WHICH SCHOOL?

Beyond  public vs private

By  Joanna  Mendelssohn

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This is the fifth in the series of NOW Australia - new journalism on contemporary
issues by Australia’s leading writers and journalists and published five times a year.
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THE DILEMMA FACING PARENTS TODAY

Why is it that the middle class is deserting public schools for private
schools? What is the private sector offering students that state schools now
don't? It's not just about money. What has gone wrong with the once excellent
state system and why are governments failing to stop the drift?

Parents are now paying for a quality education that earlier generations could
experience as a right of citizenship in the state system.

Joanna Mendelssohn in this examination of what has happened to Australian
education draws upon her own experience as a parent facing the dilemma: Which
school?

She writes of her own experiences: with her children, their friends and their schools.
In this quest Joanna meets teachers, parents and students from public and private,
selective and religious, across states who take her through the changes in education
and their consequences for the children and grandchildren of today's parents.

In her book Mendelssohn argues that national priorities must be urgently
reconsidered and suggests an agenda for change beyond the orthodoxies of left
and right to focus on children, training and teaching quality, extra curricula
value, flexibility and accountability.


About the author

Joanna Mendelssohn is an Associate Professor at the College of Fine Arts,
University of New South Wales. Her first book, The Life and Work of Sydney
Long (McGraw-Hill 1979) remains the definitive work on this artist. Her next
project was the Australian artist and printmaker Lionel Lindsay. Her catalogue
of his etchings was published in 1988, the same year as her biography, Lionel
Lindsay: an artist and his family (Chatto & Windus). The same year she began
to write for the Bulletin. In 1991 she was awarded the Geraldine Pascall Prize
for art criticism. In 1996, HarperCollins published the book based on her
thesis, Letters & Liars: Norman Lindsay and the Lindsay family papers.


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