Middle Class Dilemma - state school daughters, public school sons?

[Cortina]

Just read an article 'The Son Only Rises' by James Delingpole published this month, sorry don't have a link.

It bascially makes the point that in cash strapped times if you can afford to send just one child to private school you should chose your son. This is why according to article:

1. Boys, whether we like it or not are much more likely to end up earning their family's crust, while girls - especially if they're pretty- can always marry someone rich regardless of their education.

1. Girls, being more sophisticated, devious and socially adept than boys are more capable of negotiating the complexities of the state-school system than boys

1. Boys are generally lazier and less mature than girls so will benefit from more discipline and rigour at private school.

1. Boys are usually more physical and the sport on offer is better quality and more frequent than at the average state school.

Delingpole says, tongue in cheek I hope, that he's still holding out for a lottery win that will buy his girl an education too but this is the outcome he is hoping for:

'Boy goes to tailcoat-wearing school full of boys desperate to meet attractive sisters with urban, state-educated cred; Girl meets future duke/hedgefunder and never has to work again. I don't call that sexist. I call that common sense'.

Hmmmmm

I think he's got a point, although I suspect will be ripped to shreds on here

I do know two cases where family finances only mean one child can be educated privately and in both cases it's the boy. Hmmm.

Apart from anything else, I think it's a way to set up lasting resentments between siblings.

To be honest I would think that anyone considering this was a complete and utter twat.

I would judge a mother who decided this course of action for her daughter. I don't care about your education, but no matter, you can dress nicely when you are older and snag a rich man.

Is this the 18th century?

Just vile- if you cannot afford the same for all, then none should have it. You're just asking for family discord.

Oh!........A rich aunt of DH offered to pay school fees for him, but not for his younger sister. It does lead to resentment even now 40+ years later. And that was just the 'offer'. PIL didn't take up the offer because DH passed 11+.

My grandmother and her sisters were taken out of school aged 8yo, once they could read, write and do sums, and apprenticed to skilled craftswomen. Their wages paid for their brothers' continuing education.

That was in Poland 100 years ago.

I would like to think that we have come a little way forward since then.

If I had the money to educate only one of my DCs, I would still put them all through the state system and use the money to pay for good quality extra curriculum activities for all of them.

BTW my grandmother earned more than my grandfather throughout their working lives, even while raising a young family.

And my other grandmother, who was 'educated' as a young lady and raised to snag a wealthy man, also had a higher income than her husband throughout the war (when he wasn't allowed to work and she had to use whatever skills she could to feed the family) and for 10 or more years afterwards while he was struggling to get back into work.

erm -if he's talking about 'tailcoat wearing' school fees (so eton or harrow?) then those fees could be used to fund both children through independent day schools?

some of his points might be valid but they are not justifications of why you should favour one child over the other?

Makes me feel mildly queasy. The one point he may have is that I suspect girls are more self-starting and more likely to do well with less pushing. But I think what you do for one child you should do for them all, unless for example, you had one child who was already going great guns at the local comp and another who was struggling and needed a different sort of education. In those circumstances I could understand giving them something else. My brother and I went to different state primaries because my Mum thought he needed more discipline than me.

I think this sort of thing is quite common. My DD1 is going to a private school. They run two entry lists, one for boys and one for girls to make sure they get even numbers in each year. Applications for boys far outweigh the number of applications they receive for girls and I don't believe for a second that there is a disproportionate number of boys in the area. Possibly parents are more likely to be prepared to pay for a boy's education? I don't know.

dh fought a huge battle with his ex over this.

he was (and is) willing to pay school fees for both children.

ex insisted dsd went to local (pretty crappy, tbh) state school, while insisting dss went to one of the top public schools as a full boarder.

I find the whole notion abhorrent. aside form the education aspect (dsd was not able to study what she wanted to at ehr school - lack of sports pitches, lack of theatre/stage, lack of just about anyhting actually, including the extra help she needed due to SN), there is so much more that dss had access to from school - the extra curricular activities, music tuition, proper sports, thriving drama, clubs in just about anything you can think of.

not to mention the help when applying to university - the time taken by his tutors to really help him think through his options, rather than just having to go and do it all yourself.

the inequality is staggering.

and this was actually chosen by dh's ex - dh went through a long and costly court case trying to gain the right for his dd to have the same opportunities as her brother, and lost - the bloody family courts triumph again.

What twaddle.

I went to an all-girls' secondary, switched to a mixed 6th form college and I was horrified at how the boys viewed it as completely acceptable behaviour to talk over and belittle anything the girls contributed to discussions in class. This had obviously been the way they'd behaved all the way through school - and the girls who'd gone to school with them tolerated it and bowed down to their authority.

Yet it's OK to stick a girl in that kind of environment as long as the boys are doing OK?

From what I've seen in classes - that pattern starts worryingly young - the boys grab the attention and the girls just keep their heads down and get on with things - yeah fine, but to actively PENALIZE them for that?! Totally shocking.

I'd save the school fee money (I'm personally convinced from working in the independent sector that a GOOD private school is rare and lots are just masters of window dressing and flim flam) and make sure I was living in a decent catchment area and backing up what the school was doing at home.

I agree.

Apart from anything else, his logic is flawed because hedge fund managers/city lawyers/bankers tend to marry other professional/ high-flying/ Ivy League women so his assumption that his daughter's education is irrelevant to her marriage prospects is incorrect.

It is pure myth that hedgies are all married to beautiful stupid women.

(Not to say that I agree with him that a child educated at a state school is badly educated or stupid- but that seems to be the case that he's making)

Not in my neck of the woods it isn't. Ok, maybe not stupid but openly calculating and not highly educated although quite cultured shall we say. Beautiful, yes, incredibly sexy, yes too. Possibly the grown up women in the future this article is describing.

A small, probably non representative sample, but one just the same.

Think a sort of Candy brothers scenario in a smaller, non-high profile way - in other words very rich man dates a Holly Vallance type. She's beautiful yes, highly educated in an academic sense? No.

There seem to be two types of 'wife' in my limited exposure to the high level financial world. The accomplished, very bright 'wife' who met fledgling uber banker at Oxbridge, Stamford etc. Discarded career soon after marriage. Married to a lovely man who didn't have time for dating and happy to get married young, spent most of his 20s and 30s chained to a desk.

The 'Hedge Fund' hunter in the Holly Vallance mould who sometimes openly went out to get one. These men, to stereotype, were often players until their marriage and sometimes afterwards.

Words fail me. The author is a misogynist and a snob.

My reply to the points raised in the OP:

1. Sexist drivel. Has this man just crawled out of the Ark?

1. What is so bloody complex about the state school system? Does the author really think that state schools are full of mysterious beasts completely unlike those nice straightforward types that are found in independent schools? For the record I went to both and I found the level of bullying far more sophisticated at private school than the state school I then went on to. So bollocks to that.

1. Possibly true, but one could argue that the aggressive and competitive environment of some independent schools could render a gentler type boy completely out of his depth - or serve to exacerbate the issues of an aggressive child.

1. Girls like sport too. If the author doesn't realise that by now he needs to smell the coffee. That is all I have to say about that.

As for his ultimate dream outcome: jog on mate. And god help your daughters.

TheBolter: couldn't have put it any better myself.

This does happen; in our town there are more boys in private school than in state schools.

Perhaps boys should just learn to behave a bit better! And, how on earth can they not cope with a state education; state schools are just schools. They're not that different to private schools. They just with less wealthy participants.

I attended Cambridge University and our lectures were constantly interrupted by ex-public boys who talked over the lecturers. Their public schools had taught them to be polite to people they could get something from, but rude to anyone who was no use to them.

What a pile of horse shit.

But then so will be all the replies saying foul things about private school kids thinking that that constitutes a balance of views.

Making sweeping assumptions about types of schools and their pupils is fucking stupid whichever side of the argument you are coming form

What's the biggest pile of horse shit, gender divide apart, is assuming most people have a "choice" and that it comes down to anything much but money.

I remember being surprised by a thread on here which has plenty of posters admitting that their children went to different schools - one child state, one chid private.

It was not seperated by sex - generally a bright child was educated privately, a less bright one state.

I couldn't gte my head around that one either. Either educate them both privately, or not at all. Or you are breeding a lifetime of resentment in your own family.

Get orf

That is me

well sort of. Except DS2 is in state special school. He doesn't give a shit except that his terms are so much longer. DD howvever has school bus envy