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

111 replies

Cortina · 16/08/2010 10:07

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

OP posts:
Concordia · 06/09/2010 22:28

so many wrong assumptions made here about schools and life generally.
my mother's brothers were allowed to go to university but she was not allowed to because she was a girl.
i thought we had moved on from that.

verytellytubby · 17/09/2010 21:33

My brother and I went to quite rough inner London comps. My parents sent our younger sister to private school. It still grates.

dittany · 30/09/2010 23:31

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Cortina · 01/10/2010 02:39

Just been to see, thanks for posting link.

He says he didn't really read our comments, which were mainly insightful and may have made him think.

He does add this:

There are other reasons too, like the fact that boys generally need more the sporting activities that private schools provide and state schools often don?t, and are more likely to suffer in the feminised environment of the PC state system where to be male is now often considered a pathology. But the main one, definitely, is that girls have wombs and boys don?t, and that thereby hangs all the difference in the world.

I?ve never read this argument better explained than by Rod Liddle in the famous Spectator essay which began: ?So ? Harriet Harman, then. Would you? I mean after a few beers, obviously, not while you were sober.? Rod made the point that no matter how many well-intentioned efforts are made to skew the market through Harmanesque ?anti-sexism? legislation, women?s average pay rates will always lag behind men?s because that?s the way they choose it. They?re more likely to work part-time; they?re less likely to slog away at a job long enough to get to the very top salary levels. Not because they?re lazy or less competent or because of our phallocentric culture?s glass ceilings but because once they have babies eternal wage slavery doesn?t have the appeal it once did.

Note that word ?choose?. It?s something boys don?t enjoy to nearly the same degree. There are exceptions, of course; always there are exceptions. But in the main boys don?t have the option of being able to use their looks and wiles to snare a rich husband. Nor, though our government seems determined to change this with its silly paternity legislation, do boys get to quit the rat race so they can improve their ?work-life balance?. Boys are in it for the long haul, it?s a fact of life, and because of this, and the responsibilities that go with it, it surely makes sense to do whatever you can educationally to give them that breadwinning edge.

I worry about the way women have been taught by feminism to look at the world. It seems to involve far too much time being tortured by how unfair it all is, and far too little time accepting that within that unfairness there are at least as many upsides as downsides. I don?t want my daughter to feel this resentment; I don?t want those nice Roedean girls to feel this resentment. I want them to grow up sufficiently happy in their skin that they can read an article like my one in Tatler, shrug their shoulders and go ?Yeah. And??

OP posts:
ClimberChick · 01/10/2010 03:34

I find it all quite disgusting and sickening really

TheDevilWearsPrimark · 01/10/2010 03:59

Is there an actual link to this article?

On my dads side of the family my male cousins have been pushed into grammar school or in to private and the girls have not. This is really interesting.

I will post more once I have slept and can actually use my brain hehe.

NickOfTime · 01/10/2010 04:50

in dittany's post, tdwp.

if it's so great, this child-rearing and getting out of the rat race stuff, why doesn't he want boys/ males to get more of it?

methinks he doth protest too much.

i hope the roedean girls eat him alive. and then employ Boy after they leave cambridge.

i am heartened by his (better) description of his thought process and continuing angst re Girl though. he can't be all bad - he's just got a nasty dose of deliberate provocation to get through.

NickOfTime · 01/10/2010 04:51

(the original article was linked in the op)

TheDevilWearsPrimark · 01/10/2010 05:04

I still can't find a link to the original article, am I being a fool!?

But I don't know if I want to read it having read his 'update'

Words fail me

for now

NickOfTime · 01/10/2010 05:36

oh blimey, you're right - i must have googled tatler and found the article that way originally. serves me right for not re-reading op Blush
sorry!

tatler is online - searchable by month i think.

nooka · 01/10/2010 06:02

He's just a tosser really. Not worth discussing. I feel sorry for his children (male and female).

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