"school snobbery"

[dinkybinky]

I think it?s hysterical that some people think that if you child doesn?t attend a Grammar school or selective independent then they?re not academic. The level of ?school snobbery? that goes on is quite bewildering sometimes.

Success in life is down to so many things hard work, luck, education, contacts and money but some people have to sacrifice what they really want to do in life just to put food on the table. I?m sure most people strive to be the best that THEY can be and I am sure they want the same for their children.

Ok, perhaps it would work if I said this:

It is generally true on the whole that women who earn more than a certain amount tend on the whole to be motivated by money and material things, and arguably the best thing a woman can do for her children is to get out there and do work that is meaningful and enjoyable even if that sometimes means you won't earn lots and lots of money. It is just fun to earn medium amounts of money and have a happy life where you see your children lots rather than not very often, and every time a woman doesn't do that she is, arguably and generally and on the whole, doing her children a great disservice. I don't understand what I'm being asked here? Is the question: why am I the best woman ever? I'm happy to answer that.

dinkybinky, I think that is the most sensible post on the whole thread :)

@nit No it wouldn't. I thought you were a reasonable poster but it appears not.

I am beyond fed up of snidey snipey posters on MN insinuating that people (men or women) who earn reasonable amounts are primarily motivated by money, never see their kids, don't care about their families, are bored, have no fun, do nothing of value.........These are precisely the attitudes which will ensure that the next generation of girls have a bigger mountain to climb than they might have had, if they ever have ambition to set their sights on a career which might end up earning them above what is deemed a socially acceptable salary level for a woman.

... I know it wouldn't, that was sort of the point!

OK Mordion and Xenia etc, genuine question. All the people I know who earn serious amounts of money (yes, mostly men though not exclusively) all work in high-pressure corporate environments. They leave their house at 6am and get back at 9pm at the earliest, with a long commute, and work many weekends. Ok, so some of you manage to work for 5 hours a day and get paid 300 quid an hour, but surely most high-paid jobs require a massive input in terms of hours worked?

So when DO you see your kids? Do you ever get to go to sports days, parents evenings, school plays etc? This isn't a dig, it's a real question - how do you do it?

I don't think anyone has ever suggested this kind of work is dull - not sure where you get that from - clearly it has inherent excitement, or you wouldn't do it. But how do you combine it with seeing your kids for more than a couple of hours here and there? That is what puts me off a high-powered corporate career, and I suspect that until you can square that circle, many highly-qualified and intelligent women will be put off.

Well I work from home and I have never ever missed a sports day or a parents evening or whatever.

Also, throughout primary I took my DC to and from school every single day.

Wordfactory, I'd like your life then. I take my DC to and from school too. I get home at 9.30 after dropping them off and have to leave to pick them up at 2.30. That is barely half a full days' work! They are in bed at 8, so I guess there is 3 more hours there in the evening. But that kind of timetable is hardly compatible with being a barrister, a surgeon or a city lawyer - is it? Like I said, I'm sure some women do manage to earn huge amounts doing very few hours, but the vast majority will not.

At the moment I work from home too although on some days I work elsewhere and in 28 years I have never once missed a sports day or concert for any of the 5 children. The more you earn as a woman the more power you have to fix your diary. If you're a teacher conversely it's much much harder to get to school sports day of your own child and you have less power and much less money.

I am not saying that lots of people who earn a lot do not work long hours - plenty of them do and I spread my work over a 7 day week which seems to suit me best but if I want to pause on days I am here when the children are back from school to chat and accompany a music practice or put on the washer I can easily do that on those particular days.

Barristers do not always have the lives you describe. If you are not in court and many many of the days you are not - first of all you get big holidays, courts restarting in October etc; secondly a lot of work is advisory by email and writing opinions and you are self employed so you pick what work you want to do. There will indeed be busy periods. I personally think the low level middle managers - those rather pale often fat middle aged people who travel almost every other day with 4am starts who tend not to own the business just be paid a salary are the ones with the worst deal. i can think of such a vast range of rich people I know via work who do so many things which can be done quite a bit from home that I suspect teenage girls are simply not told about these options.

However I am not saying that there are not those long hours jobs and my daughter is in one at present but in a 40 or 50 year career you tend to have periods in them and periods not, periods at the bottom, periods at the top with different hours throughout. For most people real wealth which I don't haev tends to come when others you pay do the work for you or good you sell are sold with someone else doing the donkey work and you keeping the profits.

Pale and often fat... Awesome.

I don't really have a judgment on how often anyone sees her children, or how much is the right amount, by the way. Just bloody hate all this offensive stuff about people who earn less than loads.

Xenia - are you still convinced that you are always nice to everyone?

I'm not sure if this thread is still about school snobbery - but here goes-

DS goes to a grammar school, not because we think he is academic, but because it was the school which provided the greatest choice for him to explore his options -
Greater choice of subjects to choose from at GCSE,
more choice of after school activities
A greater choice of sports- the list goes on. He did pass the transfer test to get in but wasn't tutored.

The quality of teaching at our secondary school and academic results are not in question, but we felt DS would have more of an opportunity to try out lots of things that will hopefully make him a well rounded individual - whether he becomes a lawyer or an electrician or whatever.

It would be better if all schools offered the same facilities and opportunities for our DC but that doesn't happen. It's only natural that because schools are measured on exam results and because grammars use academic selection that parents feel pressure to do what they think is best for their DC- however misguided. Snobbery is everywhere - but it's all about attitude and perception - where you live, how much you earn, whether you iron school jumpers, how often you wash your bedclothes- who really cares if someone thinks they are better than me - they can just fuck off, I bring up my family the way I see fit and do not hurt anyone in the process.

(Breathes)

Is calling a group of people pale and fat, nice?
No, and you know it is not.

I am actually fed up that she has been allowed to get away with doing this for many years.
To my mind, these are personal attacks x 10,000?
I sort of picked a bit of a random number there.

Should she get reported for all these personal attacks x 10,000?

"Pale & fat" i.e. people who are working such long hours that they don't see much daylight and probably end up eating a crap takeaway lunch at their desk because they are so overloaded with work. Its a deliberate stereotype I assumed it was to emphasise that being stuck in the middle layer in an organisation can often be a pretty grim place to be. Senior enough to get the blame but not senior enough to stop senior people dumping work on your and not quite senior enough to meaningfully delegate the work to a junior.

All shoving in the queue for dead man's shoes.

Office politics dontcha luv it!

That was an interesting post Xenia. It just doesn't quite chime with the successful rich people I know. So for instance, a couple off the top of my head - very senior civil service, partner in a management consultancy, and whatever the equivalent of a partner is in a merchant bank. These people are neither pale nor fat, and have huge power and influence in their professional lives. But they need to be there and visible at the office, for long hours, and as a result they rarely see their kids. I'm not saying it's the only model, but if you are talking about corporate life, then I'm very surprised indeed if that is not the more usual model.

@Libelulle I never leave my house at 6am and I rarely get home after 9. Roughly two thirds of the time I work from home. Perhaps slightly less. The rest of the time, I'm either in London or somewhere else, usually in Europe or New York. Obviously when I'm away from home I'm away, but when I'm here, I'm here. Sometimes I work long hours but sometimes I work short hours. And if I am working long hours, it's generally when the kids have gone to bed or when they are doing their own thing. I set my own schedules 80% of the time. I've never missed a parents evening, I have missed concerts occasionally but my kids are in an awful lot of concerts. And to be fair, they have missed some of mine (due to disinterest). If I'm not overseas, I can be as flexible as I want when I'm working, so long as the work gets done. I don't often do the school run in the morning (although it's not unheard of. But I'm really not a morning person, I'm still staggering around half naked swearing at the time when they leave, usually) but I often do the school run in the afternoon, after I've been running.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have to go to Brussels (where I officially work but which I try to avoid like the plague) on Sunday and because of the engineering works and the general inadequacy of First Great Western, I will have to get a train at 9:45 am to guarantee being at St Pancras by 3 (in fact I will be hitting paddington at about 12:45 but the next train won't get in till 2:55 which isn't enough time to get to St P, obviously). Because of this train arrangement snafu, I will miss DD2 singing the psalm at mass, which is not going down very well with her at all since, as she correctly points out, I was there last Sunday when Dd1 sang and I'm always there when dd1 sings and it's not fair especially as dd1 isn't even bothered if I'm there or not, not like her etc etc rinse and repeat. The fact that I organised this particular thing deliberately for that week to avoid her music exams which are the week after, and the fact that they only changed the psalm rota after I'd done my own scheduling and originally she and DD1 would have been singing on the other weeks, is apparently irrelevant to her.

Aso, I'd just like to point out, there's nothing wrong with being pale.

libelulle
I make it to sports days, school plays and most concerts etc. DH does some without me and I do some without him. I do the school run in the morning. Sometimes I work long hours and occasionally I have to go into the office on weekends but this isn't the norm. However, I can also work from home. Now DS1 is at an age when he has homework if I do bring work home we sit down at the table together and both do our homework.

Can i answer the original question without becoming involved in the later discussion?.Do people really think that still?.There are just as many bright children in comprehensives as there are in grammars/private.In affluent successful areas there will be a fair number of highly educated pupils in these schools.There will also be a large preportion of above average intelligent pupils from largely non-academic backgrounds that will achieve very little.My experience of our local state school is exactly that.Hence we have decided to sent dc1 to a private school.The difference in teaching and ambition is astounding.I really didn't expect to see such a difference in ethos as i was in two minds about tearing her away from a group of very bright friends.I am not a snob but from where i see it dc1 has a huge advantage at this new school.I care more about my dc than what other people think of me and believe me i have have had some other mothers spitting feathers at my audacity in choosing to move my dc.I do not comment on other parents decisions but likewise they feel free to pass comment on mine.I'm sure they consider me a snob.

Teta there won't be 'just as many bright children in comprehensives as in grammar/private', because comprehensives mirror society, in which very bright people are in a minority. It does not follow, however, that they are then left to fester, or are bullied, or say 'haitch', or throw chairs, or all the other snobbish assumptions one hears about state schools.

teta and Soof are good examples of parents trying to do the best thing for their children and it's rarely about snobbery.

Lots of high paid workers do work long hours but plenty do not. Buy the 4 hour week book about setting up a business which allows you just to work those hours if you want a lot of pay but few hours of work.

Fat - Pale - Yes, Chaz was right about my intention between the pale and fat and the people I had in mind were male, some absolutely exhausted, often commercial salesmen, sales directors or an MD I knew who would need to be in Leeds for 8.30am one day and then the Southampton office by 9am the following day, day after day. I don't think as no one on the thread is a fat middle aged man who takes no exercise and never sees the sun it can be offensive to suggest some of those middle ranking people are a bit pale and fat. Facts are facts. Certainly in real life I would never go up to someone and way you are pale and fat (and for the record no one is whiter than I am but there is a difference between white and unhealthily pale).

Yes Xenia, but on the whole the examples you use of what women should aim for professionally are of highly 'visible' workers in traditional professions and positions of power. And there I really don't see how you easily combine those with family life and actually seeing your kids. If you're the head of a government department, the way things are right now, you certainly don't rock up at half nine and then leave at 3 to go to school assembly, or work happily with your child at the kitchen table. Ditto if you're editor of the Financial Times - can't imagine he works from home much. Or a surgeon, an example you often use. In fact the one surgeon I know loves her job but is at breaking point because of how little she sees her DD. The other one gave up and now works for a big IT firm.

But having said all that, I will certainly look up that 4 hour work week book .

It's just an extra bit of needless rudeness, isn't it? Which is always nice.

People may lurk who are as you describe.

Okay, I could say lots of solicitors have big bottoms [dont know if they do, but they may do as they have to sit down a lot]. Is that offensive?