To think that it is hypocritical to be anti Private,Selective or Single Sex Schools when you have benefited from them.

[smokepole]

Having read many threads on this site and having read a couple in particular today, it seems that "most" of the posters on here have benefited from these types of schools. However, time and time again you read these people slating Grammar , Private and single sex schools. This is so hypocritical that the posters who have had the benefit of the best of the education system, seem so anti any form of selection for today's children.

I had the misfortune of being educated in a Secondary Modern in Kent in the 1980s . There are not many Secondary Modern educated posters on this site, which goes to show how fortunate the majority of posters on here were with their educations. These people are like "Champagne Socialists" having benefited from superior educations, but seek to deny the opportunities for future generations. "DO AS I SAY NOT AS I DO" springs to mind with these posters who espouse the merits of Comprehensive education, having not being educated through the Comprehensive system themselves.

Nonsense OP.

I went to a single sex super-selective. Does that mean I have to wave the flag uncritically for single-sex education and selection for ever more? Who is going to force me?

In fact I've got mixed views on both (and on private education) but seeing a type of school from the inside certainly helps give you a realistic view.

Anyway, I think you mean 'Do as I say, not as my parents did'

Oh it's you smokepole. Glad you got your dx.

Don't you think your issues are with your parents and their decisions? Most posters here aren't going to know the backstory and the emotional significance of educational choices in your family.

Sorry you're upset.

I am a hyprocite, I am against private education but I send both of my boys private for secondary.

But why are you holding posters responsible for choices their parents made and why are you using a person's parents choices as evidence that they are being hypocritical (your words)?

Do you not see that everyone looks at their own upbringing and their parents when deciding what sort of parent they themselves want to be and what their own choices may be.

My parents used to hit me. Am I a hypocrite because I choose to never hit my children? No. I did not like being hit, I do not agree with my parents' perspective on the benefit of being hit and I choose to not copy their choices with my own children. I experienced their choice as a person with no say in that choice. I grew up and made a different choice as a direct result of my experiences.

You cannot blame people for their parents choices or use their parents choices to say that the people who 'benefited' from their own parents choices are denying that life to their own children.

Think.

Think why a person who has had a certain thing in life may feel that they do not want to repeat it with their own children.

It is because THEY don't feel it is the right choice.

Because they didn't like it.

Because for them, the bad outweighed the good when they had to live it!

Because they are not their parents.

Because they do not think like their parents.

Because they are a different person making a different choice, sometimes with the benefit of being the person who had to live with the original choice!

What you are actually asking is - why don't people think like their parents, agree that their parents made all the right choices and make the same choices their parents made?

And when you think about it that way - what a daft question that would be, wouldn't it?

I attended state school (in Scotland we don't have different categories. Just schools!). I chose to give my DD the advantages of attending the same type of school, hopefully that doesn't make me a hypocrite

People I know who attended private school tend to be against it for their own children, as they don't see it as providing advantages. They see private schools as grade hothouses. They struggled with the independent study requirements of university. Your post is based on a massive assumption that private schools are always better than state schools!

You can't draw any conclusions about the educational backgrounds of mumsnetters in general from responses on a thread like this. It isn't a survey. There is likely to be a skewed group of respondents as people with relevant views will be drawn to read or post.

smokepole the hothouse thing is particularly true where you are.

Ig I ere in your shoes I would be furious with the various things your parents have done. But look forward.

It's not too late to do acheive your potential. You're still young. How are the uni studies/plans going? Sticking where you are? Or transferring? Did you check out those links from the other thread?

Gah. If I were...

Yabu

As pp have said, your experience, which was shitty for you, was an intrinsic part of a grammar school system. You can't love grammars and not also love secondary moderns, they go hand in hand.

I went to a selective single sex school that was a poor experience for me, and was not well chosen, but it wasn't my choice. I do not think I am significantly better off than I would have been with a different school. I will make the best choice I can for my own DC and am open to all options but if I choose a comprehensive it will not be hypocritical. If I feel a private school will be best, I will have to fight DH to go for it, as he went to a private school, on 100% scholarship, and hated so much he is massively against them. That's not hypocrisy - it's experience. We certainly wouldn't sent a DC to either of those particular private schools, but I'm open to the possibility that some might be better. We are both aware though that paid education is not necessarily good education, and are better able to judge that than someone who has never experienced one.

A comprehensive school is not the same as a secondary modern. A good comprehensive can be exactly the right choice.

I think a lot of people don't choose a school on whether it is a private or state comprehensive. They choose on whether they like the school and consider it a good school and what their finances are like.

We may choose to send DCs private because the local comprehensive is rubbish. Our polics and beliefs don't actually come into it when deciding about our own precious children.

I went to the rubbish local comprehensive by the way.

I went to a great comprehensive. No commutable grammar schools and a tiny private sector (lots of middle class parents too left wing to consider private schooling) meant it was a true comprehensive.

Bollocks! YABU.

I am philosophically opposed to academic selection at 11, it failed you didn't it OP?

I personally went to an academically selective private school, I wouldn't choose it for my children and I didn't choose it for myself. How does that make me a hypocrite?

For every 'bright child denied an opportunity' there is another child branded a failure at 11 in a selective system. Can't you see that OP?

I went to a single-sex selective grammar. There is nothing similar locally, and if there were I wouldn't choose it for my children.

My DD considered the local single sex school, but preferred the Outstanding local comprehensive. For my DS we've now realised there's an Outstanding semi-selective mixed grammar he could get into (as DD could have, had we known), but we hated it on the open evening so he'll join his sister.

Having had an excellent education myself, I wouldn't knowingly live somewhere with bad schools. My parents chose our home because it was close to excellent schools, and I have tried to do similarly.

I don't see why OP.

However any of us were educated was probably not out choice. As adults we can now make up our minds as to what is right or wrong.

That said, I do think it behoves us as adults to behave like adults . Hectoring, mocking, behaving like playground bullies is frankly pathetic.

Also, dismissing people's experiences is pretty low .

I went to a single sex school.

I did not benefit.

Some subjects were just not taught because we were girls. There was a definite trend towards us becoming stay at home parents, the thought of a girl working when she had her own children was almost as bad as saying you wanted to kill kittens. Saying you didn't want them......... I had enough sense not to voice that.

It has profoundly affected the rest of my life.

I believe every child should have the best education possible. I realise this is an ideal and not possible for all, but it is something worth striving for.

my objection isn't to grammar schools but to secondary modern schools. Where you have grammar schools (unless they are super-selective taking around 5-7% of the children in the area) then you have secondary moderns, and I don't think that there are any benefits to a child of going to a secondary modern over a comprehensive.

Thank You Arsenic. I still planning to do 2 Level 1 Social science modules with the OU and then look for a University with good provision for Autistic spectrum sufferers. Canterbury University still looks like the right option at the moment.
Sauvigon. I don't think it was the 11+ system per see that failed me, I think it was a totally lack of understanding across the education system about Autism. It could be argued that with my condition and symptoms, that to come out with 4D grades at GCSE in 1990, that the school did not fail me.
However, I doubt that ,since the school was probably at the time the worst school in Kent. If I am being truthful , I don't know how I got those grades. Those grades incredibly were the "average" grades achieved across England/Wales in 1990.

I think what makes me so anxious about education is my own experience. I am desperate that my three children who are all bright achieve their full potential academically. DD1/2 have both overcome difficulties DD2 needs the discipline and structure of a grammar school. I feel that if she had gone to DD1s school for instance "Modern", she would have ended up messing around and not being bothered to do any work at all. DD1 though actually flourished by being the brightest girl in the school, DD2 would have gone the other way and become unteachable . DD2 who in year 7 the grammar "seriously" recommended a transfer to a non selective school, because of her Dyspraxia Emotional behaviour and academic potential. The schools SENCO was fantastic and stood in DDs corner arguing that with help and support she would cope with a grammar school. I remember the SENCO telling me that with support and hard work DD2 should be able to get C grades across her GCSEs. We are no hoping that DD2 achieves 3A* and 7 A grades in the summer. I believe the only reason DD might achieve these grades is because of the structured discipline and expectation of a selective school.

No, it's not hypocritical at all, don't be ridiculous. Just because your parents made a decision for you doesn't mean that you are locked into the same decision! It is perfectly possible for someone to recognise that they had advantages from a schooling system and to feel that system is unfair.

What would be hypocritical would be to criticise such schools and then send your own children to them.

And, for the record, I went to a bog standard comprehensive.

I think we all operate in an imperfect system and do what we can to get the best education for our DC, as we see it.

There are some posters who lecture others for the choices they make, whilst excusing their own choices...

And there are other posters who start threads haranguing others for trying to improve an imperfect system.

Nothing will ever be perfect, but that doesn't mean we have to settle for less than the best that can be achieved.

The OPs own posts showcase the problems with grammar + sec mod.

She resents failing to get into the grammar herself.

Her DD was threatened with having to change school, because grammar school management didn't think they could cope with a combination of high ability and some special needs.

OP makes wild assumptions about comprehensives - that they have no structure or expectations - but living in a grammar + sec mod area may never have seen a true comprehensive school. The hypocrisy of shrieking at other posters that they are preaching about what they do not know, belongs to her.

And the irony is, the OP herself may well have done better at a good comprehensive than at her sec mod. I would have done well wherever I went (comp, as it happens); when I support decent comprehensive education, it's for her benefit not mine.

To be clear, I support the aim that every student should have a decent education that meets their needs and helps them fulfil their potential, not just the OP and not just me.

can I just point out that just because you are in a grammar area, the secondary mods are not necessarily crap schools?? which seems to be the general message across these threads.

My DS was diagnosed with Autism just before starting at his comprehensive school.

He achieved good GCSES, excellent AS results and is now applying for university. Not all autistic children are failed by the comprehensive system.

Are you not confusing 'hypocritical' with 'has their own opinions'?

I come from another country so i have not experienced British education myself. However, i think everyone is entitled to have their own opinion.

Single-sex schools... In the 21st century??? Why? It's not Saudi Arabia.

Private... It depends. If people can afford something better for their DC than average, who's to stop them? I'm not anti-private, however, i'm against the unfair advantage it creates when competing for university places and jobs.

Super-selective -- why not? But the selection should be according to ability, not special tuition for a specific exam.