Hi,

I'm a secondary teacher with broadly left wing political philosophies. I support public education and think that private schools are grossly overfunded. However, I don't want them eradicated from the face of the planet or anything like that! Is it hypocritical for me to teach in a private school? Is it hypocritical but only if I can't get a job in a public school that is anywhere near where I live with my family?

Appreciate your thoughts.

Hi there,
I absolutely agree with you Private school you find the best atmosphere and good faculty. School building and Labs are Advanced this may help you to walk step by step among the recent age. In Govern School these things you can't find every one is seeking to break the rules and principles.

Since private schools are funded with private money, how are they "overfunded" Do you feel you should be permitted to tell others how to spend their money.

YES it would be extremely hypocritical of you to take a job at a private school, especially since it is only a matter of convenience for you that causes you to compromise your beliefs.

The fact that you ask this question means you really need to examine you core "left wing philosophies" to see if you really hold with them because you belive in them or because its acceptable in your circle to hold them. If you really believe in them then stick with them or accept being a hypocrite.

In my opinion it is hypocritical, because you are implicitly supporting economic segregation by working in a private school. If it is only because you can't find a job elsewhere, i find your situation understandable. To be in your position, i would just take long showers in an attempt to wash off the gross feeling of working for something i detest so much ROFL, and try to find a job in the public sector asap.

Hope a position in a public school soon opens up for you!

hmmm yes off course I agree with you John Rumpole your statement about this is right.

My youngest son has just finished Year 12.
For the past two years he has attended a private school, a school in which they are cared for both as budding adults and as students.

The teachers are dedicated and staff turnover is minimal, most only leaving to further their careers in a similar institution.

The facilities at the College are superb and one good example is music.
Their Grand Piano was donated by an Old Boy and has been there for a number of years, it is in pristine condition.

The piano at our local Government High School, which is about the same age, is covered with scratches and kid's initials.

Jane, you might like to read the answer to this ethical dilemma regarding possible hypocritical behaviour to help you with your own...

I support Occupy Wall Street and am appalled by the behavior of the corporations they’re rallying against. While I do not work on Wall Street, my small start-up is financed primarily by one of the biggest Wall Street companies. Am I a hypocrite who should resign immediately? ANONYMOUS, NEW YORK CITY

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/magaz ... azard.html

It is not hypocritical for you to work in a private school.

You would prefer to work in a private school, and presumably would indulge your preference if you could. But lots of people have different jobs from the ones they would prefer; that doesn’t make them hypocrites.

You say that private schools are grossly overfunded (I assume: in terms of the public money they receive) but that you “don’t want them eradicated from the face of the planet”. If you don’t want them eradicated, presumably you don’t object to other teachers working in private schools. It would be hypocritical of you to do a job that you objected to others doing, but that’s not the case here.

It seems to me perfectly coherent to say that “I support policies which would lead to private schools receiving less public funding”, while at the same time working in a private school. It would only become hypocritical if you said “I believe no teacher should work in a private school” while working there yourself.

Peregrinus is absolutely right. There is nothing hypocritical about you working in a private school. To say it is would make as much sense as my saying that, because I think the government spends too much on roads and not enough on rail and public transport, it would be hypocritical for me to ever use a road.

If there were fewer private schools, there would be more public schools, and there would be more likely to be a public school near you, at which you could work.

There are also ethical reasons why it is better to work near your home, where that is possible (it often isn't), including:
- you are less likely to have to travel to and from work by private car, thereby reducing your carbon emissions, and
- by reducing your travel time, you are able to spend more time with your family and friends, which is beneficial to them as well as you.

andrewk



The better analogy would be if you started a company that resurfaces/builds roads, and yes you would be hypocritical for doing so.

Hmmmm. There are two assertions in that post. Can you substantiate either of them?

Yes, you are being a hypocrite.

If you ultimately believe that public schools need more support and that private schools are grossly overfunded, you are directly contributing to the opposite of your beliefs by working at a private school. You are increasing the amount of teachers willing to work at a private school, thus lowering the cost of that labour and helping the bottom line of private schools. The converse effect occurs at public schools, as there is now one less teacher willing to work there and thus it has a negative effect of their cost of labour.

Not really much different to a rich kid in university lecturing others on the benefits of communism, or the multicultural advocate who chooses to live in a homogenous area, or someone who supports high taxation but works the tax system to pay as little as possible.

I also suspect that it is not just travel time that is the reason for your not wanted to teach in a public school. I've known people who have travelled 2hrs to get to their poorly paying factory jobs, so I don't buy it as the whole reason. Public schools have a number of disadvantages that private schools don't, for example, not being able to get rid of troublesome students - often those students will be shuffled around various public schools as they get kicked out of each one, thus a lot of public schools both kick bad students out only to receive more bad students in return. There are issues with pay being dictated by unions, thus as (what I assume is) a beginning teacher you will be paid according to the length of time you have been teaching rather than the quality of your teaching. Private schools are not as beholden to government bureaucracy when it comes to spending funding, thus often have better facilities than their overall budgets would suggest (see the rorts in the BER scheme which occurred almost entirely in public schools).

Ultimately, you have three basic choices.
1. Critically analyse your own beliefs to see why it is that you support a heavily public, government run school system whilst not actually wanting anything to do with it.
2. Find a way to live with the contradiction. Some ways you can do this are by lip service (being very vocal in your support for public schooling whilst maintaining a personal distance, etc), or blaming others (such as the rich, who aren't paying their fair share and are thus responsible for you not wanting to work in the public system, etc).

Despite what I have said, I do wish you all the best in your endeavors.

Oh and one more thing.

You have probably just finished a university degree in the teaching field. Universities are notorious for left-wing bias, and teaching is probably one of the worse areas for this. You are likely at the most left-wing point in your life, and will slowly become more conservative as you experience more of the real world outside of university theory. Try to take this into account.

Harry your accusations against the original poster and fulminations about universities make you sound very much like a right-wing ideologue that leaped with joy at a chance to put the boot into someone with opposite views. If you are going to throw around ad hominems like that the least you can do is let us know your personal views on taxpayer funding of wealthy private schools. I also suggest you look up the definition of hypocrite and then reconsider your posts in the light of that.

As for the bit about becoming more conservative as you age, I am pleased to report that my social and environmental conscience has steadily grown in the two and a half decades since I left uni, quite contrary to that suggestion. My observation is that, as one ages, one realises what is really important, and money and power have ever diminished attraction.

Andrew,

Your reply to Harry does seem to suffer a bit from the things of which you accuse him.

Personally I've found that I've become more conservative as I've grown older; I remember Sydney University as a hot bed of public and Student Union (via compulsory fees) funded left-wing radicalism and public funded etc., Honi Soit as their, largely unread, fish wrapper mouthpiece.

Sydney Uni taught me a lot, especially to appreciate the cheap South Indian cafe that was a short walk away on City Road.

Andrewk, voting patterns strongly indicate that as people age, they generally grow more conservative in their views. This doesn't mean it will happen to you, however it will happen to most. I'm genuinely surprised you didn't know this.

As for taxpayer funding of private schools, ultimately the reason they are there and tolerated by authorities is because governments know they cannot afford to run a 100% public system themselves. Ultimately it takes financial burden off the public system, because whilst tax money is funnelled into private schools it is cheaper for the taxpayer than actually having the government run those schools. Again, take a look at the waste in the BER program and note that it was almost entirely the public, government run sector that couldn't efficiently allocate resources for an example of this.

That said, the way the current system is setup is inefficient and still allows for typical government bloat. I would rather see a voucher system implemented in which public schools and private schools directly compete for tax dollars, each striving to offer a better education for the same taxpayer dollar, allowing the parent/s to decide for themselves.

Yes, universities are generally very left-wing places. Again, this doesn't mean that every single person who steps onto a university campus will end up being a radical socialist, however when compared to the real world, there is definitely that tendency. Somewhat ironically, higher education is perhaps the biggest transfer of wealth from poor to rich that this country has ever seen. The people who benefit from university are disproportionately from privileged backgrounds, yet I don't see too many of those people complaining about the inequality of their educations being funded by factory workers, retail assistants, cleaners and construction workers, who derive no benefit from said university educations.

If you are referring to its containing some personal criticism, then I agree. This was deliberate. I always prefer to avoid personal criticism in any of my posts but in this instance I concluded, after reflection, that it was warranted as a counter to the strong and, in my view, unprovoked, personal criticism of the original poster that was in the post to which I was responding.

Andrewk, it wasn't unprovoked personal criticism. The OP asked whether or not she is a hypocrite, and why that is so. Yes, my views are quite strong but that is no reason to coddle the OP with touchy-feely sentiments. I do wish her all the best, as stated before.

What is your basis for believing that governments believe this? One of the interesting lessons from the disastrous Mark Latham experiment was that there are many votes to be lost in cutting govt funds to private schools, even amongst those who are unlikely to be able to send their children to one. That appears to be indicative that governments fund private schools for political reasons rather than for economic ones.
This assertion is often made by supporters of taxpayer funding for private schools, but it is just supposition, which may or may not be correct. It is easy to draw erroneous conclusions by comparing the unadjusted govt funding provided to private schools with the average budget per pupil in public schools, but that is no indicator of what the average cost would be if all students were in government schools (given that private schools would then no longer be able to scoop off the cream of the socio-economically advantaged students who are much cheaper and easier to teach, and that the public system would have increased economies of scale), and even less indication of what the cost would be in the much more likely, and less draconian, scenario in which private education was permitted, but simply did not receive any taxpayer funds.

Governments fund things almost entirely for political reasons, or else they wouldn't get elected. You should be asking yourself why it is parents don't want to send their kids to public schools in the first place.



The benefit of having a favourable economy of scale is negated by the public system being overly bureaucratic and government run. Again, look at the BER program where, in theory, government run schools would have a much better economy of scale (being able to negotiate larger contracts for more work due to much of the work being commissioned by government departments responsible for hundreds of schools) ending up being vastly less efficient than independent private schools at allocating funds, who theoretically should have had higher costs.

If you believe that public schooling does as well, or better, than private schooling on a dollar for dollar basis, then you would have no problem supporting a voucher system in which the government provides a fixed value voucher which is attached to the student. As with most (if not all) voucher systems, rules would require that schools not be able to accept a voucher if they charged school fees on top of the voucher, thus preventing the wealthy from using it as upper-class welfare.