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.”