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?

Verbal reasoning is also seen as a sign of suitability for an academic school. This can be inculcated in any average child - a voracious reader will usually have a better vocab & a higher VR score than a child that rarely reads. Teachers frequently tell us their best writers are usually their best/widest readers. The quality of my writing improves as I read & digest more of the best quality literature etc. My basic intellect could be very average or relatively weak, it builds through exposure to the written word.

Casey: Why is my point so hard to understand?

In what way is not having access to the Internet or living in a nice house an excuse for being semi illiterate?

Being poor, ill fed, living in an overcrowded inadequate housing with stressed and worried parents can certainly be an explanation for under achieving at school.

Not sure about "excuse"- that seems to imply" at least to me, some sort of value judgement.

Being rich but never seeing your parents who are too busy working to bother with you or provide meals or a tidy home also provides an explanation for underachievement. How many children grow up in perfect homes?

The poorest are privileged compared to some parts of the world, what's your point? There is always someone worse off because some people are dead!

We were talking about the middle, not the poorest, and why they might squander the advantages and privileges they have.

offred you seem intent on saying they have none in the first place, whioch seems a little far fetched.

No I'm disagreeing with your assertion that the middle lack ambition to achieve and this is why they aren't accessing "top positions". There is no actual evidence to back it up, there is evidence of the consistent erosion of living standards though which has meant that now the middle are very often living in substandard cramped and cold conditions.

The poorest have privileges compared to some countries why do you not see them as squanderers of opportunity was my point btw?

That would explain all those poor under achieving Asian kids [inserts SARCASM emoticon]

As for me making value judgements, people who get judgy pants over how much homework other people's children get shouldn't be throwing around the same label.

Seriously not all Asian people are poor! FFS...

I wasn't aiming the "excuse" thing at you in particular- I was just commenting on how there is a difference between explanations and excuses. And I think it's an important one in this context, but people sometimes seem to use the words interchangeably.

Is there actual hard evidence that poor Asian children do better at school in the UK than poor indigenous children? When the stqts are prpared do they cpmpare white and ethnic minority childrenof equal socio economic status, or is it just on ethnicity? It's important to remember thwt lots of immigrant families are middle class.I sometimes wonder if the stereotype of the hard working first generation immigrant fighting their way to then top is just that- a stereotype based on one nor two that did. Certainly you don't see a significant number of non white people among the movers and shakers.

I think some cultures do believe in pushing children more and this will achieve better exam results, probably get them into "better" unis, possibly mean they end up with "better" jobs although not necessarily so, but at what cost? A job is not a whole life and buying a privileged accreditation for your child so they can access a privileged uni doesn't always work out, some children don't get into Oxbridge and struggle to cope in normal uni, lots struggle to cope with normal life whether they get in or not, I think and have seen, they also often hold tight to the idea they are special and better and find it hard to deal with "failure" which is often set at a much higher level than for others...

Often because their levels of achievement are set much higher than others I mean.

Offred: Gee, thanks for telling me. There I was thinking that all Indians live in poverty and that there are no Indian doctors, businessmen, JPs or MPs [rolls eyes at patronizing poster]

I have met more than my fair share of professionals who are the children of poor and often illiterate immigrants. So I can't really empathize with those who argue that the poor are uneducated because they have been dealt a shit socio economic hand .

Because India is the only country in Asia and the exceptions prove the rule. It isn't a fair comparison between illiterate from a country without universal education necessarily and illiterate here.

seeker: I wasn't taking notes as to who, what, when it was said but here on MN such reports have been referred to in the past.

I am not saying that ALL poor Asian kids go on to become doctors etc. I'm just going by my very unscientific observation of the Real World that enough do achieve academic and professional success to debunk the agreement.

I meant 'argument'

Illiterate Asian does not mean poor either.

So how many children of poor immigrant families do you know who go on th be doctors? I know children of immigrants who have gone on to academic or professional success, but they are largely middle class. Often, as would be expected for someone of my generation, Asian people from African countries.

In Paris when I was working in a consulting firm I met second generation immigrants who had benefited from the French educational system (which was more egalitarian in my generation than it is now for my children's generation). One particular friend of mine was of Algerian Berber origin. Neither of his parents could read or write in their mother-tongue or any other language when they arrived in France shortly before his birth; his father died when he was young and his mother lived out a very simple life in social housing. My friend went right through the school system and to one of France's top grandes écoles and is now an entrepreneur, though his three siblings have led much more modest lives.

Offered: I was referring to Indians living in the UK where they have the same access to education as the so called indigenous poor population.

I was at school in a predominantly white working class area. The swots were invariably Asian. When I moved on to the college of FE the A level students were predominantly Asian despite the area being predominately white (most of my white friends finished their education at 16)

At the time I didn't think anything of it but later on, as an adult, it did make me look back and think how little we valued education compared to the Asians. To many of them education was to means to escape poverty.

Does anyone knownifnthe stats are collected by socio economic as well as ethnic status? Because saying that asians do better is pretty meaningless if we don't know the wider context.

.... anyway, I kind of derailed my own point which is that with free education, council housing and benefits there is no longer an excuse to blame your lot in life on The System. Parents should take responsibility for the early years. At a certain stage in your life, you the teenager should take responsibility for your life instead of blaming the rich or the middle classes.

seeker - of course statistics are corrected for other variables. They wouldn't be statistics if they weren't!

There was a report in the newspaper yesterday about Bangladeshi girls outperforming all other groups at GCSE - all other variables taken into consideration.

seeker: Do you really need stats to tell you that your GP, hospital doctor or pharmacist is Indian?