Comments on: Do public schools create ‘melting pots’?

By: Brendan

Brendan — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:56:54 +0000

If anyone is interested, here is some economics behind sorting and segregation.

By: parkos

parkos — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:06:31 +0000

9 times out of ten you get huge wobbly bums (well rounded like a Kings education if you like) and or stupid arguments from Aussie women (and no doubt men too) of European descent later in life if not during their 20s.
So for aesthetic and peace of mind type reasons it is better for native born Aussies who can make the grade to enter high schools where they can network with flowers of the orient who can think on their own feet without all the attitude, such as the lovely Delvene Soon.

By: conrad

conrad — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:50:54 +0000

Actually John, I think there are really three groups of non-Asian families you need to consider when wondering about “white-flight”. One group is those that don’t want their children to go to Asian schools for whatever reasons (like those you mention and probably a host of others). A second group is those that want their children to go there because they are the best performing schools. An interesting question is whether this second group is likely to benefit or not. On the one hand, it might be that sending dull white kids to smart Asian schools doesn’t help them, in which case the parents are deluded. Alternatively, these schools do have quite a different culture as you note, and perhaps there is some rub-off effect — I can imagine this is certainly true of staff recruitment. A third possibility is that smart white parents want to send their smart white kids there, because they may believe they’ll be able to excel at advanced mathematics and other things that most white people seem to have given up on in the last decade or so.

By: Rajat Sood

Rajat Sood — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 05:34:39 +0000

John, you’re an anti-myopite, to coin a phrase. A raving anti-myopite!!

By: John Greenfield

John Greenfield — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 05:21:20 +0000

Indeed a lot of non-Asian families will not send their children to James Ruse and some of the selective Highs because they are so freakily monoethnic. I am sorry, but going to a school that is 95% Asian kids with violin cases and glasses whose parents fork out an extra $100 a week extra for private tuition don’t say like no party, it sure ain’t no disco, there ain’t no foolin’ around. You would get a more well-rounded education at Kings.

By: Club Troppo » Missing Link Daily

Club Troppo » Missing Link Daily — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:16:11 +0000

[...] from NSW schools as a case for rethinking our migration and refugee programs, while Andrew Norton - who notes the lack of statistical evidence - prefers Laurie Ferguson’s “black [...]

By: conrad

conrad — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:06:15 +0000

whyisitso: I had the opposite impression of Epping Boys High, that the white parents wanted to get their kids into the school, but couldn’t, although I don’t have the evidence for that (its the same sort of problem where I live with McKinnon High — far more parents want their kids to get in that can be allowed — but I don’t believe there is any great level of racial skewing, unlike Epping Boys). Alternatively, there is evidence for that at James Ruse (or at least people were complaining about it on TV some years ago), where the Asian kids were displacing the white kids, but that wasn’t because the white parents didn’t want their kids going there, and hence your observation about coaching. I might pointing out too that “coaching” and “excluding other activities” are all rather hard to define terms. One might relabel them “homework” and “studying hard” and I don’t see how you would differentiate them, esepecially because the Asian kids are getting better marks throughout high school overall (at least it appears like that if we look at who gets into the top uni courses — I’m not sure of any racial data that is available for Year 12 performance). It seems to me that this is more white people complaining than Asian people doing anything that a fair chunk of the rest of the world wouldn’t do, and we should encourage white people to do it too and Australia might be a better place (i.e., help with and help pay for their kids education). I might also note that culturally, at least for the Chinese kids, they are not excluding other activities — most people don’t care less about sport in many parts of China. In Hong Kong, I think the two main sports are eating and horse racing, for example. In Korea (many Koreans live in Eastwood/Carlinford), its computer games. Alternatively, most Indians I know are cricket mad, so I doubt they are excluding sport. Also, I don’t know that you are correct about excluding the arts (again its empirical), especially if you compare to the normal population. I don’t seem to remember too much of this going on when I was at school — I think the average expsoure for most kids that didn’t do music was approximately zero.

By: parkos

parkos — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 16:02:34 +0000

If it were not for the Asian scholarship kids in more expensive schools, the results ranking of many of them would fall significantly behind the state sector, as would the percentage of “top” placements at universities going to private school kids. So yeah, there is a reason for a mix in the “private sector”, partly so that native born Aussie principals can scam unsuspecting native born Aussie parents with skewed statistics.
Money does not equal intelligence in a truly cashless society.

There is no reason Cronulla style riots couldn’t happen in Melbourne.
Just that the powers that be (as they perceive themselves) allowed it to happen in Cronulla. If it were politicians being yelled at let alone bashed it would have been quickly contained in a manner similar to g8, g20, WEF protests etc. Nothing to do with schooling differences between states, agreed on that point. However it does seem that Sydney is more geographically segmented than Melbourne along a number of vectors including culture, economics, sexual orientation, sporting preferences etc.. Although the difference between the two cities is essentially splitting hairs as they are more similar to each other than any overseas comparisons.

By: Andrew Norton

Andrew Norton — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 08:19:23 +0000

Andrew E - The only data in the online article were a survey of principals’ perceptions and the growing Aboriginal population of a school, neither of which can really put a number on it given we need to know how the population of surrounding areas is changing as well. While I think it is perfectly plausible that parents want to remove their kids from daily contact with troubled populations, I think we need careful analysis of census data to see if there is much of this going on. As in my Carlton example, in some areas there simply aren’t many Anglo children in the first place anymore, and given the likely socieconomic status of their parents many of them would attend private schools regardless of what the local schools are like.

By: Andrew Elder

Andrew Elder — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 06:02:58 +0000

Andrew, the SMH series of stories did contain statistics on the changing backgrounds of children enrolling in state schools throughout NSW. These may not have been published online.
-
Ferguson’s “solution” is disingenuous for a number of reasons. His electorate in Sydney contains quite a few just-arrived migrants, because it contains some of the cheapest rents in the city. I’d love to see him try to appeal for more funds in the immigration budget in order to distribute people around different parts of Sydney where rents are more expensive, and in higher demand from taxpaying renters unable to enter the property market.
-
It’s also true, if ironic, that migrant groups assimilate best after they have initially established something of a ghetto. By the time new migrants from Italy had come to dominate Carlton, rather than entrench themselves by demanding that schools teach in Italian or whatever, they began to move away and form part of the wider community (while also changing that community, but that’s a matter for another debate).