To find middle class parents insufferable?

[Gwst]

Sorry rant incoming! I'm so sick of how since becoming a parent half the people I speak to seem to be insufferable snobs about the area we live in (in a big city). Schools are "terrible" despite good ratings, couldn't possibly be good enough for their children, and are upset they don't live in a posher area, too many undesirables round where we live, complaining about drugs etc when this is an issue that 100% doesn't affect their demographic. I've recently had someone say they had to move to the suburbs because at their local school all the parents had "a can of coke in one hand, a fag in the other and 10 kids" and another saying a nursery wasn't good enough as they didn't want their child looked after by someone with a speech impediment. Both of these left me with my jaw on the floor shocked someone would think it's OK to say that but they seem to have no embarrassment about saying it to me, a casual acquaintance. And the area we live in is full of creative types, ostensibly left wing etc but also seem to hold these reactionary views when it comes to their kids.

The thing about schools drives me mad as I guarantee most of these people have zero experience of attending or their kids attending a challenging city comprehensive. It's just this perceived bias that their kids will get bullied or become drug dealers or other crap that they heard from their parents as to why they went to private school and are now parroting but can't afford private school or a posh area themselves. I went to a pretty crap school but I came out with good grades and went to a prestigious uni. It wasn't all great but it was a realistic cross section of society and arguably gives you good expectations of the real world and that fact that not everyone in your community is privileged etc. But no one seems to care about that and just wants to look out for themselves and everyone else be damned.

I am middle class myself lol. And my kid is going to have plenty of (unfair) social advantages anyway without us having to get them into "the best" school or only socialise with other middle class people. I just really don't get it. Am I alone in thinking like this??

There are very few private schools in eg Germany, but their education is still segregated (Hauptschule/Realschule/Gymnasium) even though provided for free to all.

Why do you say it like being friends with somebody who is cleaner somehow elevates your social understanding?

I was a cleaner.

Perhaps. You have to be sociable enough to survive, I guess.

@IMustDoMoreExercise I won't quote your post as it's long, but I'm referring to the one that talked about a small handful of pupils who had been killed by other pupils at state schools. To which I say:

• In 2006, the daughter of a Harrow teacher was stabbed to death by a Harrow pupil.

• In 2019, two pupils at the private school Manchester Grammar stabbed to death another MG pupil.

• In 2024, a pupil at Blundell's boarding school in Devon attacked two of his house mates with a hammer and caused life-changing injuries.

Last year, privately educated aristocrat Constance Martens was sentenced to a few years in jail for killing her baby daughter. Her prevoius 3 or 4 kids had been taken away from her. All this is post-school years, yes, but it just goes to show that bad eggs are everywhere.

And I think we all know the huge scale of sexual abuse that went on a few years ago in boys' schools. I doubt that the problem of sex abuse in boarding schools has gone away entirely.

Plus, private schools are known to be places where drugs are taken, because the kids have the money for them!

If you include drugs and sex abuse at boarding schools, I think there is more crime in the private sector than the state sector.

I certainly said nothing of the sort. You made fun of my claim that I can talk to anyone, and I'm demonstrating that I can and do.

I'm not racist, I have a black friend. I'm not a snob like everyone around me, I have a cleaner as a friend to boast about it 🤦‍♀️

Read mumsnet for a while and you will notice a pattern. There is an attitude of acceptance among some people that disruptive behavior and violence are just the norm for schools. People just accept that schools are rough and many children don’t take their studies seriously.

Send your child to a nice middle class school and none of that is familiar. There are isolated incidents, but schools are generally peaceful places. The secondary school students are working hard. It doesn’t remotely resemble the horror stories people report on here.

good enough isn’t good enough. School should be excellent. So yes, we moved to a wealthy school in the suburbs and I have no regrets.

Not just my cleaner-friend. My nurse friend and my ill-spoken police officer friend, too. Don't forget them! Point is, they didn't go to uni. I know nurses have to now, but they didn't a few years ago.

I'm friends with significantly more people who did not go to university than any of my MC family and friends are. I think most of them don't have a single friend who didn't go. I have lots who went to "rough" schools and didn't go to uni, as well as lots who went to Roedean, Sussex House, King's Canterbury, Stowe, etc. and then to Oxbridge. But my current bestie went to Roehampton.

I come from WC parents who became middle-class but never moved out of their WC area. They sent me to a good state school in a leafy catchment area 12 miles away. I then went to a Russell Group uni and later married a posho. But I still have all my friends from my WC area who went to the local school and did not go to college. I went to primary school with them, played with them outside, and went to the local dance school with them, where we spent lots of time at the local youth club where the classes were held.

Laugh if you like, but I DO have the widest social mix of anyone I can think of, and it's way, way wider than the poshos I know.

I think that’s a very long way from being correct.

I grew up on a council estate and went to the local comprehensive. I left school with good grades. I am academic. I’ve had an excellent career.

But I can’t say that’s because of the school I went to. It was an absolute bear pit.

There’s a lot of crime on council estates. That doesn’t vanish when those same teenagers go to their local comprehensive.

There are high profile cases in both the state and private sectors. Our local state comprehensive had a stabbing in the last couple of years. We’ve got teachers here out on strike because they can’t control a group of teens who run wild around the school, screaming up and down corridors during lessons and refusing to be disciplined. The teachers aren’t striking for more pay - they’re asking for safe working conditions. I don’t see teachers in the private sector afraid to go to work.

In more general terms, there’s the disruption during lessons. Some of that’s due to unmet needs - children from higher income families are more likely to have been able to receive the required medical care to be diagnosed with dyslexia, dyscalculia, ADHD, autism etc.

Children from higher income homes may have parents who take education seriously. Certainly parents are paying &£££ for education they’ll expect their child to take it seriously. That doesn’t mean that no one on a council estate does; some certainly do. But it can’t be denied that in rough areas, there are some families who don’t feel school is important.

At state schools there are fewer teachers and larger classes. This provides more opportunities for problems to occur at lunches, break times etc, let alone in the classroom.

When I was at secondary school (in the 90s), marijuana use during the school day was rife. And Poppers. Kids may not have been sneaking off to snort coke but weed was endemic. And of course, Ecstasy was starting to become popular - although not during school hours.

We had gunfights after school. And knife fights. Those took place in the underpass outside our school and our nearest rivals. That would never have made the press or have been reported because it was commonplace. And when you consider knife crime has worsened, I don’t want to think about what it’s like now.

Both my DC have very significant SEN so I have no skin in this game. But why on earth would any parent not try to avoid sending their child to a comprehensive in a rough area where they’re unlikely to enjoy uninterrupted lessons? Why subject your child to violent peers - any child can get sucked into gang violence or county lines…it just takes the right kind of pressure and the wrong time and that’s your child’s future fucked.

Sounds like your actual issue is you are mixing with people with values that differ to yours and you want to mix with people who do.

We all experience one reality and make assumptions about realities outside of our own. It's common to hear all types of presumptions about what private school is like, what earning £300k a year is like. People who live that life are frankly wise enough to ignore others often prejudiced views and get on with their life.

Middle class is a huge demographic find the people who fit within it who you do align with or choose another class to mix with.

No, I wouldn't send my children to a school like that. What you're describing sounds extreme. The worst possible end of the scale.

Equally, I'm not sure that spending six extra figures on a smaller house to go from an OK/decent school to an outstanding one is worth it. At the end of the day, you can move wherever you want but the kids have to put in the work.

Thank goodness you aren't silly enough to pay for private education.. It's good you have such a clear and easy route to avoid such widespread crimes.

It is so amusing to read posts like this when you are someone who has attended private education, So funny.

No nit racially the grammar achool was much more diverse. I went to a much better comorehensive and was called " boffin" and accused of "swallowing a dictionary" for being bright and speaking BBC english. There were about 6 of us in a year group of 100.

Many people at my exclusive school took drugs.There were behavioural issues ( a classmate drinking vodka in lessons at 1 point) Most had eating disorders. Some say I was privaledged but i much prefered the comp i went to till year 9.
Dd goes to the normal comp and loves it.

I don't disagree there are comps and comps ( except in Kent where there are high schools). We actually put DS' name down for one of the better ones locally, but we were out of catchment.

The hypocrisy that ive noticed in the MCs is that they will often send their kids to state school when the only people at this state school are rich kids like theirs, because nobody else can afford housing around there.
So they get to pontificate about how private school is evil, when they've actually bought their way to a better school, just not through school fees: through buying houses nobody else can afford to buy.
The worst place I lived for this was brighton, where everybody seemed to feel they were part of one big (white) melting pot and against the system man, except they werent, they were just part of an exclusive club of people who had ultra pricey houses and flats (generally bought for them by their boomer parents)

Agree with all of this.

Yep 🙄 they don’t even realise how they sound.

But you must realise you’re massively in the minority?? You proved that point by saying you only survived school cos the bully took a liking to you..so for almost everyone else it was a shit experience!

IMO if you move to a high-priced catchment area to get into a 'good' school or you pay privately for education, you have zero right to complain about any social problems going on in your town/county because you are actively contributing to it. There is no point whatsoever in talking about community or a village or progress or anything if you segregate your children and treat people around you like pariahs.

I've worked with people in England who genuinely didn't know anyone below a certain income/wealth bracket. That utterly amazed me - Ireland is too small a country to achieve that level of quarantine and exclusion. In Ireland if you said 'I know cleaners' you'd be looked at like you had two heads - of course you know bloody cleaners, how could you not??? Heck my family includes everything from care workers to a CEO of a large corporation. The idea of knowing only one 'class' or type of people isn't even a thing in Ireland - there is snobbery of course, but the stratification and segregation thing doesn't happen. I don't think people who have never lived anywhere but the UK realise how toxic and rampant it is in England.

Of course the whole stratification thing comes from the fact that there's one family who holds power by dint of birth, everyone has to bow and scrape around them and then there are ranks of hereditary power below that. That sort of nonsense fucks a country's psyche up.

I think its really disingenuous to suggest Ireland is some sort of salt of the earth utopia thats class blind, at least in dublin go and see what families are up to in Blackrock or ballsbridge, go and eavesdrop on a few conversations in brown Thomas on a Saturday afternoon and you'll find conversations to rival the English chattering classes

Ireland is far from perfect, in fact I'd argue that it's far easier to be an Irish person in England than an English person in Ireland. Ireland is very 'clan' based - everyone wants to know who your family is and how you're connected to them. Blackrock and Ballsbridge don't reflect the rest of Ireland - there's a reason they're called 'West Brits'!

This is mg experience too.

I grew up on a council estate (not anywhere super ‘rough’) but my parents did value education and sent me to the schools in the ‘naice’ villages 10 miles away. As a result, I grew up with very middle class friends who all had the expectation that they would would work hard and go to university, so I adopted this attitude too (I had never been around people who had ever been to university before).
All of my parent’s friend’s kids went to the local schools and not a single one went to university. Most had multiple children by their early twenties (often with different partners) and the few that had done well for themselves became plasterers/electricians/machine operators/managers in retail environments etc.

Yes I do want better for my children. I want my children to be surrounded by other children who also have parents who really value education and pass this on to them!
Unfortunately some state schools in certain areas will be full of children who don’t see the value of education (through no fault of their own - they just haven’t had this instilled in them) and as snobby as it may be… I don’t want my children mixing with children like this as I don’t want this attitude to rub off onto them. Schools with this issue will be focused on improving behaviour, minimising disruption, improving attendance, social care etc. But schools without these issues can focus more on education. It’s quite simple really.

I don’t understand why you would subject your children to a more difficult learning environment unless you have no other choice or don’t value education as much?

You do sound like a typical middle class leftie who has no idea of the sort of issues that schools in ‘difficult’ areas face. Nobody is saying that schools in council estates all face drug/knife/gun issues, but I’d bet that the vast vast majority do have issues with disruption, attendance (and having to play catch up), kids with bad attitudes and uncooperative parents. And why not avoid that if you have the means to?

But there is zero evidence that our local secondary schools are like this. I haven't visited them and the parents I'm referring to haven't either as their kids are too young. It's just making an assumption based on your own prejudice that a state school in our area couldn't possibly be good enough for your kid without actually knowing anything about it.

As I've stated already i went to a not brilliant school and am well aware of the issues when you have disruptive kids in a class, I've lived it. And somehow also come out of it not thinking that I should be segregating my family away with other "nice" similar people and everyone else be damned?