AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS - D.O.G.S.

PRESS RELEASE 106#.

 LETTER TO THE AUSTRALIAN NEWSPAPER:

DISTINCTION BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE:

(Don't hold your breath waiting for its publication!)

Letters to the Editor,

The Australian

Dear Sir/Madam,

We note that Craig Emerson, an old boy of St Patrick’s Roman Catholic College Strathfield is calling for the abandonment of distinctions between public and private schools for funding purposes. (The Australian 2 April 2005) One wonders whether this masks the integration of public into private and abandonment of the principle of free secular and universal public education in Australia.

For those interested in the welfare of Australian children and the welfare of the Australian nation,  public and private education are as different as chalk and cheese and as light and dark.

Public and private education are starkly different in their purpose,  benefits, access for all children regardless of class, creed or colour, control, ownership, and accountability. The founding fathers recognised that there was a difference for funding. The primary architect of the Australian Constitution, Andrew Inglis Clark, in the 1880s recognised the danger of funding of sectarian education when he talked of States within States. Parkes, Griffith, and Barton agreed with him.

 The public system serves a public purpose rather than a private, selfish, sectarian one. It is not maintained for the personal advantage or private gain of parent, teacher, proprietor, priest, or Board of Managers. Nor does it exist simply for the personal advancement of the individual student and parent.

The future of the public school system is inextricably tied up with the future of a liberal, democratic and heterogeneous community. Constant attacks on our public system by private school products and promoters represents an attack on  our  fundamental liberal democratic values, of freedom, equality, justice, fraternity , the working of popular consent, and the personal obligation for the public good.

The Australian historical experience has proved that church schools are a cancer in our body politic and should receive not one cent from the public treasury.

Yours sincerely,

RAY NILSEN

PRESIDENT DOGS