I send my child to private school because....?

[jabed]

Well, I don?t actually, I just work in one. But it seems to be a constant source of questioning on MN and given the current news articles (I have been reading the DM and Tory graph online) about how many of our left wing leaders hypocritically claim to be egalitarian and socialist whilst buying education for their children , or have had education paid for by their own parents. I just wondered, what is it we expect from education, and why is it some of us are willing to pay for whatever that is and how they see that as worthy of their money.

There you go. :)

All voices go up at the end of sentences (and sometimes in the middle too) these days, don't they?

All voices go up. All cats are grey.

I don't think it is racist to say that when I go to Singapore I find a lot of people there extremely difficult to understand, even though I know they are speaking in English to me.

I daresay they would say the same of you.

Your error, IMHO, is of viewing your English as the 'correct' one and assuming that when you are in Singapore they should be the ones changing! I think they are being jolly decent bothering to speak English at all.

rabbitstew - don't think I get your point - we appear to agree that working class people and those with regional accents can and do modify their accents when talking to non-native speakers, as we all do. This is not at all the same as saying - as Xenia does - that the aim ought to be for them to lose their accent entirely.

I speak as someone who went for my dh partly becaus of his lovely Northern accent, and whose dcs speak with a slight Northern flattening of vowels despite having lived their whole lives down south. :)

Re Singapore English;

"English is the native language of 32% of Singaporeans, but has the largest number of speakers if second language speakers are included.[18] A form of slang English, known as Singlish, is commonly used in Singapore. Singlish is the use of English words with Chinese grammar, often with loanwords from the other languages of Singapore." (Wiki)

I'm sure I read somewhere that only about 2% of the population speak RP- are you really saying that your social circle is restricted to that 2%? apart from anything else, no Scots? No Irish? No non English friends at all?

As others have made you aware ethnicity is no barrier to RP.
I have friends from China, Zambia, and France amongst other places, as well as the UK. My DW is Canadian. We all speak using RP. Accents are very slight to non existant. My DW has a slight transatlantic accent. I was brought up using RP and I have passed this to my DS.

Of course my social circle is closed and small probably because we all share certain middle class values and attitudes (these do not have ethnic boundaries). My circle are people like me or, if you prefer they call me a friend because I am like them.

breadandbutterfly - my point is that whilst I don't want an accentless world, before you agreed with me that people can be expected to moderate their accents and dialect to suit their audience, you were appearing to claim that any dialect and accent of any strength and differential from standard English should be acceptable for any employer and should never be a barrier to any form of employment. I would point out that that is going several steps too far - just ask anyone who has ever received inadequate care on the NHS because they couldn't understand the English being spoken to them and were too embarrassed to ask, or despite asking, still couldn't get a response that was comprehensible to them and gave up. That isn't the fault of the embarrassed patient, that's failing to ensure that staff are communicating effectively in the country in which they are employed. And of course, in Singapore, it is my problem if I don't understand the person's English (and, as you have clearly discovered yourself, they are not being "nice" to try and speak to me in English, they are speaking their own form of English, not necessarily a 2nd language at all) - but if they want employment in England, it is their problem, and quite rightly so.

There's a poster on this thread who very honestly talks about his hiding of his roots from his current social circle. Very sad- and even sadder that his children are being encouraged to forget their roots even further. But a classic British trope of course- not sure whether the same thing happens in other countries

No seeker this is your interpretation of something you do not know. (I am assuming you refer to me?). My "roots" are firmly middle class. I am from a middle class, middle England family. The only thing I hide is my education
(or lack of it) which was the result of my dear mothers socialist principles. I am the social experiment. The failed experiment. My mother bought in to the post was ?Jewel in the Crown" vision of a welfare state and high class state education. I passed the 11+ but for reasons I will not expand on again (I did it before on another thread) I did not get to go to grammar school. I was sent to an SM. My mother like O'Farrel a plonker in my opinion, if there ever was one) believed that a state education would be good enough and so what if I was SM educated, state education would be acceptable and as a bright lad I would do OK anyway. It?s that paucity of education I never refer to. I went on to University (Cambridge Trinity Hall) and so that was OK wasn?t it? Well, no it was not really.

I will not let my DS be sacrificed at the altar of state education and the principles of the socialist state. I will not let him be a social experiment. I do not buy into the argument that a child can do OK with home support and a good brain. In a class where a teacher is spending 80% of their time dealing with disruptibve pupils and there is a social lack of work ethic, a child will not be OK IMO. It?s even worse if the DC is not the brightest.

I want my DC to have a better educational experience. I do not consider that he needs to get mix and match it will all sorts. He needs to be around people like him - just as we all do. We all choose our friends and social circles as adults. We do so a DC too but if you are a middle class child stuck in a working class school it?s very difficult I can tell you.

Fine, use state education if the schools near you are up to it. The schools where I live, are like many throughout the country, just not good enough.

I also believe that too many posters under rate the importance of RP and how it opens doors. Believe what you like but it?s there. Consider that a massive business is now being built up around this addressing the issues that it seems many young people (and older ones too) are realising are barriers to their success or progress in careers and the workplace. It?s not a fair playing field out there. In the past the lessons were learned at school or at ones mothers feet in early childhood (I do say mothers as they were mostly SAHM's then).

This was reinforced at school. Now it is sadly lacking and "Image Consultants" run courses to make up the deficit. Its big business worth major bucks in London.

I don't think anyone ever claimed the secondary moderns provided a high class education, did they? I thought the problem most people had with grammar schools wasn't the grammar schools so much as the crappy alternative? Oh, go on, jabed, tell us why you didn't end up in a grammar school?...
ps isn't using your experience of state education to tar all state education with the same brush going a bit far? My eldest db had an appalling experience at his private school - nasty, bullying headmaster, creating nasty, bullying environment throughout the school, exceptionally poor science and maths teaching, and parents cowed into accepting it because it was the prep feeder school for a highly regarded public school. If he therefore viewed all private education in that light, wouldn't you think him deluded?

I assume your brother now sends his children to state school as he wouldn't want to sacrifice them at the altar of the right wing state, rabbit?

I bet John O'F's children are good eggs.

I think that you generally end up talking the way that your family talk. I have just done a voice over for a presentation that will be seen by all classes, and foreign visitors, so I can't think that my voice was tainted by going to secondary modern school!

Since my best friend at the secondary modern had Oxbridge educated parents and the other one had a father who was an army officer they didn't have bad grammar and dialects either. The one with the military family had a sister at boarding school and I don't think that you could tell which was which from voice. We do seem to get caught up in stereotypes! It also seems beyond people's understanding that families don't fit into neat little boxes of private or state and it was quite possible, like my friend, to have one at both. The other one had a brother at grammar school- are people seriously saying that one school will turn out RP and one won't-in the same family?

Oh, go on, jabed, tell us why you didn't end up in a grammar school?

I suspect that?s said with a sarcastic tone but nonetheless.

I passed the 11+ in one county and my parents moved to another. In the county where I passed I had a grammar school place. It was common in those days that if you moved you would not be allocated a GS place in another county regardless of any ability.

I was promised that I would be moved as soon as a GS place became available. It never did, despite asking every year from when I was 11 to when I was 15. I was able to leave school at 15 because I was in the cohort before the RoSLA to 16. I actually left at 14 1/2. I took my O levels at night school and CSE in the SM. I then found myself a decent school for my A levels (not the Bl**dy grammar school I can tell you!). It has left me very very angry even all these years later.

That was the way it was then. They have changed the names but comprehensives are still SM by any other name and the system stinks more now than it did then IMO

I think it's family, too. I think ours has a pretty bland accent with the odd northern vowel sound ... Northerners tend to ask where I'm from and if it's Down South, but I doubt a southerner would think I was one. The dd2 sometimes says thinks like mook instead of muck (or mack!), but I don't see it as a huge problem.

rabbitstew - but you're deliberately confusing things - your references to non-native workers in the NHS have no bearings on native accents such as working class or regional. Frankly, if you have a working class nurse - pretty likely; hardly likely to be public-school educated - and can't understand them then yes, I would think it was your fault for choosing to live in a ghetto and never get out in the real world, watch TV, listen to the radio etc.

If what you said was correct, we would start to requite translators for posh people who couldn't be bothered to understand their fellow Britons!

Working class accents and regional accents are as valid,and authentic British accents as RP - more so, in some ways, as genuine RP is nearly always an artificial construct, as mentioned before. You cannot those speaking with authentic local/working class accents to a non-native speaker who does not know the language properly and is using it incorrectly!!

cannot compare

I agree with jabed, mine was just as silly, but I did end up in the grammar school -where I fitted in just fine- and I think the comprehensive system is the best system-although there are some things I would change.

Hey... IME grammar schools weren't (and aren't) what they're cracked up to be.

"That was the way it was then. They have changed the names but comprehensives are still SM by any other name"

No they aren't.

Maybe these same people would like Shakespeare to be rewriten in 21st century RP so as not to be too taxing...

Jabed, given how old you are, you seriously need to get over it. You remind me of my MIL, who has a similar sob story, and, like you, has allowed it to colour her entire adult life. She is not a happy woman. My father, on the other hand, sat his 11+ at about the same time as his own father died unexpectedly. He ended up at a SM, took no o levels and left at 15 with nothing. He put himself through night school at a later date and then university to masters level. He is retired, but was a teacher for many years. He managed all of that without developing the massive chip on his shoulder that you clearly carry around with you.

No they aren't. We don't have comprehensives in my county at all - i.e. there is no 'comprehensive' education - all secondary education is by selection through the 11+.

. It?s not a case of getting over it. It?s a case that some things are sometimes beyond getting over. The getting over is a phrase often used IME by those who have never had real trauma - no doubt you would be telling the victims of 9/11 to get over it by now too! I live with it. It isn?t a chip. It does inform how I deal with education for my DS - and rightly so

Some things stay with you all of your life. Education is one of those things.

Uldyou address the comprehensives= secondary modern issue, please?

A comprehensive is as much an SM as any SM ever was. Having taught in them I know. The levelof education and the ethos is the same. Where GS exist, SM are SM, where GS do not exist, all DC are sent to SM's . I think people are fooling themselves if they cannot see that. I am sorry for you.

I know some posters do not have a choice . That is sad.