It is not put this way, of course. Nobody wants to be known as the bastards who, having benefited from public education, now want to pull up the drawbridge. Their interests are well represented by the Catholic bishops and Protestant clerics, like the Anglican Archbishop and former director of the Brotherhood of St Laurence, Peter Hollingworth, who seek to sanctify education exclusiveness and inequality behind phoney appeals to Christian values. Of the politicians, the Liberals are relatively up-front about their commitment to inequality. Labor is more dishonest about its willingness to buy the aspirational vote at the expense of those forced to use government schools.
Individuals advance all sorts of reasons for turning away from public education.
The most honest are up-front about the advantage private schools offer over government schools, which are required to offer an education to everybody. The proposition is vile because it is a class-based slur on the character of 70per cent of the school population and their parents and teachers. Langton has also put her daughter into a difficult position with her peers, despite Langton's unctuous claims for her daughter's anonymity, which has been better respected by the media than the mother. Langton is showing ignorance. She calls into question her professionalism as an educator if she really believes there is a correlation between socio-economic class and racism.