Sam Freedman wouldn't send his kids private

Because the school dd would have got is awful in pretty much every way. And I know it's awful for the kids that had to go there. Most people avoid it. The school that she could hope for, but be unlikely to get, is good in lots of ways but still offers nothing to able dc. And I can't afford to move into catchment for a better state school, nor have I had the time to suck up to a church.

Private was because I wanted her to attend a school that offered an academic curriculum and suitable challenge. Possible because she got a small scholarship and a large bursary.

If she attended the dire school, I can only guess. She still socialises with local dc and lives here so no change in that regard.

Educationally, she'd be under the impression she could effortlessly be the best in school and that formal education was boring and easy. I'd have put her in for a maths gcse and maybe another to either appeal for a school that offers more than the legal minimum of academic subjects, or at the least to avoid the boredom of being taught maths she did years ago by a teacher who has no qualifications in the subject. I'd be homeschooling in the evenings, or maybe I'd have arranged pt school and dd studying while I was at work.

I'm also sure she'd be getting a reputation for being a trouble maker, because she's disgusted by the way some of her friends are treated by the school, and I'm under no illusions she would keep quiet in school.

Only possible gain if she'd gone there would be that a few less confident friends who have been/ are being bullied would probably not have been if dd had been there as she's confident. We've already had fall outs on social media and in one case a physical fight with one local bully, started by the bully and ended by dd before anything was hurt other than the bullies pride. And her friend with sn wouldn't have been managed out so easily because dd would have defended her from other dc and pissed off teachers asking in every lesson why her friends 1-1 was with y11s.

Hardly what I want from my child's education.

If the comprehensive system itself was fair and dc round here could attend the type so many mumsnetters consider the norm, I wouldn't have investigated private. Or if we had a grammar school in feasible travel distance. However now she's there I realise what she has is a big advantage on a good comprehensive, and given her other disadvantages in life, it evens things up between her and the many privileged dc at good state schools.

so lurked why did you choose the private School? And what do you think would have happened if she hadn't gone ? And what do you think it's like for those in the the local school without that choice?

bert I get your point that for someone like your ds the mix has broadened his understanding at an earlier age. But even without going to extremes and benefit bashing, and he'd simply grown up without the discussions, and the idea his situation was down to you/your dh working hard, thus implying his classmates parents all didn't, I still don't think the school would have provided anything but more people to look down on.

slightly I see your point re ethnicity. But even then I think it depends on the area. I know in bigger towns state schools are more mixed, but dd's private is far more mixed than most of the local state schools. As to social mixes, I've had dozens of remarks that all stem from surprise that dd and I do not meet their stereotype. And I don't think knowing her or I has broadened their minds in anyway, because they were closed to start with. And they haven't been from those in/from the private sector. Or the very wealthy. (Although I accept that's down to personal experience rather than evidence the private sector imparts understanding).

I do think it certainly could help that middle ignorant group if schools all had similar intakes, but I think that would help lots of issues and unfortunately is unlikely to ever happen.

out as do some parents in the state sector. Although let's be honest, plenty of people seem to think the two are inextricably linked.

twisted it is true of course that privately educated are over represented and state educated are under represented in many arenas.

I suspect people who choose private might be doing so to get away from behavioral issues more so than poverty.

slightly I think we'd see different attitudes amongst the general populace to people poorer than them, or even people of a different class to them ( working class people with brass are demonised and othered).

We wouldn't see parents who attended state school and whose children attend state school constantly finding ways to display their superiority for example, here on MN. The endless threads that have people lining up to declare their snobbery, the grammar police, the constant 'fat kid ' threads...it all points to a societal lack of tolerance, understanding, human respect that comps have done nothing to help.

'The vast majority are educated in comps'- yet the small minority who are not are hugely over represented in high earning and high power jobs. They do not need to be segregated in this way as small children- it does create a social divide that is not only not fair but also not good for overall cohesion.

What would the results look like if it had been successful?
(What if we went back to "official" two-tier and things got worse?)

slightly if it helped then we'd have seen the results by now.

After all,the vast majority of people are educated in comps.

My ds lives in a privileged bubble at home- and in most of his out of school activities. We do a lot of talking about society and politics, but the bubble very definitely there. If he went to a school where everyone was like him, or even more privileged, I fail to see how he would come across less privileged children except as people he might volunteer to help. Which is a completely different dynamic.
Continued
At a school with a very high % of pp children, he can hardly fail to be aware of the challenges some of his peers face. I won't deny that his friends were mostly "people like him". But he was certainly very quickly aware of how lucky he is. And the sense of the injustice of it stays with him. He will never find himself having to say what Freedman said. (OR what he was misquoted as saying!)

Okay. I see your argument now Lurked, but while I agree that it's the why that makes a difference, I still disagree that relatively homogenous private/highly selective state vs mixed more representative state doesn't make a difference.

To some children, the bubble created and reinforced for them by upbringing will be impenetrable whoever they sit next to.

But for others, the opportunity for them to mix with others who their parents don't choose for them will make a difference: a friend's parents were genuinely shocked that their little girl was playing with "an ethnic kid" (i.e. me) for example. Obviously their kids hadn't been bothered. I'd like to think it opened the parents' mind a little too. Similarly another friend was prone to talking about the "people in little houses" which she dropped very suddenly after they gave me a lift home to our teeny terraced house. I think she'd assumed I had the same comfortable background, instead of both parents on and off benefits as temp work ended.

Similarly I was equally shocked to realise that other kids in my class were worse off still than we were. At 7, I didn't immediately jump to trying to rationalise it away, as I might have done at 17 or 27, I just thought it wasn't fair.

I don't think it's a magic wand. I don't think it will magically resolve all social ills. I do think it helps.

I agree with Lurked that going to a state school will not mean that you necessarily mix with people poorer than you or make you any more sympathetic to their circumstances if you do. You might just as easily decide all the problems experienced by people in your school are their own fault.

I understand the argument that if everyone had to send their children to state schools it would mean politicians having to give education a higher priority, although I'm not sure if that would be the result in practice. But I'm not sure it would result in us all being more rounded and sympathetic human beings.

bert my point is that growing up with no understanding of how life is for others is not something that is exclusive to privately educated dc.

I'm in full agreement that some privately educated people have no idea about how bad uk poverty really is. And even some that do know will have the attitude that most are responsible for their own poverty. But I also think that the same is true for some state educated dc.

I also firmly believe that the main problem with deprivation in this country isn't just acknowledging it exists, it is the refusal to acknowledge why it exists.

Taking the old shoes example I bet your dd didn't see the handful of deprived dc at her school and come to the conclusion their parents were just lazy scroungers who spent their benefits on sky and drink over shoes and who could be more affluent if they worked hard. And I bet your ds didn't develop empathy and understanding about poverty simply because there were more deprived dc at his school. Their attitudes and knowledge will be down to upbringing, not their schools intake.

Plenty of parents choose state schools based on the intake too, and the desire to keep their dc away from undesirables, that isn't just in privates either.

My reference to the mail is because it is a simple way to encompass the judgement and lack of understanding around deprivation and how those in poverty live.

I live amongst it, and so I couldn't have sheltered dd from it's existence. But I could quite easily have sheltered dd from why it exists, and influenced her to think that in 99% of cases it is self inflicted and those people are all inferior, rather than less fortunate than her. And it's much easier for a parent in a mc area, even in a genuinely mixed school, let alone one that selects on religion/ability/postcode etc, to provide that sheltered bubble if they choose.

Lurked- I am trying very hard to understand your points, but I'm afraid I don't. Please could you explain?

Their

Of course kids notice.
And more importantly they're parents notice.

slightly do you think pick on the poor kid is something done only by private school pupils to other kids they see on the street? Or that all the idiots who enjoy poor bashing and believe the anti benefits propaganda in the mail etc are all privately educated? Because I can assure you they are not.

I don't think a child under the age of 8 would notice outward signs of depravation and i'm not sure about teens as some are very inwardly focused.
children like most adults probably assume other people live lives similar to their own.

I'm sure even the most cocooned privately educated dc have seen people who can't afford new shoes. Whether they attend your school isn't the important part, it's why you think they have old shoes and what assumptions you make based on that about them as a person. Sitting near a deprived dc doesn't create understanding.

Yes some parents want to buy a bubble, but that attitude isn't limited to parents paying fees.

It's pretty hard not to be aware of the kids in your class who can't afford new shoes, isn't it? Rather easier if they aren't sitting next to you but across town in a different building.

Plus, let's be honest. Some parents buy education because they want that bubble - a former senior manager at a place I worked would bloody wank on about how exclusive his kids' new school was for the whole lunch hour, how he couldn't possibly send them to the village school with all the council estate kids with single mothers in pyjamas at the school gate, bloody slappers, blah blah blah.

Many state school kids also live in bubbles. That's down to parenting, and to a lesser extent the individual schools.

"I am responding to some on this thread that think that private school pupils live in a bubble with no idea of the outside world"

Many do! It's a bit daft to try to pretend otherwise.

I am responding to some on this thread that think that private school pupils live in a bubble with no idea of the outside world