Sep 23, 2011
All schooling is for sale: Beyond the myth of fee-paying private vs. free public education
We are pleased to welcome this guest post from Dr. Karl Kitching, lecturer in the School of Education at University College, Cork.
There’s no mistaking a rightist Hook when it lands. It has become par for the course to describe ‘socialist’ Dáil deputies in a derogatory way. But ‘atheist’, George? From the same man who argued in the Irish Times on Tuesday September 20th that private schools are more inclusive than others because they were the first to allow Jewish students to enrol?
Let’s clear up a few of the problems with Tuesday’s pillow talk with private schools of the world, before exposing a more important contemporary myth: that there is actually a ‘private versus public’ debate to be had with regard to education in Ireland.
The biggest problem with George Hook’s defense of private schooling is that it was a solo run, so to speak. It is based on his own individual experience, and takes no account of how schooling quality and equality have dramatically changed in Ireland and internationally in the intervening period. Few would dismiss George’s own positive experience of school. But his ‘defence’ is hugely outdated, individualised and romanticised. As far as I am aware, George attended school before the advent of mass second level education. There were few alternatives to private (religious-run) schools during his time.
Only a fool would dismiss George’s experience of poverty as a child, particularly relative to today’s standards. Indeed, I want to use the issue of poverty as a core part of moving beyond Tuesday’s assertions. Ireland has seen a slow growth of a middle class since the 1960s, but our status relative to each other has little changed since then. Latter 20th century Ireland was characterised by a degree of polarisation in terms of relative income and social status that spiked during the ‘boom’. Bank of Ireland figures show the top one percent owned twenty percent of the wealth in 2006. The 2009 State of the Nation’s Children report found almost one fifth of those under eighteen were at risk of, or were in relative poverty. Almost one tenth experienced consistent poverty, a rise from the 2008 figure of just over six percent. George was correct arguing that the system is elitist. But he was absolutely incorrect to suggest that this has anything to do with the classic individualist narrative of ‘intelligence, talent and a bit of effort’. How come ‘effort’ fails to get most of the above people out of social exclusion? There is a massive waiting list for the Back to School allowance, and greater numbers of middle class are finding themselves on this list now. Is this situation all their fault too?
George was also incorrect to suggest that declining standards have their root cause in the public education system. Research has consistently demonstrated that major problems in affluent, developed societies internationally such as low social mobility, declining literacy and maths achievement and mental health problems have their basis in how these societies structurally polarise people. Income disparities between households and a whole range of other inequalities tend to heavily determine students and young people’s educational trajectories. This finding has crystallized in Wilkinson and Pickett’s extensive Spirit Level analysis. George might leaf through it.
Taking the above social changes and continuities into account, I want to strongly emphasise that the framing of this ‘public/private’ debate conceals far more than it reveals. Education in contemporary Ireland is for up sale, to families placed on a continuum of low to high spending (and culturally proper and ‘flawed’) consumers. Forget the notion that anyone has access to a free public education system or ‘universal access’ as George called it. Are parents who don’t scrimp and save and ‘make sacrifices’ to send their children to fee-paying schools somehow failures compared to those who do? No. We all know about the social and financial pressure on particular families to make ‘voluntary’ contributions. We also know that particular schools would be unimaginable for some families because of the cost of school ‘traditions’, like trips to the continent. Perhaps more significantly, the huge growth of the shadow education market has entrenched a consumerist model of education that dwarfs public/private school debates.
Officially established grinds schools and study centres now abound in Ireland, as do increasingly vapid ‘how to ace your Leaving Cert’ books. Not to mention the ‘grinds’ cottage industry taking place in homes across Ireland. At the upper end of the consumer continuum, those who can afford fee-paying schools are likely to be earning exceptionally high (dual/individual) incomes, and to have huge adaptability, confidence, and connections. What’s wrong with this consumer continuum model? It’s that your achievement is more likely to be determined by your ability to pay for the best exam notes and hints. It also raises generations of test-takers and people who do not debate the values of their school, community or most of all: consumerism. Less stress, more success indeed.
Minister Quinn was labelled a ‘socialist’ by George in his article because Quinn is allegedly trying to control education by ending state payment of fee-paying school teachers’ salaries and by suggesting a dialogue should happen around school enrolment policies. George, let’s get real about calling the Minister a socialist. Successive governments have positioned Ireland as a competition state in global markets for years. The chances of having a socialist in any Irish government cabinet are slim (I think George’s socialist-atheist double-whammy really means he views the Minister as a communist). Minister Quinn’s moves can be more accurately described as weakly attempting to lessen the pace of gross inequalities brought on by a polarised society and a massively underfunded education system.
Supporting private education is not straight-forward, particularly when we think of the need to maintain minority religious (e.g. Protestant) schooling. Indeed, the complex terms of education in Ireland are up for shaping now like never before. We have the continued growth of an individualist education model that far exceeds the narrow terms of a public/private debate. We have seen street protests for the rights of Special Needs and – to a lesser extent – Traveller, migrant and other minority ethnic children. We have a Forum on primary patronage which has geared itself towards religious patronage instead of the obvious class and racial inequalities that affect family school ‘preferences’. Is it in any way likely that the ball might bounce differently in the coming years?
