The Private-School Question

Is there any place for private schools in the U.S. of 1951? The schools themselves are sure there is, but they admit that the question must be met. In the current issue of School and Society, the National Council of Independent Schools clambers into the ring, grapples with the question, wrestles five falls to a finish, and gives itself the decision.

Are some private schools no better than gyp joints? Yes, sighs the council, both shoulders to the mat. "The sporadic growth of fly-by-night institutions without standards of any kind confronts independent schools with the same problems which medical schools met and solved in the early 1900s . . ."

Does the typical private school turn out weak and selfish citizens? "The independen school, like the public high schools in prosperous suburbs, sometimes deals with students whose chief spiritual staff is a silver spoon and whose main intellectual reliance is a successful ancestor . . . Whether the independent school deals with able, mediocre, or limited students, it undertakes to train all in high standards of academic work and performance . . . One great challenge . . . remains: that of finding a means of imparting to all . . . graduates a lasting motivation."

Do private schools breed snobs? The council wriggles mightily but very nearly gets pinned on that one. "The danger of economic exclusiveness is certainly persistent . . . The danger of social exclusiveness remains, and indifferent students are sometimes offered opportunities they waste while other boys and girls who have every qualification except cash are denied the opportunity they deserve . . . but Americans have not agreed that because not all can have opportunity, none shall."

Do private schools harm public education? With a rather messy half nelson, the council scores a fall: "The cost of educating hundreds of thousands of students now in independent schools is met by their parents, who also pay taxes to support public schools . . . It is obvious that the cost of educating these children at public expense would overload many public school budgets as much as their extra numbers would congest schools already overcrowded and understaffed."

The thing that really counts, concludes the council, is the right of dissent and choice. "Americans will not welcome in any field a line of reasoning that would forbid them to provide superior facilities . . . for their own families until identical facilities could be made available to the whole population at public expense."

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