10 Mar 2008

Growing apartheid in NSW public schools

White students move to cheap-private Catholic schools, leaving Aboriginal-dominated schools in rural areas, and ethnic-minority-dominated schools in urban areas.

The urban issue seems to be dual, with white students fleeing Asian-dominated schools, and Asians fleeing "Muslim"-dominated schools (I don't know about this "Muslim" business - is it that Islamic faith of the students or their Arabness that is the issue?).

The key issue here is not the apartheid, but the fact that apartheid public schools are bound to be worse than the private schools. Firstly, in Australia, government funding of the private sector ensures that private education is better than public. Secondly, the advocacy of white people for educational standards in public schools will be lost.

Still, one must remember that this is a somewhat marginal issue. Even busing in the United States failed to eliminate the clear black-white race divide in that country. Australia is no less historically racist - what hope can we have for the elimination of the divide here? Even integrated schooling is not busing, which in turn is not a solution.