tell me about a 'privileged' education

[Frostycake]

If you attended a grammar or private school or if you teach in one (or taught in one), tell me what I may have missed by having a comprehensive education in the 1980s.

I sometimes see glimpses of the education I could have had if circumstances had been different for my parents (the recent TV series on Harrow, meeting and working with people who went to Oxford, Cambridge, Malvern College etc.) and I often wonder what it is I missed out on apart from the obvious opportunities and overflowing confidence and maturity this type of education seems to instill in pupils.

Come and talk to me about the detail as I'm bursting with curiosity.

So if anyone who went to a comp must be discounted if they had successful parents, then I assume that also applies to anyone on Wikipedia who went to a grammar or private school?

Common man? We were listing people who attended comps!

Dino, as I just said I did agree that I'd also found that most on Wikipedia attended selective schools.

Discounted from what? I thought the discussion was about the benefits of privilege . The Wikepedia smile for me came when I read that Keira Knightley 'asked for an agent aged three' .

I thought the thread was about priviledged education (grammar/private) v comps

it's tricky to judge what gifts were imbued by a 'privileged' education, and which were from the social capital that got them there in the first place. My Grammar School chums mostly went to work in the local DSS office, went to uni and did science or worked in high street banking, or 'retail management'. I think 3 girls went on to the professions, but they were the minority I think.

Just reread the op and I still think the thread is about that.

Ok Toffee if no lightheartedness is allowed ... The benefit of grammar / selective education is huge. So huge in fact that if you find an individual ( relatively rarely ) who is successful and didn't go to such a school, turns out their background was often that of educated left wing families , wealth or other 'well above average' privilege.

And looking people up on Wikipedia is fun

SarfEast. You may well play down the 'careers' that your friends ended up in, but all of them are better than what the 20 people from my school I know are doing or did. There is only one person from the 20 I quoted up- thread earning over £20K Pa ! One girl got lucky and married a wealthy businessman she is a SAHM.

I don't find it fun or hilarious to see on wikipedia that most people who are successful had a priviledged education or upbringing no.

So much of what is on this thread is absolutely not my experience of private high school in the 90s.

Things I will concede that were different from dps state school-

Doing French every day for 5 years
Doing Latin twice a week for 2 years and having the option of doing this and/or classics as an exam subject
Being able to do three sciences (this was the norm)
Being expected not to question authority figures
One old teacher wanted to be called sir (I never did) and he called the boys by their surname
We had a a big choice of extra curricular clubs (but most you had to pay quite a lot extra for) eg drama, dancing, photography (developing), debating (only 10 kids out of hundreds), cadets, duke of Edinburgh.
Boys and girls were divided for some subjects
Boys did rugby and cricket, girls did hockey and netball.
The uniform was very strict
We had to eat in the lunch hall in first year
We could do more subjects at exam level
We didn't do any 'soft' subjects
Ski trips
Sport was competitive- it wasn't for health or exercise they were only interested in pupils who could win competitions
We were streamed for maths and English.
Getting less that an 'A' was seen as a failure
Some pupils who 'didn't fit in' were politly asked to leave
Pupils who were interested in Oxbridge were given a little bit of advice
We were expected to go to uni, were never told about other options
It was assumed that everyone would stay on at school
I got to mix with people from a wide variety of backgrounds (not just one local area) ie rural/urban, rich, poor so I never feel uncomfortable around either wealthy or impoverished people.

But honestly I don't think it was worth the money. My dc's state secondary (I'll concede in a good area) is much better in our experience.

smoke I'm not downplaying anything, I just think it's important to illustrate that a grammar school ed doesn't mean that you automatically become a wealthy stockbroker. All of those jobs I described that my friends went on to do, were classed as good jobs in SE Kent.

"Ok Toffee if no lightheartedness is allowed ... The benefit of grammar / selective education is huge. So huge in fact that if you find an individual ( relatively rarely ) who is successful and didn't go to such a school, turns out their background was often that of educated left wing families , wealth or other 'well above average'"

But if you look at the backgrounds of the successful grammar/selective people you"ll find the same. So generally speaking, successful people come from "well above average" backgrounds- regardless of education.

Privileged people with lots of social and cultural capital pass that on to their children, regardless of the school they go to. And we have had centuries of a society that entrenches and normalized that. Nobody raises an eyebrow at the fact that we are governed by old Etonians, or that the Arts are dominated by people from Oxbridge. It's just what the English expect to happen- we do love a toff! These people are not cleverer or more talented than anyone else- they just drew the double privilege straw.

too true, Hak

It's just what the English expect to happen- we do love a toff!

Except when we don't, how much of the opprobrium shoved at Cameron, Boris et al comes from the social origins, rather than what they've actually done with their lives, or what they have expressed as their beliefs?

Basically if anyone came on TV newsreader, actor, comedian, sportsman, naturalist

Dinocroc's metric for success is also flawed - showbusiness, like politics, has hundreds of 'failures' for every single transient 'success' story, the same is true of OEs, 11+ and Common Entrance successes and comprehensive ex-pupils alike.

Just because you've not heard of them doesn't mean they've failed.

Very true Hak

"Except when we don't, how much of the opprobrium shoved at Cameron, Boris et al comes from the social origins"

Still get voted for, don't they? The Great British Public has always liked to grumble and mock, before it troops into the polling booth to vote for the status quo!

Possibly, possibly not

Maybe if Cameron had gone to same school as Tony Blair [or Ed Miliband], he might have won the 2010 election outright, with the same thumpingly huge majorities Blair achieved with a similar share of the popular vote.

before it troops into the polling booth to vote for the status quo!

You can't blame the British electorate for choosing the only thing they've ever been offered. Nearly every UK government since the 1930s has been elected by a minority of the popular vote.

I certainly remember a lunch with a friend who was considering Eton for his son about 8 years ago and that they did consider the downsides too. The boy did go and did well but it is true that sometimes some schools (not all) have a negative impact and also true that some areas have grammar schools which are not very good. When all the country had grammar schools you could have a local area with 4 grammars in them none of which was up to much. It was the case that grammar schools were wonderful everywhere - although my parents both went to grammar schools in the 1940s and were the first generation of their families at university and were teacher/doctor because of their schools and families too. I am sure had they not passed to grammar school they would have found it harder to pursue those careers. They both had very high IQs though so that might have helped even if they'd gone to the other local state schools.

The jackie list above is a good list of some of the advantages although I am not sure about not challenging authority. I think one thing I pay with school fees and encourage at home is free thought and any ideas at all the children might have rather than "thou art a thick officer type who marches every day and always obeys orders" churned out as they were in the late 1800s to run our empire.

DH and I are outsiders with regards to wealth and privilege. We have it but because we weren't born with it we don't take it for granted.

What always shocks us both is how little push against the status quo there is; how most people, apart from the odd grumble, give the posh boys ( and I say that with one of my own) free reign.

There seems to be the perfect storm of apathy, delusion and flawed thinking which provides the optimum environment for the posh boys to carry on monopolising things.

It's both fascinating and horrifying to watch in equal measure.

Is the apathy because a UK citizen has a high standard of living?

We are reminded daily that immigration is rife. We believe it's because the UK is regarded as a good place to live.

We are bombarded with news or war, catastrophy and natural disaster around the world.

We are show the shortcomings of the American Dream frequently, focusing on the lack of social welfare and health care.

I believe the UK voters and abstainers realise that a very large proportion of people have an acceptable life.

Hence apathy and indifference between parties.

TheWordFactory - I'm not sure why you and your DH are shocked when you yourselves are so actively buying into the traditional routes and trappings of privilege? If you are truly shocked surely you would adopt a more innovative lifestyle?

Word, I'd be curious to know what you think the "delusion" and "flawed thinking" are, specifically.

Hak, you said: These people are not cleverer or more talented than anyone else- they just drew the double privilege straw.

Surely that's not quite true. I agree they aren't the only clever people, or even the most clever people. But surely, they had some intellectual gifts, or they wouldn't have gained places for selective secondary schools and then Oxbridge.

People's definitions of succes vary enormously!

I see stock brokers mentioned, God I would hate my DC to become brokers or traders. The stress, the horrible culture, the visits to stripclubs with clients, the burnout/heart attack at 40. Hideous job choice imo. Never met a happy stockbroker yet, though many rich ones..... Success ?

We are one of the best places to live on the planet so most people in the UK tend to be fairly content. Very few other places even have free health care or schooling. We have never had a communist 1914 type revolution so in the last 200 years at least been reasonably peaceful and despite what is read in the press there is a reasonable amount of ability to move classes. There are certainly statistics to show the gap between rich and poor is not rising despite what the press says. George O on radio 4 this week made that point to and it's true - the latest statistics show the wealthier have paid the highest price and lost the most money in the recession in the UK.

We all also know not very clever or very lazy people who are the ones who result in clogs to clogs in 3 generations. It is very hard to keep a job in the City or as s doctor in a hospital whatever your connections if you have an average IQ. You cannot buy a higher IQ. Look at Prince Harry - he didn't go to university and that was probably the right choice for him.

There are plenty of jobs where you have to have certain exam grades before you can even fill in the initial application form although I suppose there is the odd person who lies but HR do check original certificates these days.

The bottom line for the thread and for parents is what do they want from an education for their children - home education, religious cult, fundamentalist XYZ, girls taught to serve and clean or very clever girls taught academic subjects or whatever matters to that family ( specialist music school like Chethams) and then what can women and men do to ensure the education they want for their children - earning a lot of money to pay school fees or staying home so both parents can home educate or moving to an area where schools are good or whatever that might be. We are very lucky in the UK to have more choices than some countries. In Germany it's not even lawful to home educate.

Our education system cannot be that bad as people flock from abroad who can afford it to send children to British schools.

WF: spot on. The general forelock-tugging on this thread and in general has rather horrified me. I take your point about bloody well purchasing it if you can - I take another route (and I fully accept I have a lot of middle-class privilege to back me up) but quite a lot of our fundamental position is similar.