A school place that money can buy passes advantage down the generations

The argument

The second argument concerns fairness between children. Proponents of this position argue that where a better education can be purchased, the decisive factor in a child's prospects is the income of the household they were born into, which is a fact about the parents rather than anything about the child. On this account that is the objection in its simplest form: an advantage distributed by ability to pay is an advantage nobody earned. Proponents argue that the consequences do not stop at the school gate. The point of a purchased education, they argue, is partly the teaching and partly everything else it conveys: smaller classes, better facilities, confident manners, examination technique, and introductions to the families of other pupils. These convert into university places, then into professions, and then into the income that buys the same education for the next generation. Proponents argue that this is a closed circuit rather than a ladder, and that it operates regardless of how able the children inside or outside it happen to be. They add that the effect is visible in who ends up in positions of authority, where people educated privately appear in proportions far above their share of the population, and argue that a society which draws its judges, editors, ministers and executives so heavily from one paid-for route is not selecting on merit whatever it believes about itself. The argument concludes that because private schooling converts parental wealth directly into children's prospects and then back into wealth, abolishing it removes a central mechanism by which advantage is inherited, and that doing so is good.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics answer that the inheritance of advantage runs mainly through the home rather than the school, through books, conversation, expectations and stability, and that banning private schools leaves all of it untouched while removing one of the few things a family can buy openly and be taxed on. They add that the premise about positions of authority may reflect the wealth and connections of those families rather than the schooling, in which case abolition would not change the outcome. Critics also argue that the fairness objection applies to any unequal starting point and would, taken consistently, license interventions in family life that almost nobody defends.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Unearned advantage begins at home, in books, conversation, expectations and stability, so income buys prospects through many channels of which schooling is one. [Rejecting P2] The facilities, manners and introductions described are available through tutoring, catchment-area housing and family connections, all of which survive a ban and none of which can be inspected or taxed. [Rejecting P3] That people in authority were privately educated may reflect the wealth and connections of their families rather than the schooling, in which case removing the schools would leave the pattern intact. [Rejecting C] At most it follows that inherited advantage is unjust, which bears on inheritance and taxation rather than on whether these particular schools should exist.