We should feel indebted to the Xavier student who last week slagged off his public school counterparts on a VCE Facebook page. Sure, his sledging of state school kids as "retarded" and "povo f---s" – "remember to say hi to me when I'm your boss" – was so obnoxious, bullying, sneering and contemptuous that at first I wondered if he was taking the piss. But his bile also contained a timely and uncomfortable truth about an inequitable education system and the mainstreaming of class prejudice. Out of the mouths of teens.

The episode leaves a sour taste because it exposes the pious hypocrisy of adults who censured the lad for expressing an elitist view they harbour themselves. It is a view to which political leaders of both major parties have pandered, running down public education both financially and rhetorically in an approach that distinguishes Australia as moronically self-defeating.

Especially illuminating was the boy's remark that he was "eternally grateful" his parents had sent him to a good, private school instead of a "poverty stricken shit hole in Pakenham". One feature of our censorial times is that we avoid meaningful discussion of various social problems for fear of "stigmatising" disadvantaged groups. I'm guessing this is why some media reports omitted the reference to "Pakenham" from the student's slanderous quote. Yet his reference is an apt one for exploring a broken and segregated system.

Pakenham Secondary College on Melbourne's fast-growing south-east fringe draws 52 per cent of its students from the lowest socioeconomic bracket, and only 3 per cent from the highest. According to the My School website, in 2013 the school's net recurrent income amounted to $11,036 per student. Its total capital expenditure was $74,741. In the same year, 35 per cent of students landed in university, another 23 per cent at TAFE or in vocational education and 27 per cent in employment, which the gut says is a reasonable outcome all things considered.