Education superclass?

[Amber2]

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/iainmartin1/100245274/it-is-much-worse-than-sir-john-major-says-a-new-superclass-is-being-created-in-london/

This is interesting coming from John Major ...sounds like more lobbying along the lines of the Sutton Trust but do people really think it's much worse than it ever has been..? and this is do with with the inexorable rise of London...and the global money flowing in there...and so to creating an elite superclass of private schools also ...not just any old private school but a small handful of elite ones, applications to which have reached record numbers, presumably more and more from London and from overseas with over inflation rises in fees pricing out the traditional middle classes that used to be able to afford these schools.

My guilty pleasure is a Horse and Hound I always read it avidly on the train it brings back memories of wet horses, endless bills and freezing winds and burning the Xmas dinner because one was ill. I read it and feel smug; never again.

Shooting

I think it is such a shame that most children never get a good grounding of music through education. By that, I don't mean playing 4 instruments to grade 8 but having their minds and souls opened up to a wide variety of genres and styles.
You don't have to be rich neither, nor would it take up too much time at school. Its a bit of a soap box with me

Ive never listened paid much attention to classical music aka chopping, mozart etc although i love classic radio, charlotte church, sarah brightman etc. I enjoy a wide repertoire of music but my music taste isn't really in any one box. I have seen classical muic cd's being advertised before on tv, i think 16 cds inluding vivaldi etc. I'm really keen to purchase a classical cd.
What would you classical listeners recommend to a newbie?

Ooh. I don't know for a newbie adult. But as a child I was captivated by "Peter and the Wolf," because it introduced the orchestral instruments in a story and you could REALLY imagine the animals represented by the different instruments. That made me want to play the clarinet. And Sparky's Magic Piano made me want to learn the piano. .

As an adult, I tend to like a fairly random selection - pieces I get excited about because I remember playing them in an orchestra or band, myself; pieces I got to know through film music, TV or even adverts (eg the "Elvira Madigan" music - Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 21); pieces from a couple of school operettas I played in; etc. Music often tends to move people because of the memories associated with it. I really don't see the harm in buying classical music CDs with a selection of music on, because that way you can start to decide for yourself which composers you like, which styles of music, etc.

Actually you could do worse than the Classic Experience Vols 1,2 and 3. All the familiar "tunes" (this is probably worse than calling it classical music ). The opera in particular is good for blasting out in a singalonga with your DDs in the car. www.amazon.co.uk/The-Classic-Experience-Various-artists/dp/B002B69SVI Actually so is the The Messiah around Christmas but you may need to be northern. You could even go and do it with lots of other people in the Royal Albert Hall www.trbc.co.uk/

DD attends a school in the backwoods of the SW. It is a private school, not expensive by London standards but still beyond the reach of most people in this area. Practically none of the parents earns anywhere near 6 figures (barring the few successful businesspeople and showbiz kids most are the middle-class professional (doctors, academics, etc) increasingly absent from such schools in the SE). Most people struggle with the fees at times. The pupils are the same kind of pupil you would find in any London school, albeit less coached and potentially a lot less stressed. Its pupils achieve top results and waltz into pretty much any establishment they apply to after school. On top of that they are perfectly rounded individuals, and bright as buttons. They are not stressed out, over-coached little scraps with neurotic hover-parents (rather, one of DD's classmates is but even she's nowhere near as neurotic as the average London parent).

I thank our lucky stars for having had the opportunity to move away from the bearpit that is the SE. People who live there seem to think it's the centre of the known universe. It's not.

duchesse as I have rattled out, it seems a million times on here already, all London parents do not conform to the neat stereotypes in this article or that you seem to entertain. Lots of middle class people just like you describe in your quiet backwater of the South West, live, because they work in London, in the London suburbs and send their children to these schools. The pupils are not all the offspring of wealthy bankers, coached and stressed with neurotic hover parents / absentee parents who are never there for them (delete stereotype of your choice ) . A minority are (both stereotypes) but most of us are just bumbling along trying to make sure we send our children to the school that is right for them (they tend to know themselves) and to give them the opportunity to develop their talents and interests and be themselves. Hopefully not all "well rounded individuals and bright as buttons" - as it has a bit of a Stepford ring about it. Some of the pupils at these schools hate sports , some are sporty but not quite as bright as buttons , some are better at Maths and Science but struggle with English like my DD and some are the other way around like my other DD and some are introverts by nature (why do schools never acknowledge that not all pupils can be confidant and out going) or have a passionate obsession with comic con, and this is a girls' school.......

Actually the very diversity is something we really value. I wonder if in the deepest SW whether your DC would have the opportunity to have close friends who are from Sierra Leone, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Namibia, or have a chance in class debates to hear about the tensions between Muslims and Hindus on the Indian sub continent , or the plight of Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, and the human rights abuses that DID take place there, or the war in Sierra Leone, from pupils who have personal experience?

I don't think London is the centre of the known universe, it isn't, because there is a big world out there, and some of the happiest years of our family life was spent on the other side of it, but it isn't a bearpit either. My DDs enjoy a lot of the same things that your children do but they also enjoy some opportunities your DCs do not, and of course they do not have some of the opportunities yours do have.

I really do not see why there has to be this slightly tribal attitude about it all? You really might as well be saying London parents eat babies

purits wrote....

About comparing MPs only to people who earn more than them...

" I was comparing them to others who "work to improve society". No one seems to mind GPs and dentists earning shed-loads of taxpayers' money. Why do they resent politicians earning similar amounts?"

Simple and for a better reason that you would resent a dustman earning a similar amount... Because politicians arn't worth half a w@#k.

Nobody is buying that they are 'working to improve society' neither, if they did they would want their money back. None of them have done a days work in their lives, they are parasites.

So yes GPs 100+k - good value, dustman 50k - sounds fair to me, politician minimum wage - and that's pushing it.

In fact I read d's post wrongly and thought she meant SW and probably meant Dulwich College. Plenty of London parents are exactly like those in the SW described except with the addition of 50% second generation Indian/Pakistani hard working immigrants whose parents may well own a corner shop and pool all family money to educate one child.

(On MPs some have had 20 years of a business career - look at some of the aged 40+ women in the commons. It is rather unfair to say they have never done a day's work in their lives. Even the week of an MP is so awful many bright people who earn a lot would never want to do it even if the pay doubled - long hours, family split between London and the constituency, long clinics with local voters complaining about neighbour noise and thinking the MP solves everything.)

Thank you rabbit and shooting i think i know what to get now. I've already have Handels Messiah, Love it!

Gunz classical music is so varied Chopin waltzes preferably played by Clauia Arrau are easy listening and hard to beat, opera the Magic Flute, I love the Mendelson violin concerto and if I want to smile as hackneyed as it is you can't beat the Mikado. Saint Sean Carnival of the Animals was my childhood favourite especially the humans with their bones rattling and the unforgettable swan IMO preferably played by Jacqueline Du Pre.
Agree the Messiah is hard to beat although for me I personally prefer Handles Solomon and again Mozarts piano concerta number 21 is stunning although I prefer 23. The Beethoven moonlight sonata is famous because it is just beautiful the pianist John Lill is widely regarded as the best player. EriK Satie inities 88- inities 99 is another favourite of mine. The New Years Day Concert from Vienna is also great fun and again can always make me smile.
My DH is exceedingly knowledgable about classical music but neither of us would have the same 8 records on our desert island it very personal like all music.

Of course London isn't the centre of the universe, however it is the centre of many industries. (and not just the much maligned financial sectors, also many of the industries in the arts, media, fashion etc)

So if people set their faces and their DC's faces against it, they are essentially closing many doors to their DC.

Also, while many middle aged people cleve to their idea of what the provinces can offer, they seem blind to the current state of poluics and the economy. The provinces are highly deopendent on public money. And there's this funny little runour doing the rounds that public money is decreasing...

wordfactory - maybe you have a different idea of what "provinces" means to the one I do, but it is not true that all provinces are highly dependent on public money. If you take "provinces" to mean anywhere that isn't London, I think you will find that suggesting everywhere outside of London is reliant on London is quite inaccurate and offensive.

What's more, London has an awful lot of money lavished on it, to deal with its undeniably huge problems.

I agree word no one can deny London's importance in fact it is almost the centre of the universe. I lived there for many years and although Houseman's poem is so strongly etched in my heart that I was always desperate to leave I cannot deny that it has so very much to offer in all areas especially to a young person.
Now I live in Smallquianttownsville life is beautiful and peaceful and the scenery is stunning ahh the rural idyl but I suspect for my DS's provincial and boring.

INTO my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

This one Happy?

Oh...I haven't heard that one for years and years!

Yes, my middle aged heart occasionally years for blue remembered hills (or dreaming spires, more accurate reflection of where I grew up). Not least in order to opt out of the utter insanity of anxious competition I see here in SW London, where education is concerned.

yearns

Yes that one.

Life is better here (for me and the dogs) and we're closish to three very famous smart and culturally diverse cities and a few dull urban sprawls. But when DH wants to go to the opera or a concert he goes into London, when DS goes to exhibitions etc it's London, we were talking the other day about going to the theatre more often again in London. Friends seem to do the same.
Of course these things are offered in our closish famous cities and modern dance, which I find rather intriguing and quite like, was once on at the only theatre in our closest very dull urban sprawl (attendance was rather limited sadly) but not in the same depth and number as you'd find in London.

It's lovely. At the time it was written though, the extreme poverty and desperation of life in the countryside for many living on small farms meant that they left in significant numbers for the coal mines where the money was so much better. Knowing what we do about life in the mines at that time, it is a horrible thought.

But happygardening - isn't it nice going to London for the pleasure, but actually living and working elsewhere?

I like living in a big cosmopolitan city for the constant innovation and spending my weekends and holidays in a place which is entirely artificial and nice and peaceful!

Yes I prefer it the other way round too.

Not sure what you mean by artificial though? 'Lifestyle rural ism?'