I was predominantly educated in the state system - apart from a short spell at a convent for 2 years when I was 4... and so were my siblings. One of my sister's two children are both at private schools. I have always wondered why my apparently left-wing friends have sent their children to private schools - for all sorts of peculiar reasons. The real reason is of course to give them an advantage, whether social, educational or something else - confidence of some sort, vague aspirational reasons that they may not be aware of, to ensure their children don't slither down into the social abyss from which their parents and grandparents so painfully climbed. I am just as aware of the social abyss... which I may be gently pushing my children into by sending them to state schools, but I suppose it has never bothered me so much,. The mediaeval Wheel of Fortune comes to mind...,
Other friends and relations simply use private schools because they "always have" for generations and wouldn't think of doing anything else - we always like to use precedent as an excuse for doing something unimaginative. However, I think most of the users of the commercial education system would agree that you get "the right sort of people" in private schools... I don't quite know where this idea comes from - and why one is better off having one's children educated with the offspring of newsagents and computer consultants rather than the children of nurses and teachers and artists (which was certainly the case in London primary schools). I am a bit more shocked though when I hear of the unpleasant behaviour of children at really expensive, "smart" schools - because surely that is what you are taking your children out of the state system for - to avoid "rough children" - and there they are, with rich parents, paying the same fees as you and punching your kids black and blue into the bargain. Really, to think children who may be going to Eton in a year or so, behaving just as unpleasantly as any marginalised child from a sink estate!
If more people realised this, it might not be good for business in the commercial education sector! Especially since in the last few years all the heads in the commercial system have been working hard to allay parental fears about bullying. To hear them speak it hasn't happened since Tom Brown's Schooldays was written. Unfortunately, it seems likely that children from wealthy homes who have been indulged may well be worse bullies than the downtrodden masses on the council estates. So it is unlikely that the commercial schools - which pride themselves on encouraging individual "excellence" and tend to think co-operation only needs to occur in team sports out on the playing fields, are really fostering the right spirit in their clients - or if they are, they are offering a very mixed message indeed. Of course there are nice children who come out of these schools - despite the horrors.
To be quite honest, this little tirade is based on an extrapolation of things that happened to my nephew - but it could be happening everywhere - mean children are not restricted to the commercial sector, it just seems a shame that people have to pay for their children to be bullied by experts!
Other friends and relations simply use private schools because they "always have" for generations and wouldn't think of doing anything else - we always like to use precedent as an excuse for doing something unimaginative. However, I think most of the users of the commercial education system would agree that you get "the right sort of people" in private schools... I don't quite know where this idea comes from - and why one is better off having one's children educated with the offspring of newsagents and computer consultants rather than the children of nurses and teachers and artists (which was certainly the case in London primary schools). I am a bit more shocked though when I hear of the unpleasant behaviour of children at really expensive, "smart" schools - because surely that is what you are taking your children out of the state system for - to avoid "rough children" - and there they are, with rich parents, paying the same fees as you and punching your kids black and blue into the bargain. Really, to think children who may be going to Eton in a year or so, behaving just as unpleasantly as any marginalised child from a sink estate!
If more people realised this, it might not be good for business in the commercial education sector! Especially since in the last few years all the heads in the commercial system have been working hard to allay parental fears about bullying. To hear them speak it hasn't happened since Tom Brown's Schooldays was written. Unfortunately, it seems likely that children from wealthy homes who have been indulged may well be worse bullies than the downtrodden masses on the council estates. So it is unlikely that the commercial schools - which pride themselves on encouraging individual "excellence" and tend to think co-operation only needs to occur in team sports out on the playing fields, are really fostering the right spirit in their clients - or if they are, they are offering a very mixed message indeed. Of course there are nice children who come out of these schools - despite the horrors.
To be quite honest, this little tirade is based on an extrapolation of things that happened to my nephew - but it could be happening everywhere - mean children are not restricted to the commercial sector, it just seems a shame that people have to pay for their children to be bullied by experts!
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