I will start by saying that I’m an atheist so I am against the public funding of any religious school, I feel that it is both immoral and a waste of public money to subsidize the teaching of matters of faith for which there is no evidence of there being any basis for the faith.
Knowing my views on religious education, you can imagine my outrage when I read that the Shore School had been able to outbid the Federal Government for a property adjacent to their school. To think that a school that is subsidized to the extent of $9,000,000 annually could put up $35,000,000 for a property which it only required to house a museum and sporting facilities left me astounded and annoyed.
My annoyance wasn’t in anyway abated when I heard the School Governor, an ex business CEO of course, state on the talk back radio that the school had not used the subsidy to pay for the property but had been saving for this purchase over a number of years.
I suppose that the Governor didn’t listen to the rest of the broadcast when a member of P and C for a state school came on and explained that their school had just had a very successful fete and had raised $7000.
From these two talk back subjects it is easy to work out that if the public school was really keen to raise enough money to make a similar purchase it would only take a successful fete every month for the next 444 years to raise the necessary $35,ooo,ooo
There were a number of other men that rang in about this subject and many were ex students of this and other rich private schools. I was surprised at their apparent honesty when they admitted that the education that they had received wasn’t any better than a public school education, some even said that it wasn’t as good; however, the thing that they did get out of the attendance of the private school was an access to networking. Many seemed to be admitting that they had been able to get appointed to jobs, for which they were not really the best applicant, purely on the basis of having been to a private school and knowing the right people.This seemed to me to be a reasonable enough claim since when I was a working person I found that the majorith of the executive jobs seemed to be held down by nincompoops whose only talent was to be able to surround themselves with enough advisers to be sure that they would get some things right.
It is actually no wonder that the international banking system collapsed and that we can’t find solutions to global warming. It is obvious that the powers that be are not really able to appreciate that the global warming isn’t something that will hang around whilst they dither and try to please every one.
Our problem now is that we are in a position when we need scientific solutions if we are survive and we are still run by people that are there because of their contacts and old school associations. It is no wonder that Ken Henry is pessimistic about the ability of out Governments to be able to solve the problems of global warming and over population which is forecast to occur over then next 40 years.
Hi Again John,
last weekend I took my kids to the Florey primary school fete where my two boys go to school. There were crowds of parents running stalls, selling things and helping to raise money in a communal efffort to improve the education of our children. My kids wandered around happily buying lollies and trinkets, I bought some plants and simply enjoyed the happy atmosphere. Overall I suspect that this school too probably raised a few thousand dollars to buy books for the library, instruments for the band etc.
And it also made my blood boil to read about the outrageous property purchases being made by private schools in Sydney and elsewhere. It infuriates me that even 1 cent of my taxes goes to fund this rubbish. They should bulldoze the lot of these bloody bastions of privilege and elitism. Come the Revolution…:-)
Cheers
Geoff