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From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: "Free" education - comment to Bob Stewart
Message-ID: <4748@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Dec-84 22:42:08 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.4748
Posted: Fri Dec  7 22:42:08 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Dec-84 22:42:08 EST
References: <733@oliven.UUCP>  <1247@dciem.UUCP> <2631@ihldt.UUCP>, <1543@drutx.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 29

There seems to be some confusion here. A good many people really
seem to think that it is the rich people who are screaming for
free education. This is simply not the case. The rich may be bitching that
they have to pay twice (once for the public schools and once for
the private schools that they actually send their children to) or
once when they don't have any children at all, but if you read the
arguements for free schools you will find that they are overwhelmingly
presented by poor, and especiually poor Black people.

(References at home -- I will post if you don't beluieve me.)

The education system does a fairly good job of educating people
who live in white, middle class suburbia. (This is not to say that
the white, middle class suburbanites are really pleased with it, but
it is just not as incredibly rotten as the education you will get
in an inner city ghetto school in a large US city.) There are poor
people who think that the education their children are getting is
abysmal, *but they cannot afford to move to white suburbia to get
the better education*. There have been many experiments in schools,
simply because the poor people think that they can do a better job than the governmet
in deciding where their children should be educated.

Before you talk about the greatness of universal education, talk to
the people who are the supposed beneficiaries of this -- the poorest
people -- and see if they are pleased with what they have received.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura