To think that going comprehensive is an exit from the middle class?

[VolvoMo]

There may be a few minor exceptions (due to wealth or ideology) but doesn't going comp take away your middle class badge and worse, give your kids the chance to carry a big chip on their shoulder for their adult life.

Congratulations Cory, you've made it!

Your prize roll of Farrow and Ball wallpaper awaits. Johnny Boden has been alerted.

But I can't afford bloody Boden- is there any way I can self-demote?

(I'd be happy to try eating with my knife and I'm sure I could put in a bit of effing and blinding, but I can't give up my job as it pays our bills)

well... you've already sent your children to the local comprehensive so I would await the hoodies, the inevitable spiral into crime and disorder... you know the stuff parents fear; refusing to go to violin lessons, not changing pants at music festival, that sort of thing. Then the worst moment of all - the failure to get into an RG university.

Honestly keep on with licking your knife and the the other stuff will follow...

I come from Wales with a dad who was an Irish immigrant and a mum from the Valleys (the coal buckets used to still go overhead by my GP's house).

I went to a comprehensive and Uni and now live in SE England and my DS are in private schools. In Wales some of the class markers don't work in exactly the same way Rugby is a religion so is played in most schools, the Welsh National Opera was popular with a wide audience etc.

I think I want to be upper class because then
-I don't have to wash the car

• I can eat stodge rather than having to eat something with a rocket and truffle jus salad.
• I can wander around in mucky boots and jeans.
• I can buy loads of nice mismatched china in a car boots sale and pass them off as family heirlooms.

My only concern is

• will being upper class mean that DH and our sons will have to wear red trousers!

"- will being upper class mean that DH and our sons will have to wear red trousers!"

not neccessarily. You could get away with baggy and boing-smooth bottle green cords or rust coloured moleskin. HTH

Orm & LeQ

Do you know if you can get a Farrow & Ball style trouser shade guide.

It would have been handy the other day when all of the cricket fans were coming out of Lords

What do you think?
www.farrow-ball.com/colours/paint/fcp-category/list

Blazer 253 - Drawing Room Blue
Trousers 34 Calke Green
Complexion somewhere between 236 Cinder Rose & 96 Radicchio

I wonder where WASPs like me fit into OP's neat little boxes?

Talkin - if you are indeed a WASP then OP may get OP's servant to spray RAID on you (as OP is probably too posh to do it herself like).

Seriously though - me & my best friends from our old crappy Comprehensive shite school have all agreed that if we ever win the Lottery / marry rich men (ok both not very likely) then we'd want our potential / current DC to attend Private School (Public School? whatever). (Day school not Boarding school that is).

Just for the smaller, quiet classes & (hopefully?) better education.

I wish the OP would come back and analyse the likely consequences of having 92% of the nation grow up with a big chip on their shoulder. Might it do something for our international competitiveness? Or just for the potato farmers?

oh gosh I think we're downwardly mobile! we are having chips tonight though.

In the opening credits of Grange Hill wasn't there a flying sausage? that could easily have landed on somebody's shoulder and there's a fair chance it was being served with chips so...yeah!

I agree with Emphatic completely. I went to a private all girls school and while I had a very good academic education, met only middle class female pupils - and emerged extremely shy, particularly with the opposite sex! Whereas my son went to a fairly ordinary comprehensive and had the opportunity to mix with a wide range of people from all backgrounds and cultures. He is now at university, doing well in a subject he loves (music) and a wide circle of friends, with 10 times the social confidence I had at his age - I am sure his education was a major factor in this.

no, we teach anybody.

Well, I grew up on a sink estate, went to a comprehensive , got top grades and a fair few subsequent degrees and I suppose we would now be knocking on the door of the UMC if we defined ourselves in such ways.

Before retraining I was a teacher in the local comprehensive (the neighbouring one to the one I went to) and we had a fair number of UMC children, largely from families who rejected independent education on principle. The rich Left seem more able to keep their principles up here! They went to school with children from the same sink estate I grew up on.

Words fail me.

That is to say, I think the OP is a bit of a tit.

If i went to a Posh Public School instead of a Crap Comp then i might actually know how to do ratios & fractions to pass a maths test at work :(

In fact i may have then met a Posh Bloke & not have to work...

Comps in my area are superb.
Only two types of kids at the local independent schools --
1/
Rich thickos who need all the help they can get
2/
Children of working class parents who have made loadsa money and don't know any better think they're buying their kids a superior education. They aren't; in fact it could be worse than what is available for free.

Ok. Haven't read thread properly but would like to say, to the OP,

Hahahahhaha. Fuck off.

Obviously if I'd been to public school I would've put that more eloquently. Am dead disadvantaged, me.

Why would they have a chip on their shoulder?
'identifying' as middle class is pretty pathetic anyway.

Zombie thread alert.