Is it morally acceptable to send your child to a private school?

Afaik it's a result that been found by repeated studies spanning several years... there was another quite recently.

meh - if you start changing things to make them more difficult to game you'll need to be changing them quite often... and the likelihood is the greater resources of private schools will keep their pupils ahead in the arms race anyway.

WRT the athletic analogy I'd say clearly we do care about what athletes do to make themselves faster - which is why we have in-training drug tests and it's a major news story when somebody famous fails these.
I don't think there's really any moral difference between unfairly making yourself faster and unfairly making everyone else slower - just practically it's easier to concentrate on your own advantage in certain circumstances
Athletics everyone agrees to the same rules, whereas with education it's imo a lot more difficult to work out what it is supposed to be there for and what the 'rules' ought to be.

Apologies if this question has been done before

(1) It is perfectly legitimate for parents to spend money to acquire education for their children. Indeed I can hardly think of a more obviously legitimate expenditure. If you reach this conclusion, it is beside the point that other people are unable to make the same expenditure.

(2) It does not make sense to oppose private acquisition of education unless you also oppose the idea of parents teaching their children themselves. If you accept that it is morally acceptable for intelligent, educated parents to try to educate their children directly, it does not make sense to say that it is morally unacceptable for wealthy parents to attempt to do the same thing via proxy. I have never seen anyone claim that parents should not do their best to educate their children directly.

(3) It is, in my view, morally unacceptable to fail to acquire for your children advantages which you are able to acquire in order to make a completely empty gesture against a system that is going to carry on anyway. Your first duty as a parent is to your child.

I come from a working class family, and my little brother goes to private school not because we are 'posh' or anything but because no state school in our area would accept him because he has extensive food allergies and learning difficulties. The only other option would have been to send him to a special needs school which was also where they tried to send me. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with SN schools but they would definitely not have suited my little brother.Therefore, would it have been morally acceptable to NOT send my little brother to private school, where he has thrived, is accepted and has become a happy little boy?

Where state schools are at or near the top of league tables, property prices begin to rise. People with more money than others use that money to but properties in the right catchment areas. Is that morally acceptable?

There are a few arguments here as a response. The first argument is that it is only morally acceptable to send your child to a private school if the alternatives are inadequate. The second is perhaps your assumption of a SN school being inadequate for your brother is unjustified and that in reality it would have been sufficient. Note that SN schools are actually a seperate category altogether. For example we can make the argument that a SN school does not actually unfairly change the balance of opportunities for a standard student.
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A SN school would have been inappropriate for my brother - you have no idea of our situation so don't even try and say that. My brother and I have the same needs (minus my brother's allergies) and I have been successful in mainstream education. Are you seriously trying to tell me that I would have had the same opportunities and I would have been where and who I am today if I had gone to an SN school where I would be treated differently and not challenged? We know someone whose child goes to an SN school and they have not been afforded the same opportunities as me or my brother despite them being the same age.

1) The entire point is arguing against that position. If you argue that on the basis of equality of opportunity, and then unfair negative impact that private schools have on others, then parents are not free to spend money on education.

2 - 3) are roughly the same point so I'll argue them together.
First, I want to contend your claim that 'first duty as a parent is to your child'. Yes we would expect your parents to care about your best interests to some degree, but that does not give you justification to do any means possible to ensure them. A basic example is that a parent is not justified to for example murder a competitors child to ensure their child wins a competition.

Following from this, it is clear that a parent is allowed to care for their child's interest within reason. So for example reading to your child or teaching them life lessons might be viewed as within these boundaries. However actually sending them to a private school might be viewed as beyond reason as you are committing an act of harm on others.

(I think you have raised one issue which is essentially that parents who can afford to send their child to a private school is going to be achieving a degree of advantage either way. However if you educate your child well and send them to a state school then they will still have a positive impact on the other children thus this act is less harmful than if you segregated them away with other well off children in a private school.)

Finally, if you believe the system itself broken and immoral then I would argue that you morally obligated to do your part in reducing this injustice. Perhaps you still send your child to a private school (begrudgingly) but you should still make effort to change the broken system.

Apologies if this question has been done before, I suspect however that most such threads regard the educational system as a whole.

Here is an initial argument in opposition of the question:

We presumably agree with the notion of equal opportunities for everyone. In particular, we expect children to be given equal opportunities regardless of their financial background since as children they can not influence this via merit / effort.

Now schooling is a very important factor for university and job opportunities. Further, education can be thought of as an positional good in that how 'useful' it is depends on how much you have relative to others. As a result, since private schooling (on average) provides better schooling in exchange for money, we can think of private schools as converting money into greater opportunities. Now since opportunities are limited, then accounting for the positional nature of education means that by sending your child to a private school you are actively harming someone else's child. Essentially the argument is that this is not fair to those children whose parents could not afford to send their child to a private school and that you are unfairly advantaged.

Since the action you are committing is unfairly causing harm to others, it is morally unacceptable to send your child to a private school.

So how would you respond to such an argument, and what do you guys think?

I do not see how one can say that it is immoral to purchase a service which it is lawful to provide for precisely the purpose for which it is provided.

In other words the question is not a question of personal morality for parents but social and political morality for the community.

Try telling that to the victims of pay day loan providers.

So are you suggesting that it is immoral to borrow from a payday lender?


That is the equivalent of the argument that it is immoral to buy private schooling.

That's a fair comment. I guess I'm making two arguments there. The first is that the object of the spending, namely education, is a respectable and desirable end. It is a good in itself. The second is that you have no right to complain where people are spending money on objects that are legitimate in the above sense. That, I think, amounts to a complaint that you do not have (or that not everyone has) the same resources, which is not a complaint I recognise as particularly forceful.

You are accepting that it is legitimate for parents to take steps to give their children advantages that other children do not have. If you accept that, but question their right to acquire education for their children, I don't think your reasoning is clear, because the same reasoning should apply to each case: that it is not right for one child to be advantaged over another just because of his parents' resources, whether monetary, educational, or otherwise.

Another way to put what is, I think, ultimately the same point is to say that your limit of 'within reason' is totally arbitrary, because you have no obvious measuring stick for determining what is a legitimate advantage and what is not. Nor do I think your murder example is particularly strong here. Murder is illegal regardless of your motivation, whereas what we are discussing is specific moral limitations on generally acceptable actions (i.e. expenditure of resources for services).

Personally, I think people are generally entitled to enter into private dealings as they see fit, and I do not think that this general rule can be overturned without a clear and consistent reason.

I do not see how one can say that it is immoral to purchase a service which it is lawful to provide for precisely the purpose for which it is provided.

In other words the question is not a question of personal morality for parents but social and political morality for the community.

Apologies if this question has been done before, I suspect however that most such threads regard the educational system as a whole.

Here is an initial argument in opposition of the question:

We presumably agree with the notion of equal opportunities for everyone. In particular, we expect children to be given equal opportunities regardless of their financial background since as children they can not influence this via merit / effort.

Now schooling is a very important factor for university and job opportunities. Further, education can be thought of as an positional good in that how 'useful' it is depends on how much you have relative to others. As a result, since private schooling (on average) provides better schooling in exchange for money, we can think of private schools as converting money into greater opportunities. Now since opportunities are limited, then accounting for the positional nature of education means that by sending your child to a private school you are actively harming someone else's child. Essentially the argument is that this is not fair to those children whose parents could not afford to send their child to a private school and that you are unfairly advantaged.

Since the action you are committing is unfairly causing harm to others, it is morally unacceptable to send your child to a private school.

So how would you respond to such an argument, and what do you guys think?

It is not directly contradictory to believe that private schools as a system are immoral, yet believe that in certain cases a parent can be morally justified to send their child to a private school. An example of such a case is when all state schools are completely awful, we might think it is within reason for a parent to send their child to a private school.

If you believe that private schools as a system are fine, then the question posed would be trivial. However if you believe that private schools as a system are immoral, this does not necessarily provide a solution to the original question.

This means that we would be dealing with two different questions;
1) are private schools as a system immoral,

2) is it morally acceptable for an individual parent to send their child to a private school

Morality has both private and public aspects. What I do is governed by my moral values. What I expect of you is not governed by my moral code. I am not a dictator.

What I expect of you is that your acts will conform to the moral code of the society of which we are both part. For the most part that public moral code is set out in law (not necessarily the criminal law; we regard adultery as immoral and reflect that not in requiring the stoning of adulterers but in making adultery a ground for divorce).

Buying goods or a service that is lawful is prima facie moral. In certain circumstances it isn't when those goods or that service is bought for an ulterior motive. It is lawful to buy rat poison but immoral to do so to kill your wife. It is lawful to go and watch a children's' play. It is immoral to do so for sexual gratification.

If you consider the existence of private schools to be immoral, then it is prima facie immoral for you (regarding only your private morality) to send your child to one. As you have explained, it is possible to decide that none the less sending your child to a private school is moral.

However, you have no right to impose your private morality on me. You have no more moral authority over me to than to require me to refrain from what the law censures and to do what the law requires. My behaviour is moral because society permits the existence of private schools.

If I personally consider private schools to be immoral, then you can charge me with hypocrisy which I can defend on the grounds that on the particular facts sending my child to a private school was a moral decision, but whether or not I am a hypocrite, that still cannot make my behaviour, in your eyes, immoral.