So Eton, everything I expected and more

[JoanBias]

My DS is at a private school, so I have experience of private schooling, but my word Eton was like another world.

Not just the school, but the people there.

There was one prep school being shown around, all in tweed jackets, and to a boy the spitting image of Draco Malfoy (well there was one Chinese boy, but otherwise....).

One of the mothers doing the tour was not quite right in some respect, I'm not sure how but something wasn't wired up correctly or something. She was immacuately dressed, 6-inch heels (pretty daft considering the confirmation letter warns about having a long walk), but she was just bizarre. The admissions tutor said 'we have a waiting list of 80 boys and typically 35% of these will make it through', and she asked afterwards 'so 80% of the boys from the waiting list make it through?', and it was then explained again, but you could kind of hear the cogs going round and she clearly didn't get it. She had asked several other similar questions; e.g., it was explained that some Houses are catering and others go to a central cafeteria, so she then asked 'so they all eat in the cafeteria'? She pointed at the Fives Court and asked me 'what do they play here?' I said 'Fives' 'Is it squash?', she said. 'No, Eton Fives.' 'So is it squash?' It seemed as if this woman had had the benefit of the 'Finishing School for the Terminally Dim', because she was otherwise every inch the presentable upper middle-class wife.

Another family had a son who looked the prototypical pre-Etonian, and sure enough Daddy spent the tour braying on about his House when he had been there.

The facilities were extremely impressive, although they didn't bother to show us any of the academic parts, and basically the impression was 'if your son is incredibly pushy and self-motivated, send him here and we will teach him to be entitled'. They said 'every year we reject about a third of the highest performers on the test', essentially because they aren't pushy enough. (The House Mistresses seemed quite nice though.)

Fantastic training for future managing directors and whatever, but not for us.....

Well worth it to sign up for a tour, very illuminating. They take about 100 a day from what I can see, so obligation at all....

And yes, obviously people you know, like and trust saying that you speak with a posh accent is not the same thing as thinking up oh so funny Comedy Characters like Tin Lee the Chinky Shop owner who says flied lice with a funny chinky accent.

Where I live we have the best Indian take away in the world and we're rather partial to an "Indian" on suggesting it to my DH he always impersonate the elderly man who answers the phone when you pace an order. So by your definition thats racism. Here in small Townsville they are the only Indian family (well actually if Im going to be correct they're Pakistani I know becasue my mothers partner is an Indian) and we frequently see then around doing shopping etc both my DH and I always smile say hello ask them how they are etc as we would with anyone we know. The other day the elderly man asked us where we came from becasue to quote " we are the only ones who speak to them out of the restaurant!" I know who I think is being racist in Smalltownsville and it certainly isn't my indian mimicking DH.

exotic you might be surprised my friend a head at top grammar had to tell off a boy who behaved in a "juvenile way" in chapel he thought the boys crime was very amusing (apparently livened up a very dry service) but managed to keep a straight face!

I didn't say that you can't be amused by juvenile behaviour-often it is very funny. This wasn't-they were being unpleasant to an old teacher that they didn't like.

I don't get the mimicing foreign accents equals rascism argument at all. When I worked in the US people were always mimicing my accent and use of language. I thought it was funny not rascist but according to this thread those people were being rascist .

I can spell racism too

Excellent one is being given a licence to mimic those with regional accents now too and those who say haitch and you was.

I can spell dissent although I can't multi task & obviously struggle to cook and spell.

I noticed a thread yesterday about Chavs. It seems we can take the proverbial when it relates to class and gender but not culture, race or sexual orientation. No wonder children find it so difficult to know what is acceptable.

I have only just caught up on the thread. I think Eton may do it's boys a disservice if they don't explain what is expected of them in the exams. I would even question whether degree level study really encourages free thinking. At the end of the day there are expectations in terms of what you write, how you write it, who and how you reference and the conclusion you draw is always best matched to who ever may be marking your essay. I had one lecturer who you dare not question or disagree with. Try as I might and I like a good argument I had to concede defeat and write what she wanted to hear.

its not it's...

I have no truck with the word chav. It is not a good thing to say about anyone.

Yawn.

How would they feel if they knew he mimicked them behind their backs I wonder? It is juvenile and racist and parochial and smalltownish to do this. It is also ignorant. Only people who are not used to mixing with people from outside their own little bailiwick would do it, and people who have been badly brought up. (Including Americans.)

I feel quite strongly about this as an Irish person who has spent a lot of time outside of Ireland. Also as an Irish person whose grandparents spent a lot of time in India, specifically wrt mimicking the accents of people from the subcontinent (something my GPs never did, nor my dad or any of his siblings).

I hope the irony of debating whether stereotypes are acceptable on a thread that started out peddling stereotypes that many found unacceptable isn't lost on us. I could quote a few academic definitions of racism but surely in the context of this thread we can see the common sense of finding it unacceptable, and finding it unacceptable in our children, if we peddle stereotypes that lead to people being misjudged in a way that affects their life chances. I know for a fact the stereotypes peddled about Eton have done just that. Doubtless some Etonians and Old Etonians find then funny, and it is water off a duck's back because they never planned anything but a future where Eton was always going to give an advantage. However in some walks of life it has been a burden rather than an advantage and if someone is discounted from something simply because of the school they went to, it may not be racism, but it is unacceptable. The humour is Ok between friends maybe but not when it is institutional, and widely accepted.

I have interviewed Chinese applicants for a graduate management scheme who described themselves as "bananas" (yellow on the outside, white on the inside) in order to try and counter the "flied lice" stereotype type (which paternas didn't even get right). How sad that felt they had to deny all the advantages their cross cultural heritage actually gives them?

And if you google "flied lice" you get this www.japanistic.com/blog/on-teaching-my-kid-that-flied-lice-aint-funny/

*MiniTheMinx" I was just going to get all defensive about the way we do encourage free thinking in unis today (and I took one OE under my wing to help him counteract what he perceived as teaching that had only given him one perspective on the world and history, something he felt had left him unable to benefit fully from his "gap yah" but I won't generalise) and tehn I remembered a certain Politics Lecturer and her tyranny over her students but then we all do our best to protect and inoculate students from her......

I don't find accents particularly funny - it is too easy to mimic someone's accent in order to demean them. However, context is important. Also, if you can accurately mimic someone else's accent, it's impressive, because most people can't (but it's not generally funny).

If someone could accurately mimic my accent, I'd find that quite interesting. If they just spurted out a poor, stereotypical version of my accent, I would find it offensive.

yellowtip calls me Ignorant, but everyone else calls me Blissfully or Bliss...should I be offended?

Are you feeling tired Rabbit?

i think it is a bit bonkers (not to mention dodgy child protection wise) to place your small child into ANY british public school system

it can only reflect your own inadequacies as a person to put so much faith into an antiquated system of hieracy of britishness that is judged by the majority of the rest of the world as flawed and a bit mad to be honest

and yet it goes on and on ,,,,,

You are ignoring the fact that the boys perpetuated a stereotype. That is the difference between impersonating someone famous (Margaret Thatcher for instance) and 'generic Chinese person' coincidentally working in a take away.

What the French teacher thought of it is immaterial. Whether he was a bit of a bully himself is equally beside the point. What Eton thought of it, how boring the afternoon was, etc., is also immaterial. What the Singaporean Chinese may think of taking the piss out of how they speak is irrelevant too. They may well laugh among themselves about their speech, just as the Irish do occasionally among themselves, but that doesn't mean it's ok for others to do it.

It is the height of ignorance and arrogance to assume that this was in any way amusing or that a Chinese person wouldn't be offended or feel diminished by it. No matter whether the boys themselves or their parents are Chinese, they can't assume that other Chinese people would look so indulgently on it.

Not every Chinese person in the west has the great good fortune to be able to launch themselves on the world from the lofty height of Eton complete with mouthful-of-marbles accent. Many work extremely hard to get by and learn English as they go along. It is not ok for members of an ethnic group who are in a privileged position to peddle stereotypes of less privileged members of that group to anyone willing to listen. If the boys are indeed ethnically Chinese, who are they trying to impress by taking the piss out of other people of Chinese ancestry?

In your ignorance, the by-product of a state education perhaps, I don?t suppose you have travelled wide enough, e.g. to the Far East, that in Singapore the locals enjoy making a mockery of themselves by saying they (most of them) speak Singlish instead of English. That is to say speaking English with a heavy Singaporean accent (Hokkien) sometimes with some local Malay words thrown in, for those ignorant enough not to know.

Now there's a leap if ever there was one...
Clearly anyone not sophisticated enough to understand the intricate subtleties of the humour involved here must have had a deficient education? .

Happygardening, your DH sounds horrible. Stupid and offensive 'jokes' don't get funnier with repetition.

Does he honestly not understand that people in a subordinate position in the building industry these days will smile and go along with pretty much whatever shit is thrown at them in order to keep their (rare) job? Just because there are no complaints and your DH's so called humour isn't greeted by a stony silence doesn't mean those people aren't seething on the inside. Long ago the canal-digging and general labourer Irish used to tip their caps at bosses who called them paddies, and smile and say, 'Yes sir' or 'No sir' or 'Whatever you say sir'. 'Sor' (pr. 'sir') means 'tick' in Irish.

I'm interested in southeastastra's comment that it's 'bonkers' and 'dodgy' to use public schools, and furthermore shows parents' own inadequacy. Apparently the rest of the world finds the system 'flawed' and 'a bit mad'. On what can this opinion possibly be based? Much of the rest of the world (well, the rich bits) seem to be keen to use UK public schools.

I was, Mini!

I think the word "racism" is too widely used. Mimicking someone's accent can certainly be done to be offensive, but not all deliberate offence is racism.

I don't feel embarrassed when I try to speak a foreign language because I think people will be racist towards me, I feel embarrassed because I know I'll sound funny when I pronounce the words wrong and slip up on the grammar. That doesn't mean I am an inferior being for not having that language as my first language. It does mean that if someone succumbs to their amusement and laughs at me that I will find it embarrassing every time I open my mouth, though.

And as for the boys concerned, I should imagine they put on silly accents because they didn't want to sound like themselves, not because they had some racist point to make about Chinese take away employees...

Never crossed swords with this character before.... Words fail me.

It doesn't confirm my stereotypes about Eton parents. I can see 13yr olds thinking it a funny thing - I just don't like to be made out to be an old misery because I don't find it in the least amusing and I would have no difficulty at all keeping a straight face. Teachers should not have to put up with being disturbed at home by anonymous calls and if I was Chinese it would annoy me. If that makes me 'holier than thou' I don't care.

Agree with most of what mathanxiety is writing.