What is the best way to have a dig at a private school parent?

[UrbanDad]

"No am I being unreasonable?" here. I am totally reasonable to have a go at an otherwise liberal mate who eschews a perfectly good state secondary school to send his DD to a private school miles away. He makes all kinds of rubbish excuses about how his DD needs nurturing, the local secondary is composed entirely of the Bash Street Kids and it doesn't have enough sporting or cultural activities. It's all a load of Horlicks and he knows it - it's just about allowing his DD (and him TBH) to mix with the "right kind of people". I cannot afford private school and even if I could or my DKs could get a scholarship I wouldn't send them there - I just think social apartheid for children is wrong and it's poison for social mobility.

He says "everyone wants the best for their kids". I agree, but my point is this - even for purely selfish reasons - I also want the best for everyone's kids (after a couple of generations I suspect I will be blood-related to quite a few of them as well) rather than to purchase a privileged status for my own. That will be poison chalice for my DKs as well - what? After all I spent on you, you can't even get a decent job? - and it inculcates them with a terrible ethos of "every man for himself" and "beggar my neighbour".

Does anyone have any other suggestions how I can humiliate, lampoon and pour scorn upon him for being a sell-out, please?

What's the moral difference between a private school and a private music teacher, then? Not everyone can afford music lessons. Or instruments. Maybe no-one should have them?

Phin....yes good point

Private music lesson choice only available to 'those who can afford them'

There is absolutely nothing you can say, except to quietly smile when your DC and his DD tootle off to very similar universities and your DC knows something about the real world and his doesn't.

I have a poor opinion of wealthy parents who compete for places at good state schools with parents like the OP who cannot afford it. Now share nicely please.

Absolutely, Phiney. OP is too blinded by the unfairness of others' ability to afford private schooling to see that he is similarly buying privilege for his children if he is paying in money or time to enhance his children's educational experience in any way, and that includes paying for extra curricular and tutoring or cultural activities.

It will never be a level playing field. Life sucks.

Does anyone have any other suggestions how I can humiliate, lampoon and pour scorn upon him...

Once you've learnt how to play nicely OP, perhaps you could learn how to share nicely.

Do lighten up people, Urbandad's mate clearly has enough money to cushion him from life's little inconveniences, give his kids a leg up (as he sees it) and avoid mixing with the great unwashed, so a bit of gentle ribbing down the pub isn't going to kill him. I say go ahead and good luck to you, if some taunting from a friend is all he has to contend with then he's got away pretty scot free, and pls don't moan about posh bashing, I reserve the right to not care too much about mocking people at the top of the social ladder.

Would you like some salt for that chip elporto?

Why do people who work and can afford private school posh? You haven't met me!

Affording private school hasn't just happened!

Haha, well does it help if I say that we absolutely could afford to go private but we have chosen not to because that was our principle before having kids and it remains our principle now. IIRC Urbandad's friend was a card carrying lefty pre-children who suddenly finds his principles thrown into question when he has his own kids. I am not jealous of people who go private, I think they are stupid to be paying for something which the state is providing perfectly adequately and are in fact denying their DC the opportunity to see how society / life really works. You know - for everyone, not just the entitled 7%.

I totally disagree that the state is providing something perfectly adequate. My local sec modern is a load of rubbish. And who are you to call people stupid!

You sound jealous or perhaps you think just about ok is good enough for your children.

UrbanDad, you have reminded me that I used to have (note: used to have) a friend who spent an inordinate amount of time having 'digs' at me for sending my DC to private schools. She sent hers to a 'satisfactory' primary, and never stopped telling me that her DC needed to mix with 'ordinary people' [patronising face, if only there were one!], that private schools were responsible for most social ills, and that I had sold my soul to the independent school devil (for which I make no apologies).

Two years later, she sent all four to private schools, and they are still there now.

(I did wonder when someone would use the word 'entitled'. Thanks, elportodelgato).

Not jealous, as I said before: we can afford private but we won't do it. And yes, state schools are mainly adequate, some are truly amazing.

Yes there are circumstances where the local school is a bit rubbish and no other option. I was in that circumstance - our local school had the HT removed and put under LEA control it was so bad. I joined the governing body when no other parents wanted to, my DH joined the PTA, we contributed something. The school is now good with outstanding features and I'm proud to have been a small part of that, and not just for my kids but for all the kids in this area who now have a school which is serving them well. So I do get a bit bored of parents who moan about the local school but refuse to chip in. Society works pretty well if people actually do something instead of pulling their kids out of the state system and opting out.

It is entitled though - having met a huge number of privately educated people at university and in the workplace I find that the majority of them share the characteristic of believing themselves to be utterly entitled to success, no matter how little it is merited or how misplaced their confidence is.

"denying their DC the opportunity to see how society / life really works."

"your DC knows something about the real world and his doesn't."

What does this sort of comment actually refer to? What magical stuff happens in state schools that makes them the 'real world' and private schools not 'the real world'?

And do the 40 hours a week in the private school's "fantasy world" cancel out any 'real world' exposure achieved from children meeting local friends in the park, doing local clubs, going to activities, seeing "how life really works"?

"For "it's his own business", "it's their choice" or "I want the best for my child", remember it's all about the choice of individuals who can afford it. Now share nicely, please."

I look forward to seeing as much effort going in to preventing parents attempting to game state school entry and the abolition of private tuition (including by parents)l

If state schools were just as good, only those with partcular needs (boarding, paparazzi avoidance) would ever choose to spend thousands in them. Still some way to go on that one, isn't there?

awesome I tend to keeps DC in a cupboard after school. A very posh cupboard mind!

Having seen my friends child struggle awfully in main stream, then blossom in a very pastoral fee paying school, I have no doubt she is in the right place now. My friends daughter is not a social experiment, it's important she is nurtured. The more nurturing there is in this world, the less fuckd up children will be.

It's not the 'real world' by any stretch of the imagination though, as only 7% of kids go to private schools, the majority of whom have a lot of money. That's not the real world, that's a caste system.

And the state system serves a lot of people very very well. Most of my friends got into Oxbridge / Russell group unis off the back of the state system. What the private system buys you is a (sometimes misplaced) self-confidence and social connections - that's what I think people are buying, not the education.

When you are the parent of children at private schools, elporto, then you you will be better placed to comment on what the private system 'buys you'. Until then, it's perhaps better not to speculate about something you haven't experienced yourself.

eloporto to be honest most pupils at public school already have bags of confidence and their parents have excellent contacts .

That's the last thing they need from school.

I've lost a few friends who decided they were offended at my choice of private education for my kids. Guess what? I couldn't give a monkey's. My kids, my choice. I worked extremely hard to earn the money to send them to the school of my choice, and that's exactly what it is, my choice. I'm not taking up places at the excellent local state comprehensive (within sight of my house) and I don't think my choice is disadvantaging anyone else. Anyone who decided to have a go at me for this would swiftly be shown the door.
I'm sorry you're so hung up about your friend's choice. Good luck to him, I say.

El - you seem to know an awful lot of private school pupils and seem to know everything that goes on in the private sector. The pupils go to school during the term and have endless school holidays. What do you think goes on at weekends and during the school hols? They really really aren't on Dad's yacht!

at the idea that all our privately educated DC are hanging around on a yacht when they're not at school. Presumably some people do actually believe that kind of stuff.