AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS

PRESS RELEASE 395

CANNIBALISTIC CAPITALISM IN EDUCATION

7 September 2010

Amongst his election policies, Mr Abbott from the Coalition and one time member of the DLP slipped in a precedent for vouchers. He introduced the old DLP policy in the form of vouchers for children with disabilities. DOGS have consistently argued that the idea of public education and public education itself can survive many things- including starvation of funds. What it cannot survive is the undermining of its basic precepts and privatization by stealth. In previous Press Releases we have argued against private/public partnerships which undermine the public ownership of schools; the introduction of chaplains in schools which undermine the secular nature of public education and make a nonsense of access to education with offence to none, and the contracting out of billions of dollars of education services by federal and State governments to private sectarian authorities. This undermines the obligation of democratic governments to provide an education for their citizens.

But vouchers represent the privatization of public education by stealth. It places the idea of choice and diversity ( read inbequality) above the common good. It will cannibalise our proud public education system, leaving the bones to be picked over by the poor. In practice, the introduction of vouchers places public education in the market place with everything loaded in favour of the private, sectarian sector. They also undermine anyt pretence Australia might still have regarding separation of religion and the State. Vouchers have not only raised their head in Australia with the Abbott coalition. In spite of many Supreme Court cases against them in America, they have once again raised their head in that country.

An article by Rob Boston is useful reading for those who wish to inform themselves of recent developments in the war against vouchers in that country where the Right Wing churches and the market economists have joined forces against the public system. See Snark Attack by Rob Boston on the Americans United for Separation of Church and State web page.

DEFEND PUBLIC EDUCATION AND STOP STATE AID TO PRIVATE RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS.

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