'Schools create obedient workers'

[moutonfou]

I was talking to somebody who's doing an education degree and had never even thought of this but it blew my mind a bit.

She said state education was (and still is) designed to create obedient workers - sit still, listen, wear this, do that, don't speak unless I tell you to, learn this.

She said the reason privately educated individuals still thrive and dominate the social/professional elite (aside from nepotism etc) is that they are taught to question, challenge, debate; they are given a sense of confidence/entitlement; essentially they are taught to be leaders.

I can see there are probably lots of exceptions and grey areas - great state schools where there are debate clubs, consultative ways of learning and teaching, etc. But for the most part it rang quite true with me.

Thoughts??

"We also should remember that, over the course of a year, children don't spend more than 25% of their waking hours in school anyway, so they have a lot of other influences on their thinking and development, outside of school."

this ^^

we can teach our children to be independent thinkers, strong minded, etc outside of school too.

we can also help them build those social networks through hobbies etc

agree though that private schools are as much about 'socialisation' as they are about 'education'.

I went to a top university and found that the most confident and vocal students were all privately educated but they certainly weren't the brightest (judging by essay and exam marks).

I am sure your friend is right, it probably explains why prisons are so full of privately educated, non conformist free thinkers while the passive herds do what they are told, abide by the rules and never break the law.

good luck to your friend when she gets her feet under her teachers desk, I anticipate a steep learning curve, lay in tissues and gin.

viques

I'm just sitting here quietly hoping your friend is right and school managed to drum even a tiny bit of obedience into the unstoppable force that is my 3 year old

I agree with your friend largely and I am a teacher.

I went to a Steiner school for primary and just couldn't get my head round the fact that when I went to Secondary school I had to ask to go to the loo. Was I going to be allowed to go? Yes. Was me asking the teacher disrupting the lesson? Yes. It blew my mind with its ridiculousness.

I think one of the reasons I really struggled to catch up in Secondar school is that I hadn't had that foundation of obedience to rules that others in mainstream school had.

I also hadn't learned anything else at Steiner school apart from how to make fucking awesome daisy chains (self taught) and how to juggle (taught by some bloke with dreadlocks who may or may not have been a teacher). Dm still insists it was money well spent though.

I think some of the rules in secondary school are ridiculous. Kids sent home for having the wrong (plain, black no brand) shoes, can't take jumpers off in hot weather without permission etc.

In my son's (superselective state) grammar school, he said that the children who found it most difficult to adjust to the school were the prep school children who had been "spoon fed" (his words) and who couldn't cope with being given less guidance with homework, or being asked what they thought etc. One poor child was too scared to ask where the loo was for three days..!

I don't know whether I agree with this - DH and I were privately educated from year dot, our children are all going state, and I think all it did was give me an inflated sense of my own importance - I don't think that the education I got was particularly better than that which my children are getting - some of the teachers were absolutely dreadful.

And, it's never as simple as private = good/leader creating, state = bad/sheep creating....there are good and bad establishments in both sectors. I think it's far more about the connections and networks which privately educated children have access to, which give them the confidence and self belief to feel they can do anything. Depending on the school, it's rarer to come across high flyers from professional sectors who can inspire the pupils to achieve more than they thought possible in the state sector (as a very broad generalisation).

Groupie your post is proof (well, OK, anecdotal evidence ) that the IQ measure is outdated and inaccurate. Did he do the 'IQ test' on telly some years ago?

Or was it from the centre pages of the Daily Fail about 30 years ago? Because I did that one, and didn't score that highly. I remember being asked, 'Why do people wear dark clothes in the winter and light clothes in the summer?' and my 10-year-old response was a doubtful '...Do they really?'

There are private schools and private schools though. And obedience and obedience.

Ooh mother I'm fascinated by Steiner schools. Do you look back on it fondly/ as an enjoyable time? We'd you well prepared for secondary? Did it give you other life skills ..was it cultlile?! Will you send your kids?!

74681Mary. Do you really think that your children (middle class) are the only children to have grit and that's why they get better paid jobs?

Nowt to do with sharp elbowed parents buying them a middle class private education and all the advantages and networks that confers eh?

It is more keeping the jobs that is the issue, rather than getting them. You get them by having high exam grades and ability to pass interviews. You keep them if you are prepared to put up with night after night working late and massive pressure. Of course loads of people from state schools are in those jobs too. My children have just applied for jobs - i don't really understand this network thing. The good places have akind of blind interview process, you cannot even be considered unless you ahve enough UCAS points for the automated system and then you have to get past an HR person etc.

Panic I'm not sure about that. I certainly remember boys coming to my sons' prep school at 7 rather than 5 and having to catch up from their state primaries because in the prep school you had to do an awful ot more remembering of your kit, when your private music lesson was etc much more personal responsibility at a younger age rather than the other way round.

Now my youngest are teenagers it all evens out there - most of the teenagers we know in state or private schools are just individuals. The fact my boys have to wear a suit every day for school amy be makes them more work ready but plenty of state sixth forms do the same. I would imagine there is more in common between good selective state and private schools than differences and plenty of children move between the sectors. My twins have friends who moved to state sixth forms in London - one to a science or maths one I think, and others to other state sixth form colleges. It will be interesting to compare A level results in August too but I am sure all the boys will do fine if they have worked hard.

I'm sure it's not representative 7461Mary18 - that's just what he said about his particular experience - so a straw poll of one! I think that they do move between classrooms more at prep than state primary where they are in one classroom (generally), but he said that many of them found it very hard to adjust.

I do consider us very lucky to be getting the education that we do for 'free' for our children - when I meet the children of my privately educating friends there is little to no difference, other than the subtle polish/confidence that the private children have; but the university offers our schools have got are directly comparable to theirs in terms of numbers from Oxford, Cambridge and Russell Group universities (and my son's school has an impressive track record for scholarships for Harvard and other Ivy League universities).

It wasn't really an education country. Looking back it was mostly just a bunch of parents congratulating themselves on how progressive they were. I remember my mum being at school a lot. Most of the 'lessons' were just parents or parents friends coming in and telling anecdotes, other parents listening and trying to get their kids to be interested and then the kids wandering outside to play football.

I think both private and state schools aim primarily to create obedient workers. The debating element has only recently been introduced in many schools - I think it's about opening up a contained amount of dissent and discussion as there's a realisation now that our economy depends on innovation as well as donkey work.

It also depends on the child I think.

DD very much wants to push creative boundaries and that is very much encouraged at her school. Other DC probably don't feel as driven by this and so don't reap the benefits.

A child who wanted to push behavioural boundaries would get pretty short shrift.

I went to a private (Public) school and so do my DC but the rest of my family did not. My friends are split 50/50 between those who went to private school and those who went to State.

The main difference I've noticed between the two is that the ex private schoolers are so much more confident and ambitious. I noticed this especially during university years when everyone was applying for jobs. The ex state school pupils really under sold themselves while the ex private school pupils just assumed they were perfectly capable and would get a good job.

Perhaps private school pupils are more used to seeing success so the idea of being successful themselves seems like the norm???

"State schools" come in all types. So do private schools.

As a very rough general rule, private schools tend to be stricter and have more rules, I would say.

The confidence you are talking about comes from other things.

By the way, is your friend planning on teaching in a classroom? She may be in for a shock once she has actually tried getting a bunch of stroppy kids to sit down and do a bunch of academic work that they have absolutely no desire to do.

school was set up for a multitude of reasons; training future workers, keeping children off the streets, allowing the adults to work. the school major holiday (from end of june through july and august) was set up so the children could help with the harvest.
privately educated children do better for a multitude of reasons as well.

I think many of the elite private schools do inculcate a sense of superiority and entitlement that is rarer in state schools. But I think they are at least as conformist as state schools. In general they're even narrower in their acceptance of different views, it's just that their views tend to be associated with being powerful. They are also prepared to be good workers, just at a different place on the corporate ladder.

The conformity aspect of most schools in the UK is one of the things that drove me away from Britain. I think it's detrimental to inclusiveness, preparing for the future and innovation.

He did an IQ test at work three years ago. Had to do it twice and got similar both times. I should have pointed out he was born really poor in India - no IQ tests around then thankfully to limit him.

The whole governance of society is aimed at producing obedient little workers, everything from income tax to a manipulated and inflated property market is all purely aimed at having obedient little debt slave worker drones.

I work in state education. The rules about sitting and listening are about respecting those around us. For example in carpet time if we don't have a rule about listening then the children whose turn it is to talk don't get heard. Listening isn't an innate skill and needs to be learnt. Listening to others is one of the most vital skills for someone's whole life. You can't even have a friend if you can't listen.