SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Do publicly-funded schools create community?

Yesterday, I wrote that a discussion for another day was the question of whether publicly-funded schools were crucial in terms of creating community. And, what do you know, today’s another day.

I know most people tend to assume that sending kids with different backgrounds to school together will promote important assimilation. But people assume lots of things that turn out to be false - for example, that the earth is the centre of the universe or stomach ulcers are caused by worrying. Let’s look at the evidence.

One way to examine this assumption is to think about how many neighbourhood schools are actually composed of lots of kids from widely-varied backgrounds. These days, neighbourhood schools tend to be stratified according to income because people generally live in the same area with people of similar backgrounds. And even when it comes to schools that are composed of kids from widely-varied backgrounds, it is still a big question how much positive interaction there is among groups, especially given special programs like French immersion, gifted classes, special ed, and the International Baccalaureate. Studies in the US have found that private school classrooms are actually more racially-integrated than neighbouring public schools, while private school students are more likely to eat lunch with children of other races. 

Another way to look at the social glue assumption is to see what has happened in other jurisdictions. In the Netherlands, a country with a previous history of religious strife, the introduction of fully-funded denominational and secular schools almost 100 years ago has resulted in a marked lessening of religious divisions. Yugoslavia had one state school system under the Communists for over five decades, yet the ethnic hatred there is worse than ever. There is no evidence that Ontario’s Catholic schools, or publicly-funded religious schools in Alberta, Quebec, B.C., and Manitoba are producing religiously-intolerant or disconnected citizens. In fact, several recent studies suggest that private schools are more successful than publicly-funded schools in instilling tolerance in their students.

A final way to think about social assimilation is to look at students’ entire lives. There is a very strong connection between how well a student does in school and his future employment, income, lifestyle, and social circle. If students are deliberately jumbled up in one-size-fits-all schools, some students (typically, advantaged students) will receive an education tailor-made for them - while other students (typically, disadvantaged students) will flounder. In this scenario, the children may get to rub shoulders with children from other walks of life for the 10 or 12 years they are in school, but afterwards their social stratification is stronger than ever. It’s hard to see how a deliberate policy of assimilated publicly-funded schools benefits these children. 

The evidence suggests that publicly-funded schools are a very weak vessel for assimilation purposes. In my opinion, publicly-funded schools are far more suited to their original purpose - namely, giving children a good grounding in the three R’s.