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 people on drugs/drink too much and can’t be assed to do basic things with their kids and look of course that’s not the kids fault and we really feel for the kids but sometimes that doesn’t just mean bad behaviour it can mean a really sweet kid who has untreated head lice and it sucks for that kid but other parents don’t want to be combing lice out their kids hair constantly. I just can’t be dealing with my children regularly catching lice.

And that’s before we get to secondary school and have mini drug dealers and thugs. No I do not want my child having a criminal record before their even an adult.

Exactly. We visited 5 schools. At each visit, I asked who was in charge of GCSE timetabling, and met that person, asking them whether the options timetable was built around what the pupils applied for (my preference), or whether pupils were told to pick one option from Block A, one from Block B, and one from Block C. I also created a spreadsheet with a scoring system, which included Progress 8 data, EBACC entries, EBACC average points, 5+ attainment in both English & Maths, and Persistent Absence %. In addition, I made a mental note of the behaviour I observed when I saw the pupils in their uniforms around town. I only shared this data with my DH and didn’t announce it at the school gates. Failing to do my research…LOL.

Yeah I have a cousin who believed this too. She put her son into one of the roughest schools in our city. Pulled him back out after six months when he was beaten so badly he was hospitalised after school one day. Because he was “posh”.

Deprivation is a normal thing though. It's not nice but in any society there will always be people who suffer with poor mental health, have intergenerational trauma, are poorly educated etc etc

The fact that the 'rough' school exist is due to segregation. I don't know how many times I can say it.

The fact that your cousin's son was beaten up is due to a system created by middle class parents who avoid certain areas and create pockets of deprivation. This does not happen by accident.

Wow.

People struggling is normal. It is not normal to have whole areas written off and left to fall into ruin. That is created by a society that segregates and excludes.

What do you think I should do with my (very limited) free time? I’ll add it to my to do list. Seriously. Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll see if it’s reasonable.

Demand more at the very very least. Don't just look at how things are and shrug and act like it's inevitable.

this issue is not going to be solved by people lobbing their kids into these bear pit schools and hoping for the best. It’s gone too far now.

Some of these comments are genuinely shocking to me. Racist, calling people pond scum, worrying about poorer kids infesting your kids with lice...

I have lived in England all my life and couldn’t agree more. I am one of those weirdos who was dragged up in a council house in the 70s and 80s(evidence shows we were much more economically equal as a country in the 70s), went to state school and have a PhD from a RG uni, expensive detached house etc now. I went to school with people who came from families like mine but also those who came from loaded and academically minded families. Eg one of my best friends went to Oxford and became a banker, another went to work on a Turkey farm, another had a baby and left school at 15. There was a really good mix. This is not the case today. A few of my old friends DCs have gone to the school and the catchment area has shrunk and shrunk until it now only takes children from the posher villages and the kids from the urban areas who I used to go to school with are siloed into newer, crappier academies. It’s basically a class apartheid system for education generated by those who are afraid of social contagion from people they deem as lower class trouble makers. It’s absolutely no surprise that social mobility has stagnated, this is part of the cause. Kids from rough backgrounds are corralled in stigmatised areas and looked down on by a society with no expectations of them other than that they are or will become workless or criminal.

Oh give over. I became a teacher for exactly those reasons, and taught in schools where the families were economically deprived. I made no difference whatsoever and it was a constant battle, with both the pupils and the parents (who were even worse, TBH). They didn’t want their children educated and the school/teachers were “the enemy”. I don’t know the answer for turning around this ingrained culture, and would love to know what your magical solution is. In the meantime, I’ve sent my own DCs to an excellent school and owe nobody any apologies about it.

So what do you think should happen? Ban Private education, randomly assign children to any school within 10 miles, bus them in all directions to get "equality"?

Like? When my child was first beaten up in the local state school I complained to the school. They did nothing. When I they were beaten up again the school again I complained and they did nothing. When My child was beaten up again I complained to the school who did nothing and the LA who spend 8 weeks investigating (during which my child was again beaten up multiple times). The LA said there was no complaint to answer as the school were follow procedures. When they were beaten up and the bullies charged by the police and the school still did nothing I complained to my MP who seemed interested but by that stage my child was (understandably) refusing to attend so we bailed and went private where they are utterly thriving.

I still advise MPs working to reduce violence in state schools.

What more would you expect me to do?

Yeah because it happened and I didn’t even say they were poor I was 16 in a homeless shelter when my eldest was a baby, never would have let my kids have untreated lice. There’s one scruffy family in our current school who don’t treat their lice I’ve had to tell my kids to avoid (not to be mean just to avoid) because I cannot have my kids keep catching lice just to virtue signal.

Thankfully just one family at my kids school it will be a lot more at the shit schools. I’ve got no qualms about admitting I want to avoid shit like that why make life more difficult just to score nice points

Interesting to hear the critique of middle class parents. In the interest of balance, what’s your critique of working class parents?

I imagine if you were 'economically deprived' and people actively avoided sending their children anywhere near you, you would take it on the chin, be perfectly pleasant and never complain, would you?

You can't treat people like 'pond scum' and expect their situation to get better.

I live in a grammar school area. At our (medium-deprived) primary, the kids that do 11+ are basically either the Asian and Black kids (regardless of socioeconomic b/g) or the middle class white kids.
Lack of aspiration is a big issue in some quarters. I don't see why it's on the MC to lower their aspirations

And It’s never their own fault that nice people don’t want to be around them?

Never any personal responsibility. It’s always someone else’s fault.

You're not suggesting this though. You're suggesting that middle class people actively decide to stop choosing better schools and more pleasant areas to live in, in order to make society less 'segregated'. This is clearly completely unrealistic. In reality the only way to achieve this is by force (for example, school places awarded by lottery) which is very unpopular and therefore unachievable in a democracy.

I agree with you that all schools should be good enough and that we all have a responsibility to better our communities, but the idea that this is achieved by individuals choosing to have less nice lives is bizarre.

I definitely think private education shouldn't be a thing. If you can buy education for your children that automatically creates inequality. In fact I would argue that is exactly why people choose private education - they want their child to be part of a world that excludes and provides more opportunities to some more 'worthy' people.

I don't think randomly assigning children makes sense, but I definitely think it makes sense for children to go to the school most local to them, no matter who happens to live in their area.

Private education wouldn’t be sought after so much if behaviour was controlled more in schools, and they supported SEN kids more. No parent should be made to feel guilty for not sending their kids to such a place every day.

Do you know what would be the best way to eradicate private schooling? Make state schools less shit! If the local state school was able to safeguard my child and protect their learning environment by removing disruptive kids that would be BRILLIANT. I’d be right there! I’d be so much richer! But my child was consistently beaten up in state so we had to go private.