Reply to Do you make $400,000 a year but feel broke?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Private school is a luxury. Not a need. You are off your rocker. [/quote]
This is a different debate.  Again, I understand that most support a system that only allows the very wealthy to attend private school, sprinkled with some lower SES students for diversity purposes, but I don't agree with perpetuating that classist system.[/quote]

I don't understand--all children in the US are entitled to a free education between the ages of 6 and 18 (at a minimum). It's one of the few entitlements in this country. People can choose to spend their money on a private education, but how does the fact that education is expensive and therefore private education is primarily limited to the wealthy make it "classist"? I don't think it's classist that some people drive Mercedes or having bigger homes than me or do their shopping at Whole Foods. They make more money than me and that's how they choose to spend it. Same with private school.

The "classist" issue you should be fighting for is the major discrepancies in quality of public education driven by local funding and the reliance on property taxes, which vary significantly. [/quote]
First, I'm fully on board with the proposals you're making to reform public education funding. I'd actually go further and bus kids to equalize schools by SES status, as de facto segregation currently ensures that the wealthy can surround themselves with other wealthy students.

The reason the financial aid system (at least as it's being described/defended here) is classist is it permits wealthy families to painlessly give their kids better educational opportunities, thereby perpetuating a legacy system that ensures the children of the wealthy will populate higher education at higher rates than other groups (regardless of individual merit).  I don't think most founders of independent schools view were in it to create a "luxury" brand equivalent to a German car or organic produce.  Most of them were in it for idealistic reasons related to how education should work - for example, they might have believed in a progressive model of teaching that's distinct from the status quo.  Alternatively, they may have believed in integrating some level of religious teaching into a program.  I think it's condescending to independent schools to compare them to a luxury good.  But again, that's all irrelevant because private schools don't view their missions this way, so the question isn't whether every family should have an opportunity to afford private (the schools themselves say yes to this), it's how to modify the system to actually do it.[/quote]

Ummm….most of the elite private schools were started to separate the wealthy/elite from the masses in the public schools. It's got nothing to do with the financial aid system. [/quote]

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