In response to my suggestion that we ban private schools, Joe said:<\/p>\n
“the problem I have here with all this discussion is that there seems to be an assumption that it is a reasonable response to unfairness to tell people that they are not allowed to provide something for their own children, if not everybody else can also provide it.<\/span>“<\/p>\n This is, of course, an important point. The freedom to help your children as best you can is important, and not to be trodden on lightly.<\/p>\n I am not suggesting that whenever a freedom produces any unfairness or inequality, we should take that freedom away.<\/p>\n For example, I am not here arguing that people should not be free to, e.g. teach their own kids to read, on the grounds that this causes an unfairness and inequality – i.e. because other parents are unwilling or unable.<\/p>\n But “freedom” doesn’t trump all other principles on every<\/span> occasion.<\/p>\n Surely, where there is a very great unfairness caused, and indeed, serious harm being done, by people taking advantage of a freedom, there can<\/span> be a good case for curtailing that freedom.<\/p>\n For example, we don’t allow the richest parents to buy their children all the best university<\/span> places (hmm, well, having taught at Oxford, I’m aware that, on occasion, we do – but of course the practice remains frowned upon and rightly so). This is a “freedom” we don’t permit. And for very good and obvious reasons.<\/p>\n But notice that it is exactly the same sort of reasons that motivate my suggestion that we take from parents the freedom to buy their children all the best school<\/span> places.<\/p>\n “Freedom” doesn’t automatically trump the kinds of considerations I am raising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In response to my suggestion that we ban private schools, Joe said: “the problem I have here with all this discussion is that there seems to be an assumption that it is a reasonable response to unfairness to tell people that they are not allowed to provide something for their own children, if not everybody […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ban-private-schools","category-private-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}