WE’RE NOT ALL EQUAL
Education and who gets it is the focus of the third book by author Bri Lee
People are often asked what school they went to. How relevant is this to someone’s success? Unfortunately it is hugely relevant. The single biggest correlative factor in terms of student success, is parental income. In Australia over the past couple of decades in particular we have seen a ‘drift’ of every family who can afford the fees sending their children to private schools, and the result is that about 80 per cent of students with some kind of disadvantage are being left behind at underfunded state schools.
Independent schools can use all kinds of interview and testing procedures to exclude children they don’t want to teach, which is blatantly unethical. In this country some schools have orchestra pits and firing ranges, while others cannot afford to run breakfast programs for kids who aren’t getting fed enough at home, and we tell ourselves we have ‘equality of opportunity’? You’ve gotta be kidding me.
After writing this book are there any conclusions you came to about private v public education? Plenty! The main thing – the smoking gun, really – is that out of all OECD nations, Australia ranks fourth worst for having a segregated schooling system according to socio-economic class. Every year that the current funding and political plan progresses, the worse this divide gets. Other OECD countries with better outcomes for kids don’t have this weird split down the middle that we do, where so many children are at private schools. And we scratch our heads and wonder why our overall PISA literacy and numeracy rates are still decreasing. The problem is obvious. The solution requires a bit of courage and political willpower.
What did you discover about the success of girls and boys in single-sex and co-ed schools? Research shows that girls at singlesex schools are better able to accurately measure how well they’re doing, particularly with science and maths subjects. When they are in coeducational settings they are made to feel bad about themselves and their abilities. Boys benefit from proximity to girls, and their confidence in themselves translates to better results. The real value of single-sex schools for boys is in the “Old Boys” networks, where men can find employment opportunities, mentors, and defence barristers. This is true of “Old Girls” network, but to a lesser extent. Overall my opinion is that it’s just weird and unhealthy to have kids growing up never interacting with other genders.
What persistent myths around intelligence do you debunk in the book? One big one that really annoys me is the way we tell children there are “all kinds of ways to be smart”, rebranding interpersonal skills and kindness and self-awareness as “types” of “intelligence” in order to value them just reinforces the problem. I wish we didn’t automatically allocate morality and worth to people who have “intelligence”. Also … at each point in human history when we think we have found a way to quantify “intelligence”, white supremacists and eugenicists appear and start acting horrifically. Honestly, it’s a relief that we don’t yet know much at all about how or why the brain does what it does. History tells us there are some types of knowledge that humans can’t be trusted with.
What are you reading now? I recently finished The Mother Wound by Amani Haydar, which comes out soon, and it just so devastating and beautiful. I hope every single person in Australia reads that book.
What are you writing next?
Fiction! I’ve had a novel on the backburner for years now. It’s a lot about love, but also politics and capital and art … Moving from nonfiction to fiction is like going from pottery to paint. Sure, you’re an artist, but holy heck it’s a different medium. I love it.
Who Gets to be Smart by Bri Lee (Allen & Unwin, $30).