What's the difference between a "hothouse" and a school that pushes your child to meet their true natural ability?

[HappyDads]

On Mumsnet, "hothouse" often seems to be used - by implication - as a slightly derogatory term for "damaging your child" by those not getting into said hothouse school (Westminister, St. Pauls, Eton, SPGS, Tiffins, Habs, Wycombe Abbey etc - whatever floats your boat actually).

Yet we all want our DCs to reach their maximum potential, and be stretched, yet without being damaged. Where is our dividing point?

Seriously I struggle to balance my own thinking with my DD at a school often described as both a "hothouse" and yet also called "balanced".

So what is a "hothouse" and is it more a term of jealousy vs your own DC's ability, or is it something more tangible you can describe?

I don't give a shit about my children "reaching maximum potential" whatever that actually means? I just want them to be happy, happy and kind to themselves and others. To those ends I will support them in whatever will make them happy, I will not expect they become high flyers or get A* in everything, there is more to life.

And I also really resent the constant wheat/chaff/buck passing/labelling that is done in schools. I think it is ridiculous and damaging. I don't believe in "ability", I think any child with the right support can do anything and I hate the way schools teach children not to think just to answer and that their opinions/thoughts are not desirable.

Most people are happiest when achieving at a level that requires them to stretch themselves just a bit...

Some people are and some people aren't. Being happy with being challenged and stretched is different to pushing your child to achieve their maximum potential. I don't think it makes children happy if their parent makes the decision that they need to reach their maximum potential (what does that mean?) I think if you focus on them being happy and secure they are more likely to achieve but not many people are truly happy working at maximum level because it excludes everything else that is important from their lives.

But Offred, it's all about money - the more support a child needs to do something, the more it costs. And maybe your children go to the wrong school if they are taught not to think, but just to answer according to a set format. Exams don't help, of course - if a school is judged on its exam results, then it will obviously focus on ensuring those exams are passed and teaching children the right way to answer questions in order to get maximum marks from examiners who have themselves been given no discretion to give credit to people who have more original ideas than the people who set the exam in the first place...
I remember finding my year at Law School hugely depressing after university, because I went from a system of being given huge credit for coming up with original arguments to one where you just had to ensure you had learnt everything in the textbook, which I found exceptionally dull. But when it comes down to it, you don't often want your solicitor to be hugely original, you want him or her to know and apply the law and your barrister to come up with novel but convincing ways of interpreting it when it all goes belly up. ie two different skill sets and requirements...

"You don't often want your solicitor to be hugely original, you want him or her to know and apply the law."

Indeed. I've never understood the attraction of the law, personally!

Like friends, social life, family, a bit of paid work.... Reaching maximum potential in this context feels neurotic to me. I'd rather they were having full lives and learning to be people rather than ending up like my siblings and I - one cracked under pressure and gave up on education when A* became unachievable through depression brought on in part by the same pressure which led to a feeling of there being no point doing anything, one is a psychiatrist but hates it and never wanted it and is sacrificing her whole life and chance of a relationship/family to it despite really wanting to work in theatre (she is miserable being a doctor and choose psych to make the best of it because of arty things), one went to Oxford and really hated it, all the people are neurotic, but is now largely cut off from parents because of their overbearing nature, the last is currently at uni still doing postgrad after achieving a first in his degree by doing nothing but kill himself to get good grades since sixth form and consequently suffers with crippling anxiety/agoraphobia...

All schools, especially "good" ones, teach to pass them exams not to think because the system is about accreditation not education.

Offred - you sound highly traumatised by your experiences

Wouldn't say highly traumatised, would say very wary of parents who decide their children should achieve maximum potential. There is nothing wrong with that if that's what the child wants/chooses, I don't think it is something a parent should want/choose for a child. My eldest two are clever and good at school, they, at the moment, want to be a mechanical engineer and a writer, if they wanted to be a hairdresser or a nursery worker or anything else that made them happy but didn't fully make use of their brains I will be happy and proud of them.

It riles me when people make it out that the poor owe their lot in life to being born poor.

We were poor but thanks to a free state schools and, at the time, free university both my sister and I went on to good jobs. Our older siblings left school at 16 and went into hairdressing and fast food but today all my nephews and nieces (all 6 of them) are graduates.

Ok, none of us are on the fast track to CEO but it's not bad considering our parents/grandparents were poor. If the case was made in somewhere like India where there is extreme poverty and the caste system exist then I would agree but the UK??? With FSM you can't even argue that the poor are hampered by the lack of nutritious food.

IMO it is not good to propagate this blame culture eg the common one of WC kids not getting into GS because of well off and heavily tutored MC kids. It teaches kids that they are not responsible for their success or lack of it.

I think you are discounting the recent changes in the education system there totally.

Totally - you do seem to be saying two different things at once - that you benefited from free state schools and free university, but that you think kids are responsible for their success or lack of it. You can't have it both ways: either you need some help to succeed in the form of accessible, free, high quality education for all, or you don't. You can't say you do AND you don't.

But you have to deal with things as they are. The facts say that poor children currently do less well in education than better off ones. In education generally -this thread is, as far as I know, not about selective education.

It is obvious that things will be harder for poor children. If you have space to work, warmth, good food, no worries about money for swimming, then you have the best surroundings to do well. You can do well academically from a cold overcrowded house with parents exhausted from doing 3 jobs to make ends meet, or depressed by unemployment (or, yes, living a chaotic life on benefits). And one thing education should be doing is trying to redress the balance a bit. That's one of the things education is for.

Besides which, I think you are not talking about the same thing that privately educated people are talking about... it is precisely the failure of large numbers of state educated people to push themselves ferociously to the top of the corporate pile, or the legal profession, or the medical profession, etc, that is being bemoaned by the powers that be.

"The facts say that poor children currently do less well in education than better off ones."

The correlation between poverty and lower academic achievement doesn't mean that poverty is 100% the cause of that lower academic achievement.

To me the advantage of private education in those terms, getting to the top of the corporate ladder stuff, is the networking not the grades or the "potential" that is brought out in the child. People who "get to the top" all too often come from the "right" families, go to the "right" schools, have the "right" amount of wealth or privilege are the "right" colour and "right" gender and know the "right" people. Just because sometimes the system allows one or two people through does not mean it is fair, those people are to maintain the pretence of a meritocracy...

"For many years I worked in an exceedingly stressful environment where life and death decisions were being regularly made and staff experienced daily threats of violence often involving guns and and knifes. . I loved it as did my colleagues"

There's a big difference between constant stress during childhood while brains and personalities are still being formed and some adults' being quite happy with high-stress environments. Also, did you go from a stressful working environment to a stressful home environment? If a child is being seriously over-hothoused the stress is going to permeate their whole lives without a break (the "without a break" being part of the problem).

Also there is a difference between chosen self-imposed stress and stress imposed on you by a parent.

"With FSM you can't even argue that the poor are hampered by the lack of nutritious food."

Well, they get 190 meals out of 1095 meals required in a year provided - that's about 17% of their meals (leaving aside questions over how nutritious school meals actually are).

Lots of people don't claim FSM because of the stigma and actually having seen what they are made from and where they come from there is no way I'd put my dc on hot dinners because they are, at my school, made from the poorest quality ingredients full of chemicals and made offsite, kept warm and transported between schools. I don't think they are particularly healthy.

I think FSM can be a packed lunch, can't they? I don't think being guaranteed a sandwich a day whilst at school guarantees you get all the nutrients you need.

Whilst I think abject poverty obviously does have an impact on children's outcomes, I'd say that is true of allsphweres of their lives. The underclass have poor outcomes in respect of health, mortality...everyhting.

What I think is more shocking/interesting is the differences in outcomes between the wealthy and the middle.

The middle don't live in overcrowded damp accommodation. They aren't hungry or cold. Their DC arent neglected. And yet the outcomes for their DC are getting worse...many of them will live in far less comfortabkle circumstances than their parents.

The FSM comment was particularly crass.

"The middle don't live in overcrowded damp accommodation. They aren't hungry or cold. Their DC arent neglected. And yet the outcomes for their DC are getting worse...many of them will live in far less comfortabkle circumstances than their parents."

But that's not due to education is it? It's due to global economic circumstqnces.