Selective independants

[poppydoppy]

Do they look better on League tables because the standard of teaching is better or just because they select the children most likely to do well?

Packs of dogs in Bucharest?

RussiansOnTheSpree - what on earth makes you think anyone on here is talking about backpacking round the world or studying for a term at the Sorbonne??? People who spent part of their childhood living in some dodgy part of the world because their parents before them lived and worked as ex pats (or locals) in dodgy parts of the world, however, might have a head start over someone whose only experience is a bit of backpacking and spending some time in a lovely flat in Paris doing a bit of studying. You could argue that someone who survived living on an inner City council estate but still managed to get into Oxford to make their CV look good might have a headstart in accepting and living amongst danger and corruption, of course...

Alternatively, they might have hoped they would get away from all that.

And Russians you seem to be dashing off to the furthest end of my perspective. I did not say in any way that having holidayed abroad whilst young was critical to success in an international careeer, what I said was that having gained an ability to understand things from the perspective of other cultures by whatever means is going to be of benefit in any career that involves dealing with people from other cultures. I didn't say it trumped things like being clever, having good communication skills or whatever, as I said earlier it goes into the pot with a whole load of other qualities , skills and experience. However understanding how a society can operate organically in a way that without rule of law means you have to grease the right palms in the right context and in the right way and at the right time, or that the organic way in which that society operates on the basis of informal and opaque networks will subvert your business model regardless of your business sector is an advantage and I know plenty of people in Finance and Law who understand that as well as I do. Indeed one is in the kitchen right now asking where his dinner is. It isn't knowledge, that as you say can be acquired, it is an awareness that it needs to be acquired.

Yellow Yup. Loads and loads of stray dogs. Cats also but much more so dogs. I have a friend who used to do the proper expat thing - working on a contract for a big german bank out there 4 days a week - and he used to call it dogsville. Certainly the last time I was there is was a bit Scary (I really hate dogs).

Rabbit This thread is about the educational advantages offered by posh schools. Not about whether the kids of ex-pats have an advatage (in my experience, they don't). As far as your baffling remarks about my own life - it was Cambridge not Oxford, I didn't go there 'to make my CV look good' but because it was the best place in the world to go so who wouldn't want to go there, if they could, and I experienced neither danger nor corruption that was unique to the experience of growing up in council flats. I was at Victoria when there was a bomb in the early 90s, and I was in a serious car accident in the 80s but while dangerous neither event had anything to do with where I grew up. I'm sure that there were various dodgy dealings over bus routes, bin collections, council expenses etc but none of that impacted on me any more than it would have done on anyone living in a posh house in my borough.

Perhaps I should have married someone who has an international director level role, and participates in graduate recruitment, rather than being someone who actually has that role and does that activity. Then people would stop talking to me as if I don't know anything about my own job.

Clearly the people with kids at independent school refuse to countenance the possibility that lack of exposure to the sort of foreign travel experiences afforded by privilege is not, in fact, an automatic barrier to ending up in a transnational career. And they don't want to hear any real world experience other than that of their husbands. So there isn't anything more I can add to this thread as my husband doesn't do that sort of job. :( So I'll bow out and leave the experts to it.

RussiansOnASpree - how self-centred of you to think I was making comments about your own life.

Perhaps, Russians, you should stop talking as though you are the ONLY person who not only knows about your own job, but about virtually any other job that involves working or travelling overseas. You have your own perspective on what you do and others doing a virtually identical job might, shock, horror, actually view working overseas somewhat differently from you.

And so childish to assume everyone on here, apart from you, of course, is privately educated from a posh background with a husband who tells them all about the work that HE does.

And, of course, if going to Cambridge is the best place in the world to go, then of course it makes your CV look good. Or didn't you realise that?...

Besides which, as soon as people started commenting on their children's careers in law firms and how they were enjoying it, this thread ceased to be solely about educational advantages offered by posh schools. Yellowtip did not claim her dd went to a posh school.

rabbit steady on, this is becoming the MN Education Threads version of Jerry Springer.

Coo, for no particular reason (other than avoiding washing up) I've just googled Jerry Springer. Born actually in Highgate tube station in 1944. Extraordinary.

And it is pretty chauvinistic not to give Russians credit for knowing exactly what it is she's taking about, first hand.

yellow isn't it pretty chauvinistic and frankly strange to pick up one small aside I made about my husband's career choice to discredit all I have said that stems from the experience of three years living and working in a senior role overseas (and twenty five years in senior roles in international companies dealing with international companies before that) plus an MBA with a substantial international focus and seven years of advanced study at a leading institution for the study of other cultures . I can' t for the life of me know how she arrived at a job title for him, this is the first time I ever mentioned him on mumsnet in the context he is in banking.

I certainly haven't implied that she in any way doesn't have her own experience and perspective but I have too . SHe seems to be determined to misunderstand my perspective . What bit of by whatever means does she not understand. We frequently find the qualities and skills I know are valuable to international careers (valuable, note, not to the exclusion of all other qualities) in the pupils we encounter on outreach because they themselves are growing up in two cultures between home and school , and may also live between two languages . It is just that the schools fail to value it, let alone build on it or make them aware it might open up career choices, or indeed encourage those skills in others. By the same token that she declares I am not worthy of having a view point because I don' t do her job, and the only experience that I am trading on is my banker husband , I wonder exactly why she feels that the Director of my uni is talking rubbish when he highlights that we have a "long and distinguished history of widening our student's horizons and helping them gain the skills needed for a career in an increasingly international environment " (whatever their background) backed up by the fact that last year graduates from my department ended up at Linklaters, JP Morgan, Schroeders, TPInvest , Swires, Heinz, the Treasury (policy analyst on overseas projects) the Foriegn Office * 2 , the Swedish embassy, the BBC, the Olympic committee, many of those not from a privileged background , but as she has decided to flounce off I 'll keep naively believing that we do add value somehow.

Copthall I honestly think that everyone with considerable experience of their own here seems to be taking comments too personally. It's all interesting is all I would say, to an outsider.

No, Yellowtip, what you are saying is that you will forgive Russians all her rude comments, but pick others up on what they say and then pretend it's all interesting, really, and you are doing nothing to inflame anyone.

(Now, remind me who it was, again, who didn't get all personal when she told seeker she couldn't read, didn't take it personally (ha, ha) when people apparently didn't understand her comments about Oxford and Cambridge in the way she intended, and brought up Jerry Springer and chauvinism?...All interesting to an outsider...).

To be fair rabbit I think the only person I've picked up on this thread is seeker, and richly deserved.

I do find much interesting, nothing false there.

Oh ok rabbit that sounds like me. Me objecting that seeker was twisting and being deliberately thick. I hardly came over all shirty. But isn't it fair to say you may also be an outsider now, in the world of commercial recruitment? I thought you said you'd departed from law, some while since?

Oh, so seeker was being chauvinistic, then, and no-one else?

I was being chauvinistic? Eh?

Does anyone want me to hold her coat?

Sorry yellowtip but I do take it personally when someone keeps wilfully misinterpreting my perspective and writes me off as one of those "people with kids at independent school" who " refuse to countenance the possibility that lack of exposure to the sort of foreign travel experiences afforded by privilege is not, in fact, an automatic barrier to ending up in a transnational career. And they don't want to hear any real world experience other than that of their husbands" simply because it is so far from the truth, and not what I was arguing . Perhaps it is also because it is not the first time Russians has decided to cast me as a stereotype, regardless of what I was trying to argue (probably ineptly but not that ineptly) except last time it was so obnoxious it was deleted by mumsnet for breaking the talk guidelines.

But I am still not going to retaliate............

No seeker wasn't being chauvinistic but some of the rest of you were. seeker was just misreading, as so often, perhaps wilfully but more probably not.

I said 'too personally' Copthall because the comment which blew your fuse didn't seem to be directed at you.

Surely it's not chauvenisitic to believe ones own partner over a stranger on t'internet?

Surely that's just common sense?