To wonder if this is racist?

[winkywinkola]

Friend looking at UK boarding schools for her son.

Says she has discounted a few because there are too many Chinese students there. Schools teach in English, UK curriculum.

I couldn't see why it mattered myself but it seemed really important to her.

Is it racist to prefer not to have too many of one race in one school?

Just to point out, presumably she isn't talking about British students of Chinese heritage, she's talking about students from the People's Republic of China. There is a difference.

My kids at one point went to an international school with students from 40 different countries. It was great and there was very little racism, mainly I think because there was no one significant majority; everyone was in a kind of minority, so it worked.

It really is no use trying to apply the concept of racism to the choice of people with whom you do or don't wish to associate (or in making that choice on behalf of DC) - it's a personal choice.

And yes, I would be concerned about a school where a large proportion of the pupils might prefer to mix only with each other because they share a language.

Yes, your friend is racist.

It doesnt have to be a racist . . . not putting your DS into a school where their year group only has 4 other boys but 25 girls isnt sexism. We all want our children to fit in and make lots of friends. Undoubtably its an added difficulty if large numbers of classmates are a different sex or from a very different culture.

Our school has a large number of foreign students, but not dominated by one nationality, so its a great atmosphere and there are huge opportunities for learning.

Choosing an international school for your kids is one thing, deciding not to put them in an English school with a high number of non-English speakers another one entirely.

Labeling your friend racist because of her choices about a boarding school is a bit over the top frankly.

I didn't label her racist.

And she said the schools insisted the overseas students had a decent command of English.

Blatantly racist yes.

I would guess it depends on the school and how the students are integrated.

When DD1 was at uni there was a large number of Chinese students and, although they were allocated to flats with other students, many of them tended to stick together, speak in their own language, eat their own food together and not socialise with those of other races. I know some of the girls attempted to be friendly to them initially but they were never responsive to this and never attended social events.
I know it is different at university age as the students are more independent but the pastoral side is what I think would be important here

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11610110/Record-numbers-of-foreign-pupils-at-UK-schools.html

My daughters school had a large percentage of Chinese boarders and the etruth of the matter is they did not mix with the other students or integrate or socialise.

They stayed within their own clique and socialised together, even though the other girls and the school continuously tried, and yes it does impact on the dynamics of the class. It's not racist, it's simply a fact. They were all lovely girls, there was no bad feeling, but it was a case of they spoke their own language together, were always pleasant and polite to others if approached, and when it came to social events nine times out of ten they would decline. It was always a case if one came, they all came, or none of them came.

personally having educated my child through this dynamic I would not avoid it, but I would look at the balance of the class so agree with your friend there that its worth looking at.

Well I can see why a lot of white people dont like the idea of their child being a minority in a class.

But that's been the position of many many children from other cultures in the U.K. for a very long time and I don't remember anyone ever feeling bad for them. So yeah I think it's a bit, if not always overtly racist, at least pretty blinkered in terms of willingness to own up to certain uncomfortable truths about what people think is 'fine for non white kids but DEFINITELY NOT OK for my white ones'

That said, if we're talking a vast majority of classmates at boarding who a) don't speak English and b) won't be in the U.K. at holidays/for uni then maybe socially it's tricky.

This never tends to be the case though IME. It normally only takes about a third to half of the class being non english (even if most are totally fluent speakers) before people get weird about it.

"that's been the position of many many children from other cultures in the U.K. for a very long time and I don't remember anyone ever feeling bad for them... fine for non white kids but DEFINITELY NOT OK for my white ones"

^^this, thank you kaputt.

Chinese males are the highest attainers at KS4 according to DfE

I would not see this as racist. Chinese students do have a reputation for sticking together, and if they are too big a presence in the school this does change the dynamic. Many of the private school threads warn of boarding schools where most of the British pupils are weekly boarders, and being a lone Brit left in school with a largely Chinese cohort every weekend can be a lonely experience.

You have to remember that although things have changed so drastically in recent years in China, it is still not a free country. They are very guarded in their relationships with Westerners.

This is a boarding school, not a day school. If Chinese students are moving towards the majority then it's likely that in their downtime they'll be talking and socialising in their own language and have different ideas of how to spend their leisure time not to mention being less likely to be around in the holidays. I would possibly make the same decision. If Chinese students are a small part of a mult cultural mix of students that's totally different as it's likely that all the children will make more of an effort to integrate.

My child's class is very multi cultural, that's a huge positive and we've all found that a really enriching experience but I don't think the OP 's friend is being racist

KurriKurri
Agreed. I read it as Chinese far outnumbered any other race. Of course if by too many she meant 2 then I would see that as racist.

The fact that it's a boarding school makes a big difference in my opinion. I don't see it as any different to avoiding a boarding school that is known to have a high intake from a particular prep school or from any other group of any kind where your child is outside that group. Unless you have a really sociable outgoing child they'd potentially find it harder to integrate. Ditto if it has a lot of day pupils or weekly boarders when your child is a full-time boarder. Finding a school that takes pupils from a wide mix of feeder schools, social groups, religions (unless it's a religious school) and cultures is a better bet.

There are lots of sound non-racist reasons not to send your child to a boarding school with lots of Chinese children.

In particular, such schools may have an unhealthy dominance of science/maths over arts subjects. (Due to the difficulty of performing in essay subjects unless a native English speaker)

Concord College, for example, had 627 A Level entries in 2016, of which 583 were Maths, Further Maths, Science, or Economics, or languages they don't teach such as Chinese and Russian.

Also a school with a lot of overseas students may be struggling to find students in the UK, which can be an indicator of the school's success (or lack of it).

A school with lots of foreign students may be more focused on their interests than those of UK students.

Foreign students will have different goals and interests - if your future is in the UK the goals of foreign students may not be the same as your child's, nor their hobbies, etc.

When you are paying £25k-£35k/year then you don't fuck about. This is not not wanting to sit next to someone on a bus, it's spending up to £200k on the best possible outcome for your child.

Some public schools are very financially insecure. Some public schools are less selective when they are offered financial assistance. In some public schools, this manifests itself in an undiverse ethnic intake, of a lower academic standard than they formerly asked for.

In essence, a large intake of Asian students could be seen as indicating a failing public school. I think knowing that isn't racism, as it's not the students people are averse to, it's the bursar, and possibility of the school going bust or struggling.

Your friend may be racist, as typically struggling public schools recruit pupils from all over the world, as long as they have the cash, and so she may be lumping all "Asian" looking people as "Chinese", which is racist. She may also be racist if it's less about ensuring diversity, or that the school won't go bust, and more about being concerned her child would "become slant eyed" or other racist sentiment.

But she could have non racist reasons, too.

There could be legitimate, non-racist reasons that are linked to a school having a large number of children of a particular race. If for instance, the majority of children talk most of the time in social settings in a different language, or if the school has attracted a large number of a particular group of children by making its curriculum particularly attractive to that culture in a way that does not suit her own desires for a school, etc.. But if she's just going on the number of Chinese students, or she's using that as a proxy (and assuming it means a particular issue) without knowing anything else about the school or how her son will fit in, then that's racist.

No. It isn't racist, per se.

I went to a boarding school with quite a few Chinese pupils. There were also some day pupils, British kids with parents working abroad and some pupils from Nigeria,etc. These days the school has large proportion of Chinese pupils and actively recruits pupils from Asia.

In my experience the Chinese pupils worked VERY hard. They generally perfected to work than participate in extra curricular activities, go in to the local town, etc. Studying long hours is generally what they did. Most have them have done incredibly well for themselves.

TBH, it would put me off sending my DC to the school.

It would depend on her reasons, imo. The racist reasons are pretty obvious but others might include: I've heard from teacher friends that in some schools which are struggling to fill numbers, the students are either English speaking day students (sometimes only 5-8 of them) and the rest of the spaces have to be filled by higher paying boarders from predominantly one country that has ties to the school, often China, and that there is minimal social interaction between the two - which is not ideal.

On the surface, yes, it sounds racist.

BUT. I work at a big university where we run full time academic English courses for non-English speakers who will continue to degrees. When putting classes together we need to be aware of 'too many Chinese students' and they are by far our biggest student population (about 80%). Because what happens, naturally, is that students' English doesn't improve because when you're with speaker's of your own language you're more likely to gravitate towards them and speak that language. And group work is harder because students, understandably, get frustrated and end up speaking their native language and isolating those who don't.

It could be that your friend is thinking her child will feel isolated because there could be a dominant language spoken that's not English. Perhaps not, but it's a fair concern.

And just to add, getting to know our Chinese students has been one of the great pleasures of my life. They are awesome.