I'm generally completely against schools acting as travel agents though - perhaps because the schools in Scotland tend to be more socially diverse (which I think is a great thing), and so what tends to happen is that a small number of children from the more affluent end swan off on trips which their classmates will never in a month of Sundays be able to afford. The idea that this teaches those classmates to understand from a young that there are haves and have nots in this world is just obscene imo
SirChenjin,
I only just got the chance to go back and read earlier replies on this thread.
I am also Scottish, and also attended a school with plenty of haves and plenty of have nots. I was certainly not the only kid in my class with parents so selfish and reckless poor that they couldn’t afford the school trips, but could afford every Friday and Saturday night at the working mens club. I went to school with kids that barely had a coat on their backs or shoes on their feet, but their dad was a fixture in the local bookies and their mothers went to bingo 3 times per week. We had plenty of heavy drinking, heavy smoking, heavy gambling parents amongst the 32 kids in my class. Why was there always money for alcohol/tobacco/horses/bingo, yet no money for school trips?
Just under a third of my class went on the school trip to France. The “haves” I would assume you would call them. I am sorry, but I find that term almost offensive as it seems to imply good luck more than hard work. My best friend went on the France trip – she too would have been a “have” by your standards. Her mum and dad never drank outside of the home and only the occasional beer or wine in their home. Her dad smoked, but was limited to one pouch of tobacco a week, her mum didn’t smoke. Unlike my parents who both smoked and drank very heavily. Funnily enough, her dad, like mine, was in the building trade, so no real difference in income at all. Just a vastly different way of living and wholly different priorities. Her dad did extra jobs on the side in the weekends and evenings, and her mum worked part time, mine didn’t (wouldn’t have been possible to work with such bad hangovers of a morning).
I am not saying no kids in my school year weren’t from genuine poverty, but as “poor” as a load of us appeared to be, as in, we were poorly clothed, poorly fed, didn’t have many chances or opportunities in life, the majority of us had very heavy drinking parents, most of whom smoked and many of whom gambled on the horses & bingo. There were only 3 kids in my class (of 32) who qualified for free school meals as their parents were on benefits or very minimal earnings, most of the dads (24 ish out of 32) worked in the same place, it wasn’t ship building, but like ship building (The Clyde) to state the exact job would give away the exact location. But it was a VERY well paid job. Although it looked like poverty, these people were far from poor when it came to actual earnings. I have just checked and a not mentioning actual trade shipbuilder at that time earned well above the national average.
It’s quite funny how we both have such differing perceptions of Scotland and the haves and have nots.
As I already said earlier, I did me no harm at all to see the kids from the “decent” families go off on their trip to France, it did me the world of good to learn that I had to break the cycle of buying “stuff’/drinking/smoking/gambling that so many families in my birth place were (and still are to this very day) caught up in. Seeing my school mates go off on that coach to France, as silly as it sounds now, gave me something to aspire to.