Educational Apartheid - an alphabetical compendium of views

Education should be free.

All young people should be able to reach their full potential.

Unfortunately education has become commodified with the result that even in the prosperous English--speaking world access to high quality pre-university education requires parental wealth.

This Educational Apartheid extends to university education. Thus the majority of young people attending Government Secondary Schools in prosperous countries like the UK and Australia are disproportionately excluded from university, from top universities and from top courses (e.g. Medicine and Law).

The race-based Segregation in the US applies today to African-American children in public schools who are grossly deprived under a system of Educational Apartheid.

These disparities are greatly magnified when one considers the global North-South divide with dire consequences for social advancement, general literacy, infant mortality and avoidable mortality in general.

This site is devoted to describing key aspects of Educational Apartheid and how it can be circumvented (see also "Educational Apartheid":

https://sites.google.com/site/educationalapartheid/home ).

Perhaps the worst example of Educational Apartheid in the World is that imposed on Indigenous (Aboriginal) people in what must be described as Apartheid Australia, a country with an appalling and ongoing secret genocide history (see

Gideon Polya, “Australian Anzac & Armenian Genocide. Australia’s secret genocide history”, MWC News, 25 April 2011: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/10256-australian-anzac-a-armenian-genocide.html

), an ongoing Aboriginal Genocide and Aboriginal Ethnocide, and which recently passed race-based laws and regulations denying the protection fo the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act for Indigenous Australians, Afghan refugees fleeing the Afghan Genocide and Tamil refugees fleeing the Tamil Genocide in Sri Lanka.

Thus the entry for Professor Helen Hughes AO:

According to the Australian Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) “Professor Helen Hughes AO is Professor Emeritus, the Australian National University, and Senior Fellow at the CIS [Centre for Independent Studies]. Her expertise ranges from the Australian economy, economic development and aid, international trade, Indigenous affairs and capital flows. She was Professor of Economics and Director of the National Centre for Development Studies at ANU from 1983 to 1993, and a member of the Fitzgerald Committee on Immigration: A Commitment to Australia. She also worked at the World Bank from 1968 to 1983 and was a member of the United Nations Committee for Development Planning from 1987 to 1993. Widely published on a range of topics and regularly interviewed in the media, Professor Hughes has recently focussed on issues of development in the Pacific and Australia's remote Indigenous communities. Her recent work has included numerous Issue Analysis papers and press articles” (see: http://www.cis.org.au/research-scholars/cis-research-scholars/author/3-hughes-helen ).

Professor Helen Hughes AO on gross Educational Apartheid in the Northern Territory of Apartheid Australia (2008): “”Aboriginal schools in the Northern Territory have failed to provide Indigenous students with these essentials for entry into the labour force. Some 5,000 Indigenous teenagers, and another 5,000 young men and women in their 20s, are unable to speak English, and are illiterate and non-numerate. They cannot read road signs, menus, or instructions on packages of medicines, cleaning materials, and other packaged goods. Aborigines are often accused of using taxis wastefully, but many cannot read well enough to use public transport. They cannot fill shelves in a supermarket, or serve in a shop or café … These young peoples’ education has made them more foreign in their own country than the latest immigrants from Somalia… To overcome the damage these youngsters’ education has done to them would require sheltered accommodation in English-speaking environments, mentored part-time introductory jobs and one-on-one tuition for one or two years. The cost of sheltered accommodation for teenagers who are unable to live at home is $900 a week in Sydney. If the Northern Territory were serious about tackling the deficit its Aboriginal education polices have created, the cost would be between $500 million and $1 billion.” [1].

Professor Helen Hughes AO on gross Educational Apartheid for Indigenous children from urban welfare dependent families or remote communities (2008): “Australia, however, has a serious problem in low participation in higher education by students from low socio-economic backgrounds. Indigenous children from urban welfare dependent families, just like non-Indigenous children from similar welfare dependent backgrounds, have very low participation in higher education. The mainstream schools they attend – the so-called “sink” schools – do not provide adequate primary and secondary education to enable these children to proceed to university. Children from remote communities are even more disadvantaged because Indigenous schools in those communities fail to teach basic literacy and numeracy, let alone a full primary curriculum. For these children, the chances of progressing to higher education are negligible. The few Indigenous students from urban welfare dependent families or remote communities who qualify for university entrance are almost always those whose parents have them board with relatives to access quality mainstream schools, or those at quality boarding schools on scholarships, Current government school reform programs do not even aim to eliminate Indigenous schooling deficits (“close the education gap”) by 2018. Under current programs, ten years from now, most Indigenous children from urban welfare dependent backgrounds and remote communities will still be excluded from for [sic] higher education by their sub-standard education… To put it simply, id children are not taught to read, write and count, they have no hope of going to university.. No amount of affirmative action will make any difference.” [2]. ”

[1]. Helen Hughes, “Indigenous education in the Northern Territory”, CIS Policy Monograph 83: http://www.cis.org.au/images/stories/policy-monographs/pm-83.pdf .

[2]. Helen Hughes, “The Centre for Independent Studies submission to the Review of Higher Education Access and Outcomes for Aborigjnal and Torres Straits Islander People”, 18 November 2011: http://www.cis.org.au/images/stories/submissions/sub-review-of-higher-education-access-outcomes-181111-hh-sh.pdf .

Below is an Alphabetical Compendium of informed views about Educational Apartheid (wealth and/or race-based Segregated Education).

ABRAMS, Rebecca.

Rebecca Abrams is the author of both fiction and non-fiction. Non-fiction titles include “When Parents Die”, an established classic in its field, and “Three Shoes One Sock” and “No Hairbrush”, the best-seller guide to having a second child. An award-winning journalist, she is a former columnist on the Daily Telegraph and a long-standing reviewer for the Guardian. Born in 1963, Rebecca has lived in America and Switzerland and now lives in Oxford with her husband and two children (see: http://www.panmacmillan.com/authors%20Illustrators/displayPage.asp?PageTitle=Individual%20Contributor&ContributorID=75415&RLE=Author ) .

Rebecca Abrams, reviewing “How Not to Be a Hypocrite: school choice for the morally perplexed parent" by Adam Swift (Routledge, London, 2003): “It is hard to overestimate how socially divisive and intellectually muting the issue of school choice has become in recent years among a certain class of parent. Other than war in Iraq, no subject is more likely to ruin a good party or wreck a close friendship. Twenty years ago, parents who leaned to the political left were confident that the state was, if not great, then good enough. Middle-class parents would be able to make up the educational shortfall, and the benefits of learning about real life at a state school would outweigh (more or less) any advantages of intellectual hothousing at a private one. Those parents' children are now parents themselves and there is little confidence left. In the past decade, private education has established itself as a dark and powerful current in the minds of many who, in their younger days, swore (or even just crossed their fingers and hoped) that they would live and die by state education; slowly but surely, it draws them away from the shores of well-founded conviction and out into the precarious waters of what those on the other side of the political divide like to call "choice", but that those caught in the undertow suspect may be closer to compromise, or even cop-out… Swift could have adopted any number of approaches to this subject, but by sticking to a rigorously philosophical analysis and paring the problem back to first principles, he succeeds in tracking a clear path through the complexities. Put very simply, his argument is as follows: parents are morally entitled to behave partially towards their children, but not if that leads directly to putting other children at a disadvantage. Sending children to private schools rather than the local state schools does, in diverse ways, disadvantage other children and is therefore, in most circumstances, morally unacceptable… One of Swift's more startling statistics is that if all the schools in England had the same acreage of playing field as one private school, more than half the entire countryside - or 33 million acres - would be set aside for playing field. Couldn't there be an obligation on private schools at least to share their playing fields? Similarly, their art studios, music rooms and libraries? If there is clear evidence, as he claims, that private schools accrue advantages by having the brightest and most affluent children, why is there no obligation for those same schools to contribute financially to the education of all those negatively affected by the absence of such children from the state sector? If the government won't abolish private schools, can it not at least make them earn their charitable status?” [1].

[1]. Rebecca Abrams, “The great betrayal. Rebecca Abrams despairs of our educational apartheid” (reviewing “How Not to Be a Hypocrite: school choice for the morally perplexed parent Adam Swift (Routledge, London, 2003), New Statesman, 31 March 2003: http://www.newstatesman.com/200303310039 .

BLANCHFLOWER, David.

David Blanchflower is professor of economics at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, US, and the University of Stirling, UK (see: http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/12/black-students-oxford ).

Professor David Blanchflower commenting on solutions to US and UK Educational Apartheid (2010): “The Labour MP and former higher education minister David Lammy, writing in the Guardian on 6 December, reported back on responses to a series of Freedom of Information requests which suggest that getting a place at Oxford and Cambridge "remains a matter of being white, middle-class and southern". He noted that David Cameron's alma mater Brasenose College, Oxford, recruits 92 per cent of its students from the top three social classes - the sons and daughters of solicitors and accountants. The average for UK universities is 65 per cent. Lammy also found that only one British, black, Caribbean student was admitted to Oxford last year. Merton College has not admitted a single black student in five years. Black students are applying - but they are not being accepted. Cameron reiterated concerns on 8 December that the current system had hurt social mobility, saying: "Oxford and Cambridge take more students each year from just two schools - Eton and Westminster - than from among the 80,000 pupils who are eligible for free school meals." It isn't that way where I work. More than a third of Dartmouth's students are minorities, including 7.6 per cent African Americans. Thirteen per cent of our students receive Pell Grants, which are given to students with family incomes under $20,000. Some 10 per cent are the first generation in their family to attend college. We operate needs-blind admissions, even for foreign students, which means that if you are poor, we pay. Harvard, Princeton and Yale operate comparable policies and have similarly diverse student bodies. There are no sports or merit scholarships in the Ivy League.” [1].

[1]. David Blanchflower, ”What the US can teach Oxbridge”, New Statesman, 15 December 2010: http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/12/black-students-oxford .

CAMPAIGN FOR FISCAL EQUITY (CFE).

The Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) in its own words: “The Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Inc. (CFE), a non-profit organization, was founded in 1993 by a coalition of concerned parents and education advocates seeking to reform New York State's school finance system to ensure adequate resources and the opportunity for a sound basic education for all students in New York City. That same year, CFE filed a constitutional challenge to New York State's school finance system, claiming that it underfunds New York City's public schools and, thus, denies its students their constitutional right to the opportunity for a sound basic education.

In 2006, after 13 years in the courts, the state’s highest court delivered the case’s final ruling. The Court of Appeals ruled in CFE’s favor, confirming that the state must provide its children with the opportunity for a sound basic education, defined as the "opportunity for a meaningful high school education, one which prepares them to function productively as civic participants." Working with a broad-based coalition, CFE turned the litigation’s findings and the court’s rulings into legislation benefitting public school students throughout New York State: the Education Budget and Reform Act of 2007.

CFE now serves as the leading non-profit organization working to ensure that the court-established right becomes a reality for our public school students. This entails securing full implementation of the Education Budget and Reform Act’s massive school finance and accountability reforms. To this end, CFE works to provide policymakers, the press and the public with in-depth, fact-based public policy reports for informed decision-making on the important policy questions raised by the addition of new operating and capital resources and accountability measures ” (see: http://www.cfequity.org/static.php?page=about_us ).

Further, CFE states: “The outcome of CFE's 13-year fiscal adequacy lawsuit (CFE v. State of New York) led to a new era in school finance reform with the enactment of the New York State Education Budget and Reform Act of 2007-2008. With over $7 billion in additional aid scheduled to come to New York's public schools from FY 2008 - FY 2011 and the implementation of the accountability and public participation initiatives that resulted from our litigation, the stage has been set for systemic change that results in real progress for our students. We are committed to seeing that the promise of the new education finance and accountability reforms is fulfilled” (see: http://www.cfequity.org/static.php?page=overview&category=our_work ).

CFE report on Educational Apartheid in New York (2003): "Throughout this report…we document a dismaying alignment of disadvantaged students (disproportionately children of color), schools with the poorest educational resources (fiscal and human), and substandard achievement. Conversely, we find that those schools that serve the fewest at-risk children have the greatest financial resources, teachers with the best credentials, and the highest level of achievements. Perhaps the sharpest contrasts exist between public schools in New York City and those in districts (most suburban) with low percentages of students in poverty and high levels of income and property wealth." [1].

CFE report on class sizes and overcrowding (2009): “Overcrowding is a chronic problems in New York City’s public schools …Overcrowding is a particular problem for schools with struggling students and was cited as one of the facilities’ deficiencies in the Court of Appeals’ decisions in CFE v. State of New York. The Court of Appeals specifically cited overcrowding and excessive class size as inseparable and further stated as fact that “” One symptom of an overcrowded school system is the encroachment of ordinary classroom activities into what would otherwise be specialized spaces: libraries, laboratories, auditoriums and the like. There was considerable evidence of shortage of such spaces.” After the Appellate Division, First Department ordered the state to provide New York City schools with the CFE proposal of $9.2 billion in capital; funding by April 1 2006, the legislature and the Governor provided $11.2 billion in funding for facilities’ conditions in 2006 in its settlement of the CFE lawsuit.” [2].

[1]. State of Learning, CFE report, July 2003, quoted by Margaret Kimberley, “Educational Apartheid lives on”, Freedom Rider column, The Black Commentator, 20 October 2005: http://www.blackcommentator.com/155/155_freedom_rider_education_apartheid.html .

[2]. Campaign for Fiscal Equity report, “Maxed Out: New York City School Overcrowding Crisis”, May 2009: http://www.goodflow.net/static.php?page=maxedout_new_york_city_school&category=reports_research .

CLEGG, Nick.

Nick Clegg (born 7 January 1967) is a British Liberal Democrat politician who is the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Lord President of the Council and Minister for Constitutional and Political Reform in the coalition government of Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. Clegg is the Leader of the UK Liberal Democrats and is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sheffield Hallam. As Deputy PM he famously declared to the House of Commons that the Iraq invasion was “illegal” (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Clegg ) .

Nick Clegg slams Britain’s Educational Apartheid in London speech to the CentreForum thinktank (2010): “Increased levels of attendance at university have not translated into higher levels of social mobility… A disproportionate number of university students come from the middle and upper classes… We need to attack the educational apartheid that currently exists between vocational and academic learning in general, and between further and higher education in particular.” [1].

[1]. Nick Clegg , quoted by Nigel Morris, “Nick Clegg hits at “educational apartheid””, The Independent, 18 August 2010: http://www.independent.co.uk/student/into-university/clearing/nick-clegg-hits-at-educational-apartheid-2056051.html .

HUGHES, Helen.

According to the Australian Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) “Professor Helen Hughes AO is Professor Emeritus, the Australian National University, and Senior Fellow at the CIS [Centre for Independent Studies]. Her expertise ranges from the Australian economy, economic development and aid, international trade, Indigenous affairs and capital flows. She was Professor of Economics and Director of the National Centre for Development Studies at ANU from 1983 to 1993, and a member of the Fitzgerald Committee on Immigration: A Commitment to Australia. She also worked at the World Bank from 1968 to 1983 and was a member of the United Nations Committee for Development Planning from 1987 to 1993. Widely published on a range of topics and regularly interviewed in the media, Professor Hughes has recently focussed on issues of development in the Pacific and Australia's remote Indigenous communities. Her recent work has included numerous Issue Analysis papers and press articles” (see: http://www.cis.org.au/research-scholars/cis-research-scholars/author/3-hughes-helen ).

Professor Helen Hughes AO on gross Educational Apartheid in the Northern Territory of Apartheid Australia (2008): “”Aboriginal schools in the Northern Territory have failed to provide Indigenous students with these essentials for entry into the labour force. Some 5,000 Indigenous teenagers, and another 5,000 young men and women in their 20s, are unable to speak English, and are illiterate and non-numerate. They cannot read road signs, menus, or instructions on packages of medicines, cleaning materials, and other packaged goods. Aborigines are often accused of using taxis wastefully, but many cannot read well enough to use public transport. They cannot fill shelves in a supermarket, or serve in a shop or café … These young peoples’ education has made them more foreign in their own country than the latest immigrants from Somalia… To overcome the damage these youngsters’ education has done to them would require sheltered accommodation in English-speaking environments, mentored part-time introductory jobs and one-on-one tuition for one or two years. The cost of sheltered accommodation for teenagers who are unable to live at home is $900 a week in Sydney. If the Northern Territory were serious about tackling the deficit its Aboriginal education polices have created, the cost would be between $500 million and $1 billion.” [1].

Professor Helen Hughes AO on gross Educational Apartheid for Indigenous children from urban welfare dependent families or remote communities (2008): “Australia, however, has a serious problem in low participation in higher education by students from low socio-economic backgrounds. Indigenous children from urban welfare dependent families, just like non-Indigenous children from similar welfare dependent backgrounds, have very low participation in higher education. The mainstream schools they attend – the so-called “sink” schools – do not provide adequate primary and secondary education to enable these children to proceed to university. Children from remote communities are even more disadvantaged because Indigenous schools in those communities fail to teach basic literacy and numeracy, let alone a full primary curriculum. For these children, the chances of progressing to higher education are negligible. The few Indigenous students from urban welfare dependent families or remote communities who qualify for university entrance are almost always those whose parents have them board with relatives to access quality mainstream schools, or those at quality boarding schools on scholarships, Current government school reform programs do not even aim to eliminate Indigenous schooling deficits (“close the education gap”) by 2018. Under current programs, ten years from now, most Indigenous children from urban welfare dependent backgrounds and remote communities will still be excluded from for [sic] higher education by their sub-standard education… To put it simply, id children are not taught to read, write and count, they have no hope of going to university.. No amount of affirmative action will make any difference.” [2]. ”

[1]. Helen Hughes, “Indigenous education in the Northern Territory”, CIS Policy Monograph 83: http://www.cis.org.au/images/stories/policy-monographs/pm-83.pdf .

[2]. Helen Hughes, “The Centre for Independent Studies submission to the Review of Higher Education Access and Outcomes for Aborigjnal and Torres Straits Islander People”, 18 November 2011: http://www.cis.org.au/images/stories/submissions/sub-review-of-higher-education-access-outcomes-181111-hh-sh.pdf .

KIMBERLEY, Margaret.

Margaret Kimberley is a freelance writer living in New York City. Her Freedom Rider column appears weekly in Black Commentator (see: http://www.blackcommentator.com/155/155_freedom_rider_education_apartheid.html ).

Margaret Kimberley on Educational Apartheid blighting the lives of Black children in New York and in the US (2005): “We haven't even lived up to the promises of Plessey v. Ferguson [163 U.S. 537 (1896), a key US Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in private businesses (particularly railroads), under the doctrine of "separate but equal". This remained standard doctrine in U.S. law until its repudiation in the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson ]. . American schools today are separate and no one would even pretend they're equal. Every expert has a new plan for creating successful segregated schools, and the white society loves to hear these stories because they let them off the hook completely.

Campaign commercials for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg claim that public schools have improved under his stewardship. The ads tell us that test scores have risen and "social promotion" has ended. This claim is supposed to convince New Yorkers to cast votes for Bloomberg because higher test scores and fourth graders being "left back" are supposed to be good things.

In fact, the opposite is true. The end of "social promotion" via test results is a sign of educational failure that is visited primarily upon children of color. Testing is a financial boon to the companies that produce the tests. It is of little value to teachers forced to teach to the test or to the children who are forced to take them.

The colossal scam brings with it failures that are touted as successes. The children who are not allowed to pass into the next grade are also conveniently not allowed to take the high stakes test. If the most challenged students can’t take the test, it is inevitable that scores will rise. Children are being used as political pawns in order to make politicians look good with tales of rising test scores.

What Bloomberg doesn’t tell us in his commercials is that the state of New York is under court order to remedy discrepancies in public school funding. New York City spends $8,171 per student, while its suburbs spend an average of $12,613 per student. Some New York City suburbs spend as much as $17,000 per student…

The plight of black America in public education is consistent with our plight in every other arena. Shortages of wealth and income, political power, and good political leadership conspire to prevent us from succeeding as individuals and as a group, and it all begins as soon as we learn our ABCs.” [1].

[1]. Margaret Kimberley, “Educational Apartheid lives on”, Freedom Rider column, The Black Commentator, 20 October 2005: http://www.blackcommentator.com/155/155_freedom_rider_education_apartheid.html .

KOZOL, Jonathan.

Jonathan Kozol (born September 5, 1936 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a non-fiction writer, educator, and activist, best known for his books on public education in the United States. He is .is the author of many books, including “Savage Inequalities”, “ Amazing Grace” and “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Kozol ).

Jonathan Kozol on US Educational Apartheid (2005): “Many Americans who live far from our major cities and who have no firsthand knowledge of the realities to be found in urban public schools seem to have the rather vague and general impression that the great extremes of racial isolation that were matters of grave national significance some thirty-five or forty years ago have gradually but steadily diminished in more recent years. The truth, unhappily, is that the trend, for well over a decade now, has been precisely the reverse. Schools that were already deeply segregated twenty-five or thirty years ago are no less segregated now, while thousands of other schools around the country that had been integrated either voluntarily or by the force of law have since been rapidly resegregating.

In Chicago, by the academic year 2002-2003, 87 percent of public-school enrollment was black or Hispanic; less than 10 percent of children in the schools were white. In Washington, D.C., 94 percent of children were black or Hispanic; less than 5 percent were white. In St. Louis, 82 percent of the student population were black or Hispanic; in Philadelphia and Cleveland, 79 percent; in Los Angeles, 84 percent, in Detroit, 96 percent; in Baltimore, 89 percent. In New York City, nearly three quarters of the students were black or Hispanic.

Even these statistics, as stark as they are, cannot begin to convey how deeply isolated children in the poorest and most segregated sections of these cities have become. In the typically colossal high schools of the Bronx, for instance, more than 90 percent of students (in most cases, more than 95 percent) are black or Hispanic. At John F. Kennedy High School in 2003, 93 percent of the enrollment of more than 4,000 students were black and Hispanic; only 3.5 percent of students at the school were white. At Harry S. Truman High School, black and Hispanic students represented 96 percent of the enrollment of 2,700 students; 2 percent were white. At Adlai Stevenson High School, which enrolls 3,400 students, blacks and Hispanics made up 97 percent of the student population; a mere eight tenths of one percent were white.

A teacher at P.S. 65 in the South Bronx once pointed out to me one of the two white children I had ever seen there. His presence in her class was something of a wonderment to the teacher and to the other pupils. I asked how many white kids she had taught in the South Bronx in her career. "I've been at this school for eighteen years," she said. "This is the first white student I have ever taught"…

Whether the issue is inequity alone or deepening resegregation or the labyrinthine intertwining of the two, it is well past the time for us to start the work that it will take to change this. If it takes people marching in the streets and other forms of adamant disruption of the governing civilities, if it takes more than litigation, more than legislation, and much more than resolutions introduced by members of Congress, these are prices we should be prepared to pay. "We do not have the things you have," Alliyah told me when she wrote to ask if I would come and visit her school in the South Bronx. "Can you help us?" America owes that little girl and millions like her a more honorable answer than they have received.” [1].

[1]. Jonathan Kozol, “Still separate, still unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid”, Harper’s Magazine, v.311, n.1864, 1 September 2005: http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/American-Apartheid-Education1sep05.htm .

LAMB, Stephen.

Professor Stephen Lamb is an Education academic at the University of Melbourne Graduate School of Education (see: http://www.findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/researcher/person2350.html ).

Professor Stephen Lamb, quoted as saying Victoria had a very segregated education system (2010): “All of the top-performing [Victoria, Australia] schools are selective in one form or another, either through academic tests or the application of fees. We tend to have kids from wealthy backgrounds who have the highest NAPLAN and VCE results at elite private schools and selective-entry schools and a lot of kids from poorer backgrounds in government schools or poorer Catholic schools. Ultimately, some schools can't achieve the same thing because all the kids they would normally have in their intake have been removed .” [1].

[1]. Professor Stephen Lamb, quoted in Jewel Topsfield, “Familiar names at the top of the VCE siumit”, The Age, 16 December 2010: http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/familiar-names-at-top-of-the-vce-summit-20101215-18y68.html#poll .

POLYA, Gideon.

Dr Gideon Polya is a Melbourne-born, Melbourne-based Australian scientist, writer, artist, Humanist humanitarian and pro-peace, pro-environment and pro-human rights activist (see: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290810.htm ).

Dr Gideon Polya in a Comment on an article by sensible Australian economics journalist Kenneth Davidson in part about the gross underfunding of Government Public Schools in Victoria and Australia (2010): “Excellent article. The Lib-Labs are betraying Australia's children and their parents in 2 key ways: (1) Educational Apartheid in favor of the rich and (2) Violation of Intergenerational Equity re climate change, this also involving perversion of childrens' education through lying and spin.

1. Educational Apartheid. The worst kept secret in Australia is that the majority of children who attend Government schools are disproportionately excluded from optimum education, entry to university, entry to good universities and entry to top courses such as medicine and law (just consult "My School" for the Awful Truth about your local state school versus Trinity Grammar, MLC or Melbourne Grammar). The Libs have traditionally believed that it is a good strategy to keep the "lower classes" ignorant and poor but the now neocon Australian Labor Party (Another Liberal Party) evidently also believes that ignorance and poverty will help keep safe Labor seats safe.

2. Intergenerational Equity. Top scientists say that to avoid disaster the world must reduce CO2 emissions to zero by 2050 (racial equality means that high per capita polluting Australia must do this by 2020). The pro-coal, anti-science Lib-Labs are committed to BAU greenhouse gas pollution and back this with child-violating lies, spin and slies (spin-based untruths).

Decent, child-caring Victorians are obliged to vote Green and put the Lib-Labs last, their only problem being who should be very last, the Liberals (who have always supported the rich and see nothing wrong with it) or Labor (who support the rich but know it is wrong and that they are betraying Labor voters in the process).” [1].

Dr Gideon Polya commenting on an article on Australian educational inequities by Chris Bonnor (co-author with Jane Caro of "The Stupid Country: How Australia is dismantling public education”) (2010):

"Excellent article. Obscene neoconservative desire to commodify education found fertile ground in the greed-based politics of Lobbyocracy Australia.

Australia has an Educational Apartheid system in which the majority of Australian kids attending Government schools are disproportionately excluded from university, from top universities and from top courses such as Law and Medicine.

The article is correct in stating that "The My School website, for all its faults, is laying bare many of the regressive features of our system". Consult the My School website and you will discover that the percentage of kids going to university from a working class state high school is half that from a top Melbourne private school.

Of course Educational Apartheid exists in the UK and flourished under neocon Labour that, like Labor in Australia, has utterly betrayed its lower income supporters. Educational Apartheid flourishes in the US as a race- and wealth-based de facto Segregation system (for details Google Educational Apartheid).

Race-based Educational Apartheid in Australia also involves Aboriginal Ethnocide (legislation for most NT Indigenous instruction in a foreign language, English; cf prohibition of Welsh in schools in 19th century Wales) and contributes to the disastrous Aboriginal Health situation (9,000 avoidable deaths annually; Google Aboriginal Genocide).

"Fair go" Australians should be incensed over the betrayal of Australian kids by the Lib-Labs and especially by Labor. UK university students have hit upon an excellent if counter-intuitive political strategy: withdraw support from potentially more progressive but presently disgustingly neoconservative Labour until it agrees to massively support equity in education and other major equity issues (peace, requisite climate change action). Australians should do likewise." [2].

Dr Gideon Polya commenting on an article re Educational Apartheid by Professor David Blanchflower (professor of economics at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, US, and the University of Stirling, UK) (2010):

“The US Dartmouth College leveling system is a major step in the right direction to address the appalling Educational Segregation and Educational Apartheid that occurs in the US (race-based) and in the UK and Australia (wealth-based) (for details see "Educational Apartheid": https://sites.google.com/site/educationalapartheid/home ).

Senior UK journalist and editor Peter Wilby has suggested a similar leveling system to address post-secondary Educational Apartheid in the UK: "So what's the answer? There is a very simple one. We change the whole basis of élite university selection. Each year, Oxford and Cambridge between them admit 6,000 UK undergraduates. There are about 6,000 schools and colleges that have young people taking A-levels. The top pupil from each - the one who achieves the best A-level results - should get a place at one of the two universities " (see Peter Wilby, “Put an end to educational apartheid”, Guardian, 7 July 2002: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2002/jul/07/schools.publicschools ) .

However the intrinsically racist US has a long way to go to end Educational Apartheid.

Thus according to the US Census Bureau (2003 data) the percentage of US-born people with a bachelor's degree or more was 27.2 (total), 29.7 (Whites), 16.3 (Blacks) 13.5 (Hispanics) and 48.3 (Asians) and this says nothing about the quality of the degree (see "Educational attainment in the United States: 2003: http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/p20-550.pdf ).

In the UK and Australia, proposals such as that of Peter Wilby should be rapidly implemented. However the entrenched Educational Apartheid at the pre-university level requires tough political action by the young and the poor.

Reform is more likely to come from Labour (Labor in Australia) than from the Conservatives (the Liberal-National Party Coalition in Australia). However pro-war, pro-Big Business, neocon Labour (Labor) has utterly betrayed its voters , not just on Educational Apartheid but on many other matters, notably intergenerational equity issues (social equity, war, climate change).

My counter-intuitive strategy proposal is that the disadvantaged and young should simply dump Labour (Labor) until it decides to adopt a really strong progressive and equity agenda, not just on abolishing Educational Apartheid but also on abolishing nuclear weapons, participation in genocidal US wars (8 million excess deaths so far in the US War on Terror) and man-made climate change (10 billion will die due to unaddressed man-made climate change; see "Climate Genocide": https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ ). [3].

[1]. Gideon Polya, comment to Kenneth Davidson, “Labor cosies up to the rich and influential”, The Age, 15 November 2010: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/labor-cosies-up-to-the-rich-and-influential-20101114-17sm9.html .

[2]. Gideon Polya, commenting on Chris Bonnor, "Misguided schools "market" sees us slip down the ranks", The Age On-line, National Times, 9 December 2010: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/misguided-schools-market-sees-us-slip-down-the-ranks-20101208-18pq0.html.

[3]. Gideon Polya comment on an article by Professor David Blanchflower, “”What the US can teach Oxbridge”, New Statesman, 15 December 2010: http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/12/black-students-oxford .

SELDON, Anthony.

Dr Anthony Seldon is the headmaster of £25,620-a-year Wellington College.

Dr Anthony Seldon slams Educational Apartheid in the UK and offers a solution re Independent Schools (2008): “detached from the mainstream national education system, thereby perpetuating the apartheid which has so dogged education and national life in Britain since the Second World War:” [1].

[1]. Dr Anthony Seldon, quoted by Laura Clark, ““Private schools fuel out social apartheid”, says headmaster of £25,620-a-year Wellington College”, Daily Mail on-line, 15 January 2008: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-508217/Private-schools-fuel-social-apartheid-says-headmaster-25-620-year-Wellington-College.html .

SMALL, Mike.

Mike Small is a freelance writer, co-editor of Bella Caledonia and editor of Newsnet Scotland (see: http://newsnetscotland.com/politics/1256-educational-apartheid and http://www.opendemocracy.net/authors/mike-small ).

Mike Small on Educational Apartheid in the UK (2010): “In 2003, 84% of senior Judges in England and Wales were educated at independent schools, as surveyed in 2003 by law firm SJ Berwin. This is especially significant considering that just 7% of all British children are educated at independent schools. If you want to talk about an educational apartheid this is it, the basis for maintaining the political elite and the core of the British establishment.

A report last year by the Sutton Trust showed that pupils from private schools make twice as many applications to the UK's leading universities as state school teenagers with similar A-level or Higher results. The report found that teenagers educated privately were three times more likely to apply to leading universities - including Edinburgh and St Andrews - than those at further education colleges.

Apartheid means 'separate development', the separation and segregation of groups in society. We have educational apartheid here and now.” [1].

[1]. Mike Small, “Educational Apartheid”, Newsnet Scotland, 18 December 2010: http://newsnetscotland.com/politics/1256-educational-apartheid ).

STREET, Paul.

Dr Paul Street s an independent radical-democratic policy researcher, journalist, historian, and speaker based in Iowa City (IA) and Chicago (IL). He is the author of five books: "

“The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power" (July 2010); “Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11” (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004); “Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era” (New York: Routledge, 2005); "Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: a Living Black Chicago History" (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); and “Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics” (October 2008) (see: http://www.paulstreet.org/ and http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:W5GzpjCfawsJ:zcommunications.org/zspace/paulstreet+%22paul+street%22&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au ).

Book summary for Paul Street, “Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in post-civil rights America” : “What real progress have we made to meaningfully reform America’s schools?

Is the racial make-up of today’s schools, as Paul Street argues, in a state of de facto apartheid? · How do we begin to realize the equality that Brown v. Board of Education envisioned?

With an eye to the historical development of segregated education, Street examines the current state of school funding, disparities in teacher quality, student-teacher ratios, and more. Critical of “No Child Left Behind” and the school vouchers initiative, Street proposes no easy answers for creating equal educational opportunities for every American child. Instead, he offers both theoretical concepts and practical solutions for fulfilling the promise of integrated and equitable schools for all.” [1, 2].

[1]. Book summary for Paul Street, “Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in post-civil rights America”: http://www.paulstreet.org/?page_id=55 .

[2]. Amazon.com, Paul Street, “Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in post-civil rights America”, Routledge & Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2005: http://www.amazon.com/Segregated-Schools-Educational-Apartheid-Post-Civil/dp/041595116X .

THE AGE NEWSPAPER CENSORS comments on Educational Apartheid.

Censorship of proper public discussion of Educational Apartheid (or indeed any other abuse) ensures its continuance. The Age is arguably Australia's most progressive mainstream medium, although that's not saying much in the context of a Murdochracy and Lobbyocracy, look-the-other-way, politically correct racist (PC racist) Apartheid Australia. The Age has an On-line National Times section that is linked to other Fairfax Empire newspapers around Australia in which it invites comments from readers on articles by Age writers or invited writers. However it has repeatedly censored comments re Educational Apartheid from Dr Gideon Polya, who has been heavily involved in teaching in the tertiary sector since 1972 and has a postgraduate teaching qualification in addition to his first degree and PhD. One could reasonably assume that this censorship reflects what The Age does not want it readers to read, to know or to think.

4 March 2011. The Age partly censored my comments on an article by academic Joel Windle on Educational Segregation (Educational Apartheid) in Australian high schools. . The Age published 49 comments on the article (mostly anonymous) but only partly published my following comments - what they did not want readers to read is in bold ((for details of the article and my censored comments see; http://gpolya.newsvine.com/_news/2011/03/03/6181554-education-expert-re-educational-apartheid-were-creating-a-segregated-school-system ):

"Excellent article on the government-supported, wealth-based educational segregation that educators and commentators in the US, UK and Australia (e.g. UK Deputy PM Nick Clegg) refer to as Educational Apartheid.

A check of the My School website already informs that the two out of three Australian children who attend state schools are disproportionately excluded from university, from top universities and from top courses such as medicine and law. The Federal Government is reportedly about to also record the financial support for all schools from fees and government.

Expert suggestions for minimizing the harm done by Educational Apartheid in the UK include offering places at Cambridge or Oxford to selected students from all schools and help from each private school for a local government school.

Governments should be held accountable re (a) Educational Apartheid, (b) inequitable tertiary education outcomes; (c) taxpayer subsidy of false instruction in private schools (e.g. taxpayer-funded promotion of anti-science creationism, intelligent design, misogyny, homophobia, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and unsafe sex ); and (d) taxpayer ownership of taxpayer-built infrastructure.

The sort of "moral gradualism" that has led to Educational Apartheid in Lobbyocracy Australia, the ostensible Land of the Fair Go, also constrains sensible voter backlash over Educational Apartheid and indeed other key issues (e.g. climate change inaction, war, human rights abuse) because neocon Labor has better political rhetoric than the Libs while being actually just as bad. Voters (especially in educationally disadvantaged "safe" Labor seats) should vote 1 Green and put Labor last until it genuinely and convincingly returns to the "fair go" Labor values of the Whitlam era."

7 January 2011. The Age published an article by a community worker and writer Chris Middendorp re Educational Apartheid entitled “why should the public fund private schools” (The Age On-line, The National Times, 7 January 2011: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/why-should-the-public-fund-private-schools-20110106-19hhn.html . The Age published some 116 comments on the article (all but 7 from anonymous bloggers) but would not publish the following comments from a 4 decade credentialled teacher made under his own name (Dr Gideon Polya) - one can only guess at what points The Age did not want its readers to read.

“Excellent article, the key point being that two thirds of Australian children attend a state school system that is grossly under-resourced while successive Lib-Lab governments lavish funding on well-resourced private schools. Some further key points below.

1. Consult the "My School" website and you will discover that the majority of Australian kids who attend state schools are disproportionately excluded from university (as well as from top universities and from top university courses such as law and medicine).

2. Similar Educational Apartheid exists in the US as intertwined race- and wealth-based segregation. According to the US Census Bureau (2003 data) the percentage of US-born people with a bachelor's degree or more was 27.2 (total), 29.7 (Whites), 16.3 (Blacks) 13.5 (Hispanics) and 48.3 (Asians) and this says nothing about the quality of the degree.

3. UK Deputy PM Nick Clegg has used the term Educational Apartheid to describe the wealth- and class-based educational inequities, stating "Oxford and Cambridge take more students each year from just two schools - Eton and Westminster - than from among the 80,000 pupils who are eligible for free school meals."

4. Senior UK journalist Peter Wilby has suggested a partial UK solution involving entry to top universities for the top student in each high school.

5. Various US Ivy League universities (Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton and Yale) have initiated substantial needs-blind entry with consequent large minority attendance (Google "Educational Apartheid").

6. Australian state schools are variously unable to provide basic final year subjects.

7. Reject Lib-Lab-supported Educational Apartheid and put Labor last until the ALP (Another Liberal Party) recovers its historical egalitarian values.”

TOPSFIELD, Jewel.

Jewel Topsfield is a journalist with The Age newspaper, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (see: http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/familiar-names-at-top-of-the-vce-summit-20101215-18y68.html#poll ).

Jewel Topsfield on private versus state segregated education in Victoria, Australian (2010) : “Students at private and selective government schools dramatically outperformed those at other public schools in this year's VCE, raising fears Victoria has a segregated education system.

MacRobertson Girls High School, a selective government school where more than 1200 students compete for 225 year 9 places every year, blitzed the field with 44 per cent of subject scores 40 or above.

But the public system was generally poorly represented in the rankings, which were dominated by private schools, most of them from the eastern suburbs.

The highest-performing non-selective or specialist state school was Glen Waverley Secondary College, with 21 per cent of study scores 40 or above. VCE subjects are marked out of 50, with a study score of 30 the average, and more than 40 considered an excellent result.

Jewish schools did exceptionally well, with Beth Rivkah Ladies College (35 per cent of study scores 40 or above), Bialik College (35 per cent), Mount Scopus Memorial College (35 per cent) and Leibler Yavneh College (33 per cent) all in the top 10. Ballarat Clarendon College was the highest-performing regional school for the seventh successive year, with 27 per cent of study scores over 40, placing the school in the top 10.” [1].

[1]. Jewel Topsfield, “Familiar names at the top of the VCE summit”, The Age, 16 December 2010: http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/familiar-names-at-top-of-the-vce-summit-20101215-18y68.html#poll .

WILBY, Peter.

Peter John Wilby (born 7 November 1944) is a UK journalist. with a degree in History from the University of Sussex. In 1968 he started writing for The Observer in 1968 and was Education Correspondent of the New Statesman in the 1970s and for the Sunday Times in the 1980s. He joined The Independent on Sunday in 1990 and eventually became its editor (1995-96). He was editor of the New Statesman from 1998 to 2005 (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wilby ).

Peter Wilby presenting a proposal to end Educational Apartheid in the UK (2002): “Fee-charging schools have smaller classes, more highly qualified teachers and better buildings and equipment. They can select out or kick out the dim and the disruptive and can concentrate their efforts on the academic qualifications needed for university entry, without having to worry about the education needed for those who will become carpenters or waiters.

They send dozens of children to Oxford and Cambridge every year and so have the contacts and the experience to guide their charges through interviews and other entry hurdles. The top comprehensives may be able to give a child an excellent chance of an élite university place; the private schools can virtually guarantee it. All else said on the subject is waffle.

As a result, the 7 per cent of children who attend private schools take nearly half the places at Oxford and Cambridge and nearly a third of the places at other élite universities such as Durham, Manchester and Bristol. It is crude educational apartheid and a major obstacle to the equality of opportunity that New Labour says it wants.

The restoration of state grammar schools would makes no difference. The grammar schools flourished 40 years ago, when private schools were still more concerned with social conditioning than academic success. In those days, the private sector was simply not meritocratic in the sense it is today; many schools hardly taught science and they prepared a high proportion of pupils for the armed services or the City, neither of which was interested in degrees.

Now, no matter how much the state schools heed calls to pull their socks up, or acquire fancy new names like beacon schools or city academies or science and technology colleges, or obey ministerial injunctions to abolish mixed-ability teaching classes, they can never compete on equal terms with fee-charging schools…

So what's the answer? There is a very simple one. We change the whole basis of élite university selection. Each year, Oxford and Cambridge between them admit 6,000 UK undergraduates. There are about 6,000 schools and colleges that have young people taking A-levels. The top pupil from each - the one who achieves the best A-level results - should get a place at one of the two universities.

This is a crude version. But we could include Durham, Bristol and some of the London University colleges and select, say, the top half-dozen from each school; this would create enough flexibility to allow for the successful students' different subject preferences. We would have to take some account of the size of school or college. The whole thing would be arbitrary and unfair, but not nearly as arbitrary and unfair as the present system.

Such a scheme would transform both education and society. Why would anybody pay for a private school if it could deliver no more top university places than the local comprehensive?...

I do not claim for this proposal that it would increase social mobility... But at least we would be rid of our vicious educational apartheid.” [1].

[1]. Peter Wilby, “Put an end to educational apartheid”, Guardian, 7 July 2002: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2002/jul/07/schools.publicschools .