A private matter

The better the citizenry as a whole are educated, the wider and more sensible public participation, debate and social mobility will be. Any serious rivalry from private education systems will siphon off the elites and thus fatally weaken both the drive and the financing of the state system.

That a private system may be able to offer to a limited number of students the finest education in the world is irrelevant. Highly sophisticated elites are the easiest and least original thing a society can produce.

The most difficult and the most valuable is a well-educated populace.

Canadian essayist John Ralston Saul, born in 1947.