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Comment by Sileni | Hacker News Reader

It's classist, which is just the modern socially acceptable version. It's saying "We're aware there's a problem with the public school system, but we can't be bothered to do anything to help. We'd rather withdraw our own kids and create another school system with the resources we can then divert from the public school system."

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It's not saying shit. It's just that you want the best education for your child, and you can get the greatest marginal gain not by donating to the school system but by just sending your child to a private school. It's not even diverting resources from public schools because you still have to pay the taxes for that.

This ignores that educational funding is (generally) allocated by legislative bodies, based on various criteria. And that these criteria determine how much funding is delivered to where, and if any funding is delivered at all.

So we have the now classic cycle of perform a cut, point out how bad an institution is performing, use this as an excuse to cut more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

At least where I live (and in most of the US from what I understand), it's almost exclusively based on property taxes. Quite obviously, areas with more rich people get more tax revenue and therefore better schools, even if the rich people don't go to those schools. This actually works to the benefit of districts that are mixed, because there's a lot more revenue. The fact that the rich kids aren't attending works as a bonus because their revenue is still there, only spread out across fewer (poorer) students.

* Actually, I don't think this is relevant to what I'm saying in any case. The fact that parents want their kids to have the best education possible shouldn't be surprising even if it hurts someone else. I'm not trying to argue for the side effects (as I said above, rich areas get more funding so most poor students get less), I'm just trying to say that there's nothing wrong with a parent wanting to send their kids to private school.

I would go so far as to argue that they in fact do desire the ill-education of the remainder of the populations' children (at least, on some unconscious level) as an advantage given to everyone is no advantage at all, and one's success is always measured in relation to another lack thereof. The two cannot be disentwined.

My issue is that no child asks to be born. And that alone charges and commands us with a certain responsibility to insure that, upon reaching adulthood, or thereabouts, they are capable of exercising themselves in the world to the best of their ability, not that everything need be given, but that enough be given that they can ensure their own attempts to access their own desires. And I will say, that this stands doubly important in a democratic society, where they will grow to have just as much power and say so, in theory, as any other member of such a society. And to allow such a bifurcation in the fundamental educational strata, creates a two-classes society which, it would seem to me, most likely to gravitate toward either a set of demagogues ruling over such a body and turning their ignorance to their own despotic ends, or the return to a state of affairs whence it was considered acceptable and proper for only a certain segment the population, defined by money, or land, or familial prestige, who through these means were the rare few to have access to a said liberal education, are considered once again the natural rulers of the lives of the greater mass of people.

If you think education funding would be cut year over year the way it has been if the people making those decisions actually had to send their kids to those schools, there's no argument to be had here. You can't really believe that teachers would still be paid effectively minimum wage across the country if they were responsible for the children of community leaders. It's a joke.

Classes are always going to exist, friend. People will also always look out for their and their family's best interest before the collective's. Those are all constants and they aren't malevolent. What is malevolent is calling people racist for withdrawing support for a clearly broken system when their children are at stake.

Who here is being malevolent and calling other people racist?

Well, their comment is flagged now so I can't directly quote it (drats). More or less they said, "private schools are indicative of racism". In other words, people who send their kids to private schools are racist or support racist constructs? Racism is fairly malevolent.

So, then, the social equivalent of privatize the profits and socialize the losses?

Individualize everything.

A sentiment that can only be expressed by an individual (or group, which bears its own irony) from the (relative) comfort of the accrued benefits of the opposite form of social organisation.

“The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.” ― Hayek

“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.” ― Arthur Schopenhauer

Liberty and freedom aren't the same things. If you're in complete solitary, sure you have complete freedom. But what does that matter? That doesn't comment on how we should structure our societies. Liberty isn't unchecked freedom for every individual. Unchecked freedom for every individual would in fact run counter to preserving liberty for every individual. Unchecked freedom means I can steal your stuff or kill you. Liberty means the opposite; I'm free to do as I please as long as it doesn't infringe your ability to do the same.

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