Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Government schools?

It's amusing that the phrase would be controversial. After all, as Ramesh Ponnuru notes,
The phrase is more neutrally descriptive than it is pejorative, and more accurate than "public schools." What distinguishes these schools from other schools is not their greater accountability to the public, their greater service to the public, or even their greater openness to the public. ... What distinguishes them is that they’re run by the government. It’s because it’s a neutral term that, as Bosman notes, the phrase is often used overseas to describe what we typically call “public schools” here.
Indeed, as Jason Bedrick notes ("There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Public’ School"), "privately owned shopping malls are more 'public' than district schools."

No comments: