To find people say X public School is OK because

[NoComet]

It gets DCs into Oxbridge and RG universities, a daft justification for choosing a school that costs £15,000 plus a year.

We have a local secondary (not even a true comp as there is some creaming off of bright DC by Grammar schools) that is in Special Measures that has just got two pupils in to Oxbridge.

And this is hardly news, bog standard state secondaries and sixform collages all over the country send DCs to Oxbridge and RG Universities every year.

My very ordinary Welsh Comp sent someone in the year above me to study medicine at Oxford, there were others at prestigious med schools and, now, RG uni's me included.

Yes, private schools are very nice, yes DC avoid some DCs with a bad attitude to education, Yes DC get good sports facilities and yes DC may study a wider range of subjects, esp. MFL.

But in the end your DC will, quite likely end up at exactly the same uni, doing the same course, just with poorer parents!

My DH went to boarding school, went to Oxbridge, got a Double First, still manages to be totally clueless about lots of things. That's not the reason we're not sending our kids to Private schools though - we're not sending them because the system is elitist.

beast wasn't that said of de Sade? I remember an introduction to Justine or something that said 'if this is a book one reads with one hand, one must have a sick bowl in the other'!

It's from Book 1 of Rousseau's Confessions. He mentions "ces livres qu'on ne lit que d'une main" (these books that one only reads with one hand).

Well I never, and there was me thinking Rousseau was such a smug holier than thou type... Typical of my old tutor that he pinched the reference. He teaches in the US now (he must be 70) and I see him on rate your professor with all these students saying what a lovely old man he is. I want to log in and say, do you clean-living preppy types have any idea what a filthy old reprobate he was int the 1980s, you are riding a tiger here if you think he is a sweet old man....

Steaming.. Sade used to really upset me, he was so cruel and disgusting and I have never been quite able to clean my mind of his description of anal sex...

Talkin, true about Fledermaus.

Beast - yes, I made the mistake of reading it because I read some critic or introduction or something saying no-one who hadn't read de Sade could hope to understand Flaubert.... but frankly it wasn't a price I was willing to pay, in the end.

Never did find out what happened to Justine in the end, but I'm sure it wasn't nice.

It was completely revolting and there were things he did to his MIL in I think another book... I rebelled and wrote an essay on Casanovas memoirs instead which was very much nicer.

Actually Sade was a total creep and spent not quite enough of his life locked up IMHO, I objected to even showing that i agreed with his reputation by writing about him.

No idea how reading him is meant to help with Flaubert though, some critics do really go looking for ways to be different....

Simone de Bouvier.

Beauvoir, damn it.

What about her, crowler? Did she read one handed too? There's equality for you....

Beast I think it was in relation to Salammbo... and Flaubert did like de Sade, but then he was a twat in many ways, too.

Simone, one-handed reader. Ha!

I was wondering if that was the person TOSN was speaking of, I think she was not exactly an admirer of the anal sex saga but found it worth reading or something.

Oh, Salammbo, I had forgotten that one. Actually I think I didnt manage to finish it but from memory it was a bit weird and twisted and kind of self-indulgent?

Flaubert was OCD seems to me, all that stuff about spending all morning on an adjective.

I didn't finish it either - only really liked Mme Bovary and the one about the old maid and her parrot!

He wasn't a very nice man, certainly... never thought of OCD!

bouvard et pechuchet- theres another unreadable one, actually always made me think of Gilbert and George.

I do have a theory that many of these writers are only famous because there was very little competition and nothing much else to do. people who devoured Flaubert probably didnt get the option of reading say Fontane or Hardy, and there was no telly or internet...

None of it is a patch on liaisons dangereuses, my fave book of all time.

Crowler, how interesting, she was a big femimist, perhaps she was trying to show how unshockable she was, as a more sleazy, sexist, mysogynistic set of books you would be hard put to find. And of course full of the line that the women enjoyed the pain and humiliation

still fuming after 35 years

Oh I read B&P, god it's depressing.

Actually I think Mme B is fantastic though - just a shame about everything else he ever wrote.

BUT, actually there was loads of competition to break through - the shadow of Victor Hugo, Balzac, George Sand..... I do think Mme B was genuinely something new and impressive.

(I have derailed: sorry. I prefer this, though, to being presented with ever-more improbable situations in which I might send my children to private school )

Mme B was excellent, agree. Just think Flaubert didnt write muich else that was good...

Balzac... I am still scarred by the week where I had to do both Balzac for my French tutor and Nietzsche (in German) for my German tutor... I didnt know there was so much writing in the world...

sorry to collude in derailing, but it is nice to find fellow linguists and revisit the grave of my former intellect :)

My MA was on Flaubert - it was very basic, looking back, but I just wanted to write lots and lots about Mme Bovary!

Well, I only have 2 more to go with dd1, so fingers crossed...

To be honest the summer birthday in itself would not concern me: there are always several children with August birthdays in every class and they seem to be alright. Speech problems I simply do not know about, you are right.

2 more years to go, I mean. Having got through 11, with all their highs and lows!