Should ‘British’ kids be pushed a bit more?

[Bloodybrambles]

Following a conversation with my sister on how not one of our peers went on to become a doctor/dentist/engineer/research. Out of a couple of hundred students, I can only think of three that studied nursing/midwifery and a handful wanted to do teaching. A few of the ‘clever’ kids went on to do graduate schemes/roles and currently sit in middle management positions.

Our conversation was us having the same thought in school of our country being screwed by looking at our cohort. We’re lucky to have immigration as if the majority of our year flukes the exams and became a doctor, they either wouldn’t have a pen to do the prescription or arguing about having a dress code.

My career advice was somewhat like ‘you’re doing well in your A-levels, you like sport, you should study Sport Science at uni’.

Why on earth wasn’t we encouraged to do something useful? Surely as a country there should be some kind of drive to guide kids into doing something useful for society.

Look don't get fooled by someone who goes to an academically driven school saying they make no effort. That is a lie. They work hard.

You find out how good they are when their results come in. All an affectation. Trying hard conspicuously is not very British. But doing it quietly is very very common. Woe betide a child who does not make the grade without appearing to.

Other cultures don't do this. But we do. "Relaxed" parenting is no such thing in many cases.

Says the poster on the internet using an interface that's been created with UX and UI and fonts that are created, while surrounded by brands and products that are designed, no doubt navigating the world with infographics and designed elements, on a Mac or iPhone!!

Watching TV with actors, without the "arts" or creatives you'd be in a shit dark boring place right now and wouldn't be able to email, phone, call or find the local GP - as there would be no road signs 🤣

Basically that you need to think carefully and have a plan (and a Plan B).

I agree @TempsPerdu. Thinking about where your degree can take you is important and if you’re interested in a niche subject or a very competitive field, having a Plan B is a good idea. As I said upthread, my composer/conductor friend taught for several years to make ends meet until he started getting recognition.

Twas ever thus..

And what if they fancy being a trade, plumber etc or hairdresser?

Will you pull a cat bum face forever?

I am Irish and my ex-husband is English and I always found the difference between his nieces and nephews and my cousins of the same age quite eye-opening. His nieces and nephews even went to a private school for quite a few years. None of them ended up going to university, they are working minimum wage jobs at Tesco, etc. And have no ambition to do much else to be honest which I find a shame because they are in general a bright Family. All of their parents have very good jobs. My cousin, which are the same age as them, are doing finance, architecture, engineering and food science. They all have drive and they all know where they want to go in their career. I know this is anecdotal evidence but it really is such a waste in my opinion that they were never pushed harder in their later years. It’s funny because their parents used to push them really hard in primary school… it’s like they completely gave up at the last hurdle.

Is that how you imagine it happens?

Do you refrain from making demands of your children because you're afraid they won't like you? Other parents have a good deal more confidence in their relationships with their children.

@Lentilweaver I agree that not having a safety net gives you focus! Here in the US, it’s very easy to plummet down the economic scale as there’s few social safety nets so you really need to have a plan beyond school/university. It doesn’t matter what it is, trades are respected here, but you need to be working.

@aliceinawonderland also filed along with such classics as;

"Oh I'm not very good" = I have a technical skill in this area which is world leading

"I know a bit" = I have a thesis

There are examples of this very British, clever superior behaviour in this thread. And predictable responses

In my family, in the layer of my siblings plus their children, the youngest being 24 there are 6 people with science/medical discipline PhD’s out of 15 of us. I sadly am not one of them, deemed lazy by my brother, who literally said you’re so lazy you could have a PhD by now. I trained as a nurse when young and also retrained in another career in my very late twenties so I don’t consider myself lazy I did however marry a scientist with a PhD so redeemed myself. We are of Chinese descent though I was born in the UK.

There are not any children who don’t get on with their parents. My much older brothers daughters are only around a decade younger than me at 40ish. They all holiday together in his very nice holiday villa in Florida every year.

My family are complete immigrant stereotypes.

@mathanxiety I don't need to imagine it I've seen it time and time again.

And it's not a reflection on my own parenting journey I have great balanced great grade kids with work ethics, who are paving the way to being internationally successful and very well educated.

Just minus the pushy straight A grade crap, there is more to life.

@Chocolatl1 But I don't want to force DD down the identikit STEM route, which is what would most likely happen if she went there; she's only 7 at the moment anyway, but so far (very much like me) she seems to favour literate subjects over numerate ones. I want her to be in an environment where those interests and talents are valued.

We toured my old grammar at their open day last year, weighing up our secondary options (we may well need to move to get what we want, hence starting early). It's still clearly an excellent school, but last year 166 out of their Yr 13 cohort of 190 took Maths A'level, while very few studied English Lit, History, MFL, Music or indeed anything non-STEM. We very much got the impression (and indeed a rather dejected and off-message MFL teacher complained to us) that STEM was the only game in town.

I agree with this. And starting them on phonics assessments at age 4 is ghastly. By the time they're seven, many children have decided, based solely on their experience of school, that they're not cut out for academics.

Have you read "watching the English"? The author's husband does this...he's a brain surgeon but so self deprecating "it's a bit like plumbing really".

Mind you, I think I prefer it to the "sell yourself" American alternative!

My bug bear is schools which tell pupils not to revise eg for year 9 exams. I take it literally, only to find everyone else has been beavering away

@Chocolatl1 Also just to add that I don't think we're denying DD anything by opting to send her to a comp (we are willing to relocate for the right one, and indeed are likely to do so this year). We'd need to start tutoring soonish to have a fighting chance in the grammar tests, and as an ex-primary teacher myself I've seen numerous kids forced to jump through the intensive tuition/Kumon/holiday revision/weekend mock exams hoops, only to be devastated when they then 'fail' the exam. You only need to read a few posts on the 11+exams online forum to see how intense it all is, and we have no decent Plan B. When I did the San exam in the early '90s I had an hour of tuition a week; DP had nothing at all and still got in. Very different world now.

As I said in my previous post, I really think there is a middle ground between signing up to all this dog-eat-dog competition and leaving your child to just get on with it.

@aliceinawonderland - not read the book but lived the life - I think this is why English literature is so complex. If the English said what they meant all the time we would probably have riots all the time in this country.

It used to be a joke when we were in the EU. Reticence gets you everywhere, who likes a show off?

It's one of the problems with modern life.

I agree with this too - saw it as a primary teacher, and now with my own DD. She does seem to be pretty academic, but at 7 is already becoming rather jaded about it all ('Mummy, all we did in Year 1 was phonics, and now all we do is grammar and times tables'). When I was her age we were doing topics and nature walks and art and music; now it's 37-slide PowerPoints on subordinating and coordinating conjunctions. I volunteer in a Year 5 class at DD's school, and can't get over how static and sedentary it all is, even compared to when I was teaching Year 5 myself a few years ago. So many of the kids can't cope with the lack of variety and movement, and it's very much reflected in their behaviour.

That poster has not denied her daughter anything worth having. Hothousing children and expecting them to get top marks on all exams is harmful and sets them up for painful awakening when they go out into the real world, make mistakes or have a project failure because the workplace in no way resembles exams or coursework, and have no idea how to cope psychologically or interpersonally with that failure and its consequences.

Road signs were designed by Margaret Calvert. She also designed the Transport font used on the signs that tell you "⬅ Accrington" and "Cardiff 14" and the Calvert font used on the underground trains in Newcastle.

Designing road signs is arguably a form of safety-critical work because misunderstanding a sign could cause a collision.

How do immigrant parents do it? The reality is their DC's mental health is not a top consideration. We were told from a young age that our job was to get the best education we could. Anything we did we had to be good at and if not, we were pulled out. Be that team sports, learning an instrument, exams or the Easter bonnet parade. This taught us resilience and perseverance. My

siblings and I did not know any different as we only socialised with families that were like ours. Going against your family was a no no as you could be alienated from the family and the thought of that was awful. As a teenager, I thought their behaviour was unfair but as I hit adulthood I understood why they did what they did.

I used a combination of British, Tiger and Island parenting. My DC have definitely heard the phrase 'I am your parent not your friend' on more than one occasion. They had a much healthier childhood but they grew up knowing that education was their job and they needed to get the best education they could.

It all comes down to good parenting, alongside a good school and decent peer group.

Infact my sister is a hairdresser, and a very good and successful one at that. She wasn’t academic so no, she didn’t go to university but she trained with one of the best hairdressing academies there is and she’s brilliant at what she does.

However, she did have to study hard at school and do the best she was capable of regardless of if that was a 1 or a 9. As I said in my previous post, it’s not for me being the best, it’s about YOUR best in whatever you do.

They know what I'm doing is for their own good. All my DC still live with me 😀

It teaches them resilience. Life is tough and they should get used to it.

In our family we don't seem to be quite like this mediated version of Britishness (to be fair I only have one grandparent born in England, and they were Irish Catholic).

We live in a few clusters near each other and have lived with each other lots as adults when it made sense. We own things in common like houses and sometimes cars. We look after each other's kids and they let themselves in our houses whenever they want. We work really hard and find a lot of value in hard work and all have run or do run our own businesses as well as salary jobs. My mam ran two businesses when she was at home with us in the 80s. We go to church - not loads and honestly don't believe in God but quite like church tbh especially at Christmas and Easter. The kids work hard at school, pitch in with housework, don't swear at adults (they can do what they like on their own), and play out by themselves. We make them learn instruments and play sports and so on and they moan about it, so what. They're fine.

I actually, as you might have guessed, think this is a very ordinary type of British family. But it's so rarely discussed or seen in the media. But I think in real life it's quite normal.

This whole thing of going NC and distancing yourself from your pushy parents is not an Asian thing. No one I know has. Some have emigrated for opportunity with the blessings of their parents, but that's different. My mum and MIL stay with me for months at a time, and I plan to move my mum into my house eventually.

We have always known we have to work twice as hard to go half as far. We do not resent our parents for realising that early on. Even more so now with anti-immigrant sentiment worldwide.
You have to be an Usha Vance to be accepted.

My parents never pushed me, they got me to school but everything else was on me.

I left school and worked in a chip shop - no comment from parents.

That was boring so I ended up doing A level, degree, more training and I've worked in a job I love for 25 years.

People/children/young people do have their own motivation - parents can't be responsible for everything.