to ask how do private schools produce such "confident" kids / adults and how I can do it at home?

[dragontwo]

Ok, I have my reservations about private schools, but I recognise that often they produce kids / adults with high self confidence and self assurance.

I want to know how they do this, how they drill this confidence into them, and how I can replicate any beneficial aspects of this at home into my own kid (state schooled)?

What do they say / do / teach that encourages them to be so confident and expect success?

I know there are down sides to everything but I'm just thinking about good ideas I can help my kid. NB I'm no tiger mother and do my best to encourage my kid as it is already but just looking for ideas and general thoughts on how it's done!!

Just curious!

beachbody This is very true about reading. My elder two read a lot of non fiction books. My son has craft materials at home and made a planetary system himself with scrunched up balls of paper and pipe cleaners. Blew my mind my kid could or would do this. He is 5 and it was something he did on his own at 5am on a Saturday morning. He explained everything to his elder sister and after breakfast they played astronauts making helmets from old cardboard shoe boxes in the recycling pile. Meanwhile DD is fascinated by the rainforest and made spiders with pipe cleaners. Scared the bejesus out of me. Both have autism and are clearly high functioning.

My kids go to a state school here in America. The spend per child in our town is more than the tuition of the private schools. It's interesting because very bright or struggling DC go state and average DC do better in private. It's almost the opposite in the U.K.

I don’t think academic success and confidence go hand in hand, in fact the most intellectual people I know are quite shy and self-effacing. Look at some of the (most successful) contestants on university challenge - do they look polished and self-assured?

My cousins went to a public school and emerged with barely an O Level between them, but they have the floppy hair (thinning a bit now!), patter and tastes which I think some posters are thinking constitutes private polish. They have “posh jobs” too, such as country house estate agent. Has a posh person ever worked in the public sector?! (Surgeons and judges excepted)

A general sense of confidence and being at ease in situations for sale at some private schools. I would say be careful what you wish for, because some people buy arrogance along with the confidence.

There is also delusions of grandeur involved. My brother is a single dad of a 10yo. He has very little Money and we (his siblings) have bailed him out substantially in the last 8 years. He has to use food banks. We found out that 2 years ago he sent his boy to private junior school because my bro thought ‘it wasn’t good enough’. We’ve managed to find out that he got an 85% bursary but he still can’t afford the rest and we are being called to put £20 in his bank account so some food can be put on the table. I mentioned this to someone I know who is Eton-educated and he couldn’t get his head round the ‘food banks but kid goes to private school’!

Sorry that should say the local primary school wasn’t good enough!

I choose not to send my children to private schools. I did not want them to come out insular and arogrant. I thought it said it all when my son came home from a party age 8 where he was the only child at state school and the other children wanted to know if he lived in a detached house or not.

Insular and arrogant?

Here’s just one little thing. When I started going for job interviews after leaving Uni I found the whole shaking of hands thing uncomfortable. My DCs have been shaking hands with their teacher every day since they were four years old. Pretty standard in private schools from what I understand but it certainly never happened at my state school!

Very interesting thread.

I think it’s a lot of things, most of which have already been mentioned, but in my experience, private schools don’t mollycoddle the kids to the extent that they get an ice pack and a sticker on their jumper every time they bump into a radiator walking down the corridor; nor do the staff live in fear of aggressive parents barging into school, shouting the odds (and worse) to defend their badly behaved children. Badly behaved kids at private schools are faced with real sanctions and loss of privilege.... a bit like it used to be for all kids before the 1980s

Small class sizes, high expectations, selective (so mostly well behaved, motivated kids), you’re told you’re the “elite”, opportunities for public speaking. This is from my experience of going to a private school

I’m not sure i’d want to shell out thousands of pounds for my dcs to learn to shake hands.

It cost me not a penny to say to ds, “Here, stick out your hand and say, “How do you do?”

What tv programme?

I also believe it’s smaller class sizes. My two DCs are educated privately. They each have 12 in their classes. They don’t get lost in bigger classes and shyer children are able to grow in confidence without feeling overwhelmed. Clearly there are exceptions but I do think this is one of the main reasons.

Simple. Manners.Codes of conduct rigidly enforced. Penalties for stepping out of line. Majority of parents with same mind-set.

@Irmafaylear there are plenty of posh people in the army.

It’s because private schools nurture each individual child. State don’t. So it builds their confidence. They get a service catered to them.

"It’s because some schools nurture each individual child. Some don’t.
Fixed that for you.

I don't think drama helps one iota with developing real deep-down confidence. How many actors and actresses insist they are really shy etc. - loads. Being able to stand up on a stage and spout is just that - it might be brave or reckless or born of desperation, but that doesn't equate to confidence.

Drama's a waste of time, unless perhaps it is fun.

I don't think you are being fair to privately educated children TBH

DS is the furthest removed from insular and arrogant that you could find. He is kindly, genial generous and listens more than he talks. It is a very unfair thing you have done there - labelling all privately educated children as insular and arrogant

DS is currently doing his A levels and has an offer from Cambridge. I don't believe he would have got the offer from Cambridge without his school.

I think a state school would have eaten my gentle DS alive. He might not have found an inspirational physics teacher. He wouldn't have found an environment where being very clever was kind of cool.

And that might well be a wrong thing - but maybe that's another thread.

"I also knew how to eat and converse while he had to master that."

Fortunately, I haven't had to rely on school to teach my children table manners......

I didn’t go to public school but had oxbridge worthy levels of self assurance and presentation ablilities at 17 and it is often assumed I went to public school as I am ‘that type’ - I think it’s down to my parents giving me a lot of ‘pretentious’ input that has really stood me in good stead in certain social situations. ie. I grew up watching the animated tales of Shakespeare on vhs and my mum banned me from reading any books she considered ‘fluff’ (I was banned from reading babysitter club books or any animal farm titles - a cruel blow at the time). I am also an only child and I just slotted into their life - so I had a lot of adult conversation from a young age.
I think it’s a lot about having really high aspirations and giving children ‘highbrow’ tastes and letting them feel like it’s all theirs for the taking - you can of course do this in a good state school and that’s what mine did, allowed me to be my own person.

Also I have cropped up on threads like this before and pointed out that I know a lot of public school boys (I have a type) and they do seem to have tendency towards depression/anxiety in adult life -that I think has been exacerbated by their schooling. Outward confidence doesn’t always mean resilience or translate into actual good people skills/relationship forming. I know it’s a cliche that public school boys are all a bit damaged but it’s interesting that most of the ones I know are.

"I think a state school would have eaten my gentle DS alive. He might not have found an inspirational physics teacher. He wouldn't have found an environment where being very clever was kind of cool"
Words fail me. They really, really do

You do realise that when you talk about state school "eating your ds alive" you are talking about my children-and 93% of the children in this country?.

@Bunpea
That is so true.
Dd2 hasn't got much confidence, so I duly sent her to drama, as you do.
She has simply developed a strategy for speaking on stage - she pretends she's an actor, and has no problems now.
So, it has helped in that regard, but hasn't made one jot of difference to her inner confidence.

I have perfect manners - but at my state school the swots, the neerdy to kids, the uncool kids, the 'good kids', the girls who didn't look like Debbie Harry or were interested in boys (and therefore must be ugly lesbians) got a rough ride and kept their heads down.

It’s because private schools nurture each individual child. State don’t. So it builds their confidence.

Certainly true in my experience. Small class sizes enable teachers to focus on each individual pupil, which allows them to flourish and achieve their best, and with that comes happiness and confidence.

Also I happen to have worked at A Very Posh Well Known Boys School and some of those boys are fucking awful - but tragically so, like trapped in a prison of their own (their parents) image. Some are paragons of a ‘nice young man’ but all of the ones I knew seemed to have very fragile self esteem. It was very strange tbh.