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.

*LL: I've got a working class body

I look like a very hard-worked farm-girl that's shagging the cowherd and consquently gets the cream off the top of the milk

In 20 years I will look like a laundrywoman with a cheery rosy face and strong, fat forearms.*

Rosie? Rosie Cotton? Is that you?

I am skinny and wiry. What class does this make me?

I used to work for a very upper class family (titled,landed,etc). My ex boss would need the vapours if she heard someone describe the Middletons as upper class.

She was extremely sniffy about the Royal Family who she considered to be verging on middle class and a bit common.

BoldFAIL

I think you've achieved precisely what you set out to, OP. Terribly clever.

DH - son of teacher and engineer went to the local comp. He then went to one of Oxbridge. He then became a lawyer. His parents were working class, he regards himself as working class.

Our DC go to frightfully nice independent schools (although we did try a comp in the top 100 for dd but it didn't work out). What does that make us and our dc?

Let's not be nasty to the poor OP - there are people so insecure about their background, intelligence, status and character that they invent all sorts of byzantine ways of 'proving' they are better than other people. They spend each day mentally judging as many people as they can (ooh, a tattoo - I'm better than that person) and desparately emulating the behaviour, choices and even accent of anyone they percieve as 'higher' than them. Generally, they are seen as less than contemptible by the very people they try so hard to be like (who don't usually give a toss about the so-called 'badges' of status). They describe others as judgemental and justify their behaviour by trying to convince themselves that 'everyone is like that'

But she is right about one thing - if she put her DC's into a comp she wouldn't make any new friends...but that wouldn't be anything to do with having a child in the comp.

If you have a comprehensive in a middle class area with no grammar schools then the pupils are going to be middle class.

Seeker

Yes, the upper classes invariably describe themselves as 'poor as church mice' or say they 'don't have two farthings to rub together'. Quaint, old-fashioned sayings which separate then clearly from the lower orders who actually might struggle to pay their lecky bill or feed their children.

I just think that it's really sad that this kind of thing matters to some people.

mind-bogglingly stupid OP .

Viva

DS2 had a stint at an independent prep school, full of the children of Bentley driving nouveau riche types who owned fast food outlets, nightclubs and garages, trying desperately to outdo each other.

He's at a comp now, his best friend's father is a dentist, and the little girl that he's friendly with is the daughter of a vicar.

My personal favourite was a Porche Cayenne (sp?) with the number plate 'KFC'... they weren't his initials... .

M&S chocolate shortbread certainly fits the bill. Or those lovely chocolate gingers.

To be fair most people using independent schools don't actually think like the OP either, not in my experience anyway.

I would love the OP to come and tell us what they would believe to be a middle class response, seeing as they hadn;t had one so far.

shockers and LeQueen
do you know the OP?
because you are falling in to her trap of grading and judging people on all these outward signifiers.
They really don't matter you know.

You're right of course Greythorne.

It mattered to those parents though, they'd have been furious at not being thought middle class...

lequeen to be honest they do know that the vicar's wife looks down on them, but they quite simply don't give a shit .

She wears horrible clothes and has a bad haircut. She never has any real fun. She thinks she's better than they are because she is middle class with all the important signifiers.

Meanwhile the nouveau riche are having a ball!!!

shockers it might have been like that it days of olde, but it's no longer the case. These days most of we arrivistes can think of nothing worse than living that lifestyle.

Greythorne, the the responses aren't unanimous, they are about 93% not seeing it quite the way I do. I wonder why that is? Funnily enough, on a post (not me) last week about sending one DD private and one DD state, there was outpouring of encouragement to go private, presumably from a clearly more middle class group of Mumsnetters. The irony here is that the 7% that go private and those smart enough to go grammar do so precisely because these routes offer a more secure middle class future. To deny that, and to say going comprehensive does not make a difference, as most respondents here do is delusional.

Whether it makes a difference depends on the child I'd say, as well as the quality of the local comp.

But there's a big jump between "private school/grammar school makes a difference" and "attending the local comp turning middle class children into working class children and giving them a chip."

I don't know why I'm bothering really, you sound a bit bonkers OP.

OP, has it occurred to you that some very middle class parents prefer to send their children to comprehensive schools in order to avoid the sort of shallow wankery snobbery that you demonstrate so effectively?

I could certainly afford to send dd to a private school - thanks to an excellent comprehensive education and Cambridge degree, I earn a salary that happily enables me to make such choices. However, given the outstanding education that is on offer in our local comprehensive school, I wonder at the motives of those who choose the rather second-rate independent school down the road. I rather suspect that I wouldn't want my own daughter to be mixing with them.

This was only 3 years ago! To be fair, not all the parents were so obvious. The rest were teachers there... and us. We are neither wealthy, nor particularly well educated. We picked the school because we wanted a nurturing atmosphere and small classes for DS, who is adopted. It did it's job well for the time he was there, but I'm glad he's where he is now.

VolvoMo, DS passed his 11+ but decided on another school. There are many, many children "smart enough to go to grammar" in comprehensive schools! There are also many practically minded children who will start their own successful businesses after leaving school, make shedloads of money and send their children to independent schools.