Why should going to Eton make you less part of 'real life'?

[MayDayMayDay]

I have friends who went to Eton and other leading private/boarding schools. Between them they have: children at state schools, cancer, children with disabilities, been made redundant, parents with dementia, been unable to afford a house, become alcoholic, suffered marriage breakdowns, lost family in accidents, voted Labour, worried about the future...

We all have different experiences of life. Who really thinks one life is more 'real' than another? I might vote for David Cameron, I might not. Whatever I vote it will have nothing to do with where any of the party leaders went to school. I'll leave those considerations to all the snobs who can't recognise themselves as such.

[mrsbaldwin]

I once enjoyed a one-night stand with an Old Etonian . In the morning I put my hand down the side of the bed and pulled out ... a copy of Gun Dogs Quarterly

[sallyjaygorce]

I've had a couple of those but can't say they were that enjoyable. Still, at least you had something to read.

[policywonk]

I wouldn't vote or not vote for someone on the basis of where they went to school. Blair went to Fettes - not that different from Eton. Most top politicians went to Oxbridge. Singling Cameron out for the Eton connection doesn't make much sense.

However, I do think that it's entirely reasonable to point out that someone who attended Eton (or Fettes) and then Oxford is going to have had a powerfully skewed idea of what life is like for the vast majority of people, unless they have worked very hard to correct their early conditioning.

[wastwinsetandpearls]

I don't think it does, my dd almost went to a public school but she would have still been very real and we ceratinly are. We are just a normal working class family who have first hand experience of living on benefits, divorce and poor health .

But I suppose if you come from a family who have been educated at Eton for centuries then you could be said to be our if touch. Despite my hairy socialist ways I dated quite a few public school boys and many of them did not have a clue what normal life was like .

But I suppose that you could also sAy that someone from a staunch working class background may not know much about life outside of their social circle.

[PortBlacksandDweller]

But you could argue we don't need our politicians to be understanding of everyone's situation - being well educated may make a better politician than being empathetic. I'm not saying this is true btw and you can be well educated at any school provided you have the brains in the first place.

[mumblechum]

Am arfing that you lump sending your children to state schools with getting cancer and becoming an alkie

[ClaireDeLoon]

"The papers keep writing that [my wife, Samantha] comes from a very blue-blooded background", but "she is actually very unconventional. She went to a day school."

I think that sums it up. It isn't the privilege it's the lack of comprehension of just how privileged he is. I mean does he really think not going to a boarding school is unconventional. Does he not have any friends in his group who went to state school for example?

[mrsbaldwin]

Teehee SallyJayGorce. Anyone else done it with an Old Etonian (or David Cameron for that matter)?

[policywonk]

LOL at Claire's quote. Did he really say that?

I'm worried by senior politicans (of any party) who can't comprehend the powerlessness that comes with multi-factorial poverty (lack of money, poor education, poor diet, few resources, lack of a support network, health problems, etc etc). It's one thing to know about these things in an academic sense, but if you have known real people in these situations, you're much more likely to appreciate how trapped many people are. Whereas if such people are just statistics to you, you're more likely to think that they should jolly well pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

[MmeBlueberry]

I'd take Eton over Kirkaldy High any day.

[wastwinsetandpearls]

That quote shocked me as well Claire.

[scaryteacher]

School is only one part of your life though, and over by 18. How many of you would like to be judged on where your parents decided to send you to school, and how you were at 18? I am of the same era as DC, slightly older perhaps, and I wince sometimes at what I was like at 18; and I can see post 40, just how much I have changed and grown in that time. I expect that DC has done so too.

Gordon Brown has bugger all in common with me, and his experience of 'real' life is different from mine - why is his more real than that of DC?

[southeastastra]

there are so many old etonians in the tory party. does eton not teach them to do anything else?

[TheFallenMadonna]

Why would you take Eton over Kircaldy High MmeB? Would you take it over Kesteven and Grantham Girls School?

[MayDayMayDay]

Mumblechum - I'm hardly suggesting that going to state school is as unfortunate as having cancer etc. I'm saying that going to a private school doesn't always mean your family remains on that particular path of privilege forever. By the time most of us reach 40 we have been informed by a lot more than our school. I'm saying I know people who went to certain types of school who don't repeat the pattern either due to circumstance or by choice. I think you knew that.

[SethStarkaddersMum]

"It's one thing to know about these things in an academic sense, but if you have known real people in these situations, you're much more likely to appreciate how trapped many people are. Whereas if such people are just statistics to you, you're more likely to think that they should jolly well pull themselves up by their bootstraps."

you would think so wouldn't you Policy? But there are plenty of conversations on here where the bootstraps brigade are actually the ones who come from the deprived backgrounds and are saying 'if I did it anyone can'. Bit like Norman Tebbit telling people to get on their bikes like his dad did.
Whereas the ones with the sheltered lives (me for instance) are often more sympathetic.

[Kneazle]

When i was at university I had a boyfriend who had been to a silmilar school . He didn't realise that some people didn't take A levels and left school at 16

[BeenBeta]

MayDayMayDay - agree with you. This arguement just annoys the pants off me.

There are plenty of people who profess themselves to be Labour voters and hate Cameron because of his 'out of touch Eton background' but yet they went to nice state schools then Oxbridge. Lived in Islington/Putney as children, never saw their parents or grandparents unemployed and have a completely care free life and live in relative wealth now. Frankly they have no clue what life is like for people living on benefits or in unemployment blackspots in the North of England.

I met plenty of them at University. Me and DW used to call them 'trendy lefties'. They wore their social concience like a badge but as soon as they left university they went into the City or married a banker.

I went to private school too but was born in a mining area and married a girl from a two-up-two down then went to the City and married a banker. My experience is their experience plus a bit more real life grit.

Gordon Brown is not from a poor background. Nick Clegg is a descendant of European arisocracy, went to Westminster school and then studied archeology at Robinson College Cambridge. See his wikpedia entry.

[tattycoram]

I remember reading htat Iain Duncan Smith when he set up the Centre for Social Justice started taking Tory policy bods/MPs round deprived areas and he said the one thing that they all said to him was that they just didn't know.

[tattycoram]

I've just remembered too a month or so ago when the Tories published a policy docuemnt saying that 50% of teenage girls had babies (or were single mothers, I can't quite remember). The real figure was 5% and that document must have been checked by several people before it was published.

That they found that figure credible does imply a "there be dragons" attitude to life less privileged than their own doesn't it?

[amothersplaceisinthewrong]

Don't think it matters where they went to school, but they do need vision, an ability to see the big picture, and to grasp complex ideas. Which means they probably need more than a couple of Grade G GCSEs