Finland ranked seventh in the world in OECD’s student assessment chart in 2018, well above the UK and the United States, where there is a mix of private and state education

  • someguy3@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I think private schools should be banned. Too easy for the rich or even upper income class to gut public schools when you don’t use them. Everyone getting the same education chance is what I call equal opportunity.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Same for health care. If the rich had no other option but to depend on the public system, they’d be more likely to ensure it’s properly funded.

    • pousserapiere@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Well, there are edge cases for private schools that would not make sense being solved by public schools. I moved a lot in my life (still do), and having access to schools in one of my children 's main language is an important thing for them. Those schools are still following local regulations though

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Even if nationwide absolute mediocre student body was a goal banning private schools wouldn’t achieve it.

      Next you would have to ban tutoring companies, after that you would have to ban test prep, after that private tutors, after that you would need restrictions on funding for all schools (which wouldn’t work since not all schools have the exact same funding needs), you would still have advantages. One kid is closer to the library, one kid has a parent who was a teacher, one kid has a stay at home parent with the resources to help them with homework, etc.

      Nothing short of an absolute police state of fairness would be able to achieve this.

      • someguy3@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Next you would have to ban tutoring companies, after that you have to ban test prep

        Lol no you don’t have to. Nice slippery slope. You do what the government can do, which is fund schools. This is really easy, but you want to slippery slope that it must lead to all these other fearmongering things which it doesn’t. Like lol at, sorry to say, your absurdity.

        So back to schools. You fund them all the same. Where I live all public schools are funded the same in the whole province. This is really easy.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It isn’t a slippery slope. It is me showing you what is needed to achieve the goal. A slippery slope is when someone argues that if A then B must follow and hasn’t justified it, it is not at all the same as me saying if your goal is X you will need to do what you just said and more.

          You fund them all the same.

          I highly doubt your province is doing that because it doesn’t freaken work. This school has more kids that have special needs, this other school has more kids whose parents speak a different language at home, this school needed a major boiler upgrade last year, this school has poor students so needs to provide more school supplies, this school is more remote so they had to pay extra to get X, this school is more urban so it needs to pay all teachers a bit more, this school had an unusually low number of 2nd graders this year…

          No government is so fucking stupid to try to do what you are saying. You can start with a baseline funding number and modify it as needed but you aren’t saying that. You are saying the equivalent of lawful stupid alignment for accounting.

          • someguy3@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Dude it’s a slippery slope, you literally went off how you “have to” ban all these other things. And the answer is simple, no you don’t have to ban those other things.

            Oh I see what you’re doing, you’re making a bad faith argument ad absurdem. That it must be 1000000% equal, no adjustments for anything, ever!!! Wow and lol. If I really to spell it out, you fund based on number of students of each ____. Yes repairs and maintenance are funded as they are needed lol. Yes you have baseline funding for small schools.

            In the small chance that any of what you say is good faith, you seem to be stuck in this it must be 10000000000% equal!!! mentality. Ban everything!!! To make it 10000000% equal!!! mentality.

            Dude, this is really simple. Fund public schools well. See above. Peace.

            • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Nope. I told you what you need to accomplish your goals and I pointed out your lie about how funding is happening in your province.

    • cricket97@lemmy.world
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      Yeah let’s pull exceptional students down to the baseline. Every child should be forced to go through the government approved curriculum, nothing can go wrong with that.

      Private schools are based. Much better education than public schools. Obviously I don’t want public schools to be gutted, so let’s make laws preventing that rather than preventing children from getting a good education that public school will never be able to provide.

      People here are way to authoritarian.

      • adriaan@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Look at the Netherlands for a good example then. Private schools aren’t banned but public schools are so good even the princesses go to them. You’re just so used to public schools being underfunded that you think they can’t work. The reason you’d want to ban private schools is because it creates an incentive for the rich and powerful to fix your shitty public schools.

        • cricket97@lemmy.world
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          Why do we need to ban private schools if Netherlands was able to create good public schools without doing so? There is a limit of how good you can make public schools when you have no selection criteria. Private schools are based. I like that there is an option outside of government run institutions.

      • someguy3@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You have gifted programs in the public school. Your thinking shows the exact problem, that public schools can only “pull students down”. You can only see public schools as bad instead of, you know, funding them to be good. How about funding them so they pull everyone up, huh?

        Then you go on to conspiratorial thinking to vilify, gasp, public schools.

        • cricket97@lemmy.world
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          A genius being around average people will pull them down. It’s a good thing to concentrate our smartest children in an environment that lets them learn with equally intelligent peers. There might not be enough hyper intelligent kids in a geographical region to warrant the resources required to fully support that minority of students. Nothing I said was conspiratorial.

          • someguy3@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Dude, gifted programs. Advanced classes. They are together. This is really easy. Any reasonably sized school will have enough to fill out an advanced class.

            And this ensures all students can live up to their potential! How about that? Instead of only the ones that can afford stupid high tuition. Who have to pass screening, and wait times, and wait lists, and then long commutes. If you want more advanced people in society, the way you do that is opening the doors to more people, at all points in their life, right where they live.

            And what the other guy said about selective public schools.

            And yes you’re on about government approved education dogwhistle and authoritarianism. Dude, you’re right down conspiratorial thinking.

            • cricket97@lemmy.world
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              Almost every good private school has extensive financial aid programs. At the private school I went to, they had blind financial aid, meaning you got accepted first and if you couldn’t afford it, you would get in for free, so there was no discrimination against poor people.
              I’m not against gifted programs and more resources being allocated to public schools. But private schools play an important role in this imperfect system and getting rid of them “because it’s unfair” just brings people down.
              It’s not a conspiracy to suggest that public schools abide by a government approved curriculum. You are way too sensitive. You can improve public schools without making private schools illegal, is my point.

              • someguy3@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                You know what’s even better than financial aid? Not needing it in the first place! Because you have excellent public schools. Which works for everyone, at all times, in all locations.

                Had a bad year and couldn’t get the grades to make it to private school that one year? Well now you can pay attention to the excellent teachers you have in public school.

                Can’t take the 1+ hr bus ride to a school far away? Well you can have an excellent school 10 minutes away.

                And this all also starts in grade 1. Or Kindergarten if we get that sorted out. So you have good education before you ever have marks in any substantial way. This starts wayyyyy earlier than you’re portraying. How do you think someone can develop at later stages when they don’t have good schooling to begin with? Really I can’t emphasize this enough. Smart people don’t just pop up out of the blue and then we whisk them away to private school. How do you think people become smart or capable in the first place? We need good, public, accessible, education from the very start.

                m “because it’s unfair” just brings people down.

                Oh you’re still stuck in your mentality that public schools “bring people down”. I think you have this because that’s all you’ve ever seen. You can’t seem to conceive of good public schools, that have gifted programs, that don’t “bring people down”, that can in fact bring people up.

                When rich and upper class don’t use the public schools, there is zero incentive to make them work. As seen by the current state of the US. It’s so bad that, like I said, you can’t even seem to conceive of a public system that doesn’t “bring people down”. It’s so bad that you’ve defined the public system as “bringing people down”. That it must “bring people down”. You’ve said it multiple times.

                And yes saying “government approved education” is a thinly veiled dog whistle. If there was any doubt it was gone when you said authoritarianism. You just don’t like that I called it out, so you have to say I’m “way too sensitive”.

                • cricket97@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  I’m not saying the public school system indiscriminately brings people down, but for the intellectual top 1% of kids it definitely can. stop thinking in absolutes. I think it’s a good thing for smart kids to hang out with smart kids. Believe it or not, different degrees of intelligence require different needs to allow children to reach their full potential. I believe that private schools are great in making sure that potential is met. It’s up to the schools themselves to allocate funding rather than a government bureaucracy, which is notoriously inefficient and frankly always will be, especially at scale. Advocate for improving funding to public schools so private schools would be unnecessary instead of making the choice on behalf of people.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The gifted program at my kids school is based on a single standardized test and practically speaking there is no way to appeal. It isn’t some perfect system.

          • someguy3@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            So… marks. And I assume you can enter at most times.

            So NOT ability to pay $$$, and ability to live in a certain area, and ability to have parents with pull, and ability to pass subjective screening (oh you went to what school before? Well this other student went to this other school we like more).

            • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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              I don’t know why you are assuming when I am right here and you can just ask. Well okay I know why you are assuming I am just going to pretend that I don’t.

              It is one standardized test given once a year. Kid is sick during it? No appeal. Kid had a bad teacher that year? No appeal. One single thing goes wrong on a single day of an entire year and your kid lags behind for at least another year. No teacher recommendations, no gpa, no retest, no other options. Maybe next time ask before you assume.

              Oh and it isn’t some great equalizer either. I see tutoring places bragging that they can get your kid a better score on the test. If you have the money and the time you can get your kid in the program.

              • someguy3@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Dude I’m assuming because that’s how I’ve seen it work. Once a year, cool. Pretty much what I thought. I don’t know why you’re trying to turn this into something else. Boy and you run with that.

                So your argument is more criteria. Ok cool.

                And see my previous message about all the things that it’s not about. It doesn’t need to be 1000% equalizer for public schools to be a pretty good friggin thing.

                • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Now

                  Once a year, cool. Pretty much what I thought

                  Before

                  And I assume you can enter at most times.

                  Keep your story straight instead of assuming.

    • itsame@lemm.eeOP
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      1 year ago

      Hmm. What’s a better, non-misleading title? Or is the article BS in general? I’ll delete this post if it’s false.

      • SaakoPaahtaa@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        “5 years ago finland did aight in education but since then we reformed the system and now we’re plummeting like the rest of the western world”

    • poopkins@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I don’t know if something got lost in editing, but perhaps it was meant to say “no fee paying private schools”? I don’t know if it’s more accurate or not since the article is paywalled, I’m just speculating off the URL.

      • SaakoPaahtaa@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There are fee paying private schools too. The only honest difference is that private schools can’t generate profit, money going in has to go out. That just means that private schools here are proportionally even more luxurious than their public counterparts.

  • Nakedmole@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Private schools are a privilege for the upper class and a symptom of the unjust social inequality in capitalism. In an egalitarian society with good public schools, private schools are obsolete and every child has the same chance to get good education independently of their heritage.

    • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
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      Private schools grant an “out” for the wealthy (and by extension, powerful). If they can pay for better results, they’re actively incentivised to lobby to defund public schools. If the private option doesn’t exist, they’re incentivised to lobby to improve public schools (the ones with kids, in any case).

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      If there is one thing that my experience living in the UK (having lived in other countries of Northern and Southern Europe) has taught me is that private education as well as non-meritocratic access to higher education are a key component in suppressing social mobility and “keeping people in their place” across generations: in that country the rich and high middle class have this well established path for their children through very expensive private schools (curiously know over there as “public schools”, in the same sense of “public” as “anybody can spend a night in the Ritz if they have the £400 to pay for it”) and then an “interview” selection process for Oxford and Cambridge where selection criteria are arbitrary such as for example “having attended the right school” (as an aquaintance of mine was told he hadn’t, as reason to refuse his application) so that people who popped out of the right vagina and were sent to the “right” (£30k a year+) “public” schools are guaranteed to get in and come out of the other side with a diploma from an “elite” (not quite when it comes to pupils, but definitelly can and do hire some of the best researchers and lecturers) university.

      By the way this all continues into their career, since “public” school educated types leverage the connections acquired there (and mommy and daddy’s contacts) to literally step into highly paid sinecures purelly on cronyism.

      In the UK Education is very much part of a red carpet for life if you were born in the “upper” classes.

      My impression there was eventually that, had I been born in the UK to the kind of poor working class parents I was born to, instead of having gone into Physics at Uni thanks to my very high grades at high school and 98% score at the entrance exam (though I ended up switching to and graduating as an EE) and having a successful career across various countries of Europe in Engineering, I would’ve at best been a car mechanic because the education system in the UK is not at all meritocratic and is designed first and foremost to preserve class membership through the generations.

      All this to say that Britain is a perfect example of a very well establish use of private education to maintain the lowest level of social mobility in all of Europe.

      PS: Oh, and don’t get me started on how “public” schools are “charities” (kid you not!) and thus pay no taxes. It’s the very definition of “adding insult to injury” or as they would say over there “really taking the piss out of everybody else”.

    • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Private schools are a privilege for the upper class and a symptom of the unjust social inequality in capitalism.

      Same issue with private health insurance in the US vs. universal healthcare in most other developed countries.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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    My father went to one of the oldest English “public” (i.e. private) schools. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latymer_Upper_School He didn’t talk about the academics, which is surprising for an academic- he talked about the antisemitism he faced every single day from kids, teachers and staff. I’m sure it didn’t help that his parents were poor and he was there on scholarship.

    I went to a private school in the U.S. for elementary school. I was bullied every day, not just by the kids, but by the only teacher I had from first through sixth grade, and he terrified me so much that my parents didn’t know until I was an adult and my mother ran into another kid I went to school with who talked about how sorry she felt for me.

    My daughter goes to an American public school. She is bullied a lot too (we’re an eccentric family), but at least the teachers are mostly on her side, and if one isn’t, I have someone to complain to about it. I wouldn’t even think of risking her in a private school.

    • MrSilkworm@lemmy.world
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      Your family is not eccentric. It’s exceptional. There is a big difference. Unfortunately people are afraid of that,that seems different to what they are accustomed. When they cannot do something the other can, they ridicule it. Being bullied feels like shit. Be there for your daughter and help her steam out all the feelings she has. Help her make alliances with other kids in the school. let her choose to do sports or art she likes. teachers may take her side, but don’t imagine that they’ll do something, no mater how much you complain. I hope my response has some meaning for you

    • aidan@lemmy.world
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      I’m sorry you experienced that, but to be honest it’s entirely circumstancial. There are a lot of teachers in certain districts who normalize teasing students.

  • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    this is just the age old addage “if everyone has to use it then there is an incentive for the gov to make it not garbage”

    • hansl@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Force rich people to use the bus and suddenly the buses are going to get better.

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Finland has great schools.

    They’ve also solved homelessness. (Minus 1000 or so people who are willfully homeless, but that’ll happen anywhere.)

  • cricket97@lemmy.world
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    Finland is also small and ethnically homogenous. A lot easier to make social programs work in that context.