Private Schools

In my opinion, any institution providing children with a fundamental education is public. They are in existence to provide a service to the public. Private schools, even though they require an annual tuition, still provide a service to the public. This is in agreement with John Dewey, the esteemed champion of public education, recognizes that private institutions may serve public ends. Hess defines public schooling as directly accountable to elected officials or funded by tax dollars. He also states, “public schools should also teach the essential skills and knowledge that make for productive citizens, teach them to respect order, and instruct them in the framework of rights and obligations that secure our democracy and protect our liberty”. For the most part all schools, whether public or private, provide this structure.
I don’t believe we can determine or define schooling as public or private in the traditional sense any longer. Today, parents have the choice to send their children to a neighborhood school (public), a charter school (considered somewhat private), a catholic school (traditionally private), or homeschooling (extremely private). We truly can’t define a private school by the lack of tax dollars, because students receiving a state voucher to attend a catholic school receives tax dollars for that child’s attendance, we can’t consider a charter school private because a child transferring from public to a charter via a voucher brings tax dollars with them.
We can, however, possibly look at schooling in the future as a retail commodity. Parents will choose their child’s school based on their child’s future opportunities, prestige, quality, price and/or religious belief. To use a crude analogy, it will be like buying a car. Those who can afford a Lexus will send their children to top schools and others who can only afford a Kia, Toyota, etc. will send their children to public schools. Parents choose to send their children to alternative- educational institutions for two, possibly three reasons: quality of the education, safety and religious confirmation.
Again, in my opinion, public schools are a thing of the past. It’s all about competition and the type of services being provided.