What happened Doc?

Currency Lad has an email from a reader about the struggle she and her husband had to put their kids through a private school. They are not happy Latham! I don’t blame her. In a previous life, a long time ago, I was a recruiting Sergeant and in one day I lectured at two north-of-the-harbour Sydney schools. The first was St Leo’s Hornsby. I was well received, the students sat quietly and listened, or at least sat quietly, and when I finished the head boy thanked me after some reasonable searching questions from the Year 12 audience. After lunch I went to Hornsby State. The gym was decked out in communist propaganda – I mean copies of USSR posters, and the students were an unruly, profane mob. The teacher, who had obviously primed them, smirked and ask me how it felt to be a murderer. I walked out – embarrassed for my self and my country. At about the same time I read an article in the Bulletin magazine about the Evatt Family. You know. Doc Evatt…the Evattt Foundation …one of Labours greatest leaders? In this article one of the family, and I think it was Doc, was quoted as advising;

Don?t leave your kids money. Spend as much as you can afford on their education.

Always ready to follow good advice, my wife and I put five kids through private schools and then helped them through University. We chose Private schools, not because of some weird elitist ideal, but because we believed in education. The Christian ethos, discipline and charters of the schools we chose, suited our beliefs. We had a choice and took it. We could see that Doc Evatt had a good point. We too worked three and sometime four jobs and in the one year when all five were at high school, we had to take out a loan to maintain the dream. Our socialist neighbours thought we were all mad. While we worked shifts to midnight, three and four nights a week on top of our day jobs, the neighbours watched ‘Neighbours’ and like the ALP today miss the point. We did it happily and ask for no return other than the kids use their education for the betterment of their community, their family and themselves. Apparently Doc Evatt, and by extension, myself and all other parents who have tried to improve on generational standards are wrong. What happened Doc? UPDATE: Graham at Ambit Gambit has some good background and comments on the education debate. Well worth the read