'. Public school are inadequate often

because of property tax funding. There should be state funding across the board. In Ohio, Kasich has cut the state funding for schools and all schools are suffering but the inner city and the poor rural schools fare the worst as they don't have a property tax base to fund the schools. With the GOP packing the courts. I don't see much we can do about it right now. Even in progressive states, the inequality in education is appalling...New York is a great example.

[Calista241]

36. We spend over $600 billion a year on education

In public elementary and secondary schools. That’s over $12,500 per student. That is the 5th highest per-pupil spending amount in the world.

I would argue that the schools are not underfunded, but that those funds are mis-managed and improperly spent.

[Loki Liesmith]

27. No. Next question?

[Joe941]

30. nope

[GreenEyedLefty]

31. I worked in a small suburban school district just over the line from Detroit.

Very small, supposedly progressive community. The district lost more kids between 5th and 6th grades than at any other grade break, because parents decided to pull their kids from the public schools and send them to private/parochial schools.

I heard more carefully veiled reasons why parents didn't want their kids going to school with black kids than I ever thought I would. It was very disappointing.

I am positive that for the vast majority of these families, the bigotry was completely internalized. If they were called out on it, they would be horrified. However, it wasn't my place, so I said nothing.

Edited to add: I don't think private schools are immoral, in and of themselves. What I do think is immoral is the way public schools are funded, using the tax base of the communities in which they are located. It automatically punishes districts where poor people reside. This is not to say black people are always poor, but in some communities, the Detroit area in particular, poverty and unemployment tends to hit the black community harder.

[Caliman73]

39. I agree and would argue that yours is one of the top posts on this thread.

Things are not immoral, people are immoral. If a system is immoral it is because the people within the system act immorally or at least accept immoral activity from others.

The way that public education is structured and funded in the United States is fundamentally flawed and the incentive of profit further exacerbates those flaws when private schools are introduced into communities.

The worst thing is that our universities US Universities have models of education that have been adopted by Finland, and other high performing countries. They came here and took our models of education, applied them back home, and are doing well while we continue to struggle relative to other higher income countries.

The politics of public education and the history of racial and class distinction have always been an anchor around the neck of educating our children.

[SummerSnow]

32. I went to a non religious all black private school in the 70's NYC

.Only 80 students /40 boys and 40 girls
. 4 teachers
.grades 5-8 / 20 students per class

Excellent education!

[aikoaiko]

43. The issue is integration not private and public

I grew up in an affluent town in northern NJ in one of the best schools in the state. It still ranks in the top ten every year.

Each grade had about 250 students and we had one black classmate in each grade - if any.