will someone scold and spank me and remined me I am a stubborn socialist guardianista?

[twinsetandpearls]

I have always made my feelings clear about private schools but the family has been working on me again and have ordered a proespectus for a private school that I have been idly flicking through and I have fallen in love with it and even - and this is a big deal for me - looked at the website.

For me this is a huge step and I am feeling sick with guilt, so guilty in fact that I have just re planned all my lessons tomorrow for my classes as some kind of penenance.

I need other socialist guardianistas to take me in hand.

Surely no socialist could approve of a local state comp to integrate just privileged locals who can afford those house prices? That can't be a socialist pure position. you have to bus or use lottery tickets otherwise you're hypocritical, otherwise you'll always and one school where the concerned helpful good parents congregate and others that aren't so good. I still don't get why you do something that is worse for your child for your principles. That seems so morally unsound. By all means put yourself in a worse position, take a low paid job, help the poor but why ensure children have a worse education because you think everyone else shoudl be doing that (and you know they won't and it will make no difference to anyone except disadvantage your child). You're sacrificing them for your principles.

Reading the posts, I don't think you should do it Twinset.

Your dd is 5 fgs, and it's already causing you anguish. You'll be prickly and uncomfortable, quick to criticize, even a little chippy dare I say. This is her primary school! Nobody needs their mother narrowing her eyes at the big cars in the car park and having a crisis of conscience in the uniform shop. Nor do they want their friends to be scrutinised for brattishness and over-privilage when they come round for tea.
Leave it. Go with where you're comfortable. Rethink at 11 if you think appropriate.

You don't want to send her to private school, so don't!

...you mean we don't want socialist parents like that in our ranks even.... good point - we might not want her, need a conservative party card to be allowed to join the school...

But I think she really does want it. More teachers in state schools get the money together to send children to private than others on similar incomes actually. They know the benefits the children get.

I was reading Quattrocento's post from Sat 30-Jun-07 23:07:33 with interest.

The school system you are describing seems pretty much like the one I grew up with.

All schools were state schools, pupils were selected purely from geographic proximity. Pupils were selected by the education authority and placed in a school with no application procedure, parents were just told what school the offspring should go to. All children therefore had a place in a school closest to their home, mostly within walking distance avoiding extra congestions on the roads around the school.

The interesting thing is that because most houses were selfbuilds and you built according to your means, you would find neighbourhoods with a big mix in size and styles of homes, and so wealthy could live right next door to somebody not so wealthy, and you did not have specific wealthy or poor areas/neighbourhoods. In schools therefore the children were of fairly mixed backgrounds in terms of sosi economic status(not so much in terms of ethnicity as at the time there were next to no immigration to my country).

I have had a hard time getting to grip with how it works here, it is mindboggling. It seems to me that the whole school system is an incomprehensible mess with state, faith, and private, and various intake criteria which means that a large propoprtion of the morning rush hour traffic is people getting their kids to school travelling great distances congesting the roads and adding to the pollution (or increasing their carbon footprint to use a popular term) when instead they could have gone to the local school. Does anybody go to THEIR local school, or do they all just go to somebody elses local school? And even after all this agonozing in chosing the school, people are still agonozing over changing schools. It does not work very well, does it?

Sorry I seem to have lost my plot towards the end here, but wouldnt it just be so nice if everybody just got a place at a good school next door?

lol Xenia. No I didn't quite mean that. I meant if she feels guilty about her postcode fgs then she's going to feel uncomfortable about the school. Why put herself through that?

100x made perfect sense. A response on an entirely personal level.

Oooh thanks Quatt

"So we have literally no means of joining wealthy and poor through school-age education."

Yes we do! Wealthy parents could send their kids to state school. Problem solved. No one is compelled to send their child to private school because they are wealthy, as far as I'm aware.

The most dangerous thing about sending your child to private school is that it is almost impossible NOT to give him or her and yourself the uneqivocal message that state education is not good enough for them. If it was good enough they would be there, so no arguments to the contrary will have much weight. So what's wrong with that message, if you don't think the school IS good enough? I think the danger comes because it gives them and you a sense of being essentially socially different from the mass of people in their area. Bang. Social division as it is wrote. NOT because of nastiness and snobiness on the part of private school attendees or their parents at all. Perhaps you think that you are very very lucky and advantaged in comparison to others who are poor and don't have access to a great education like you/your children. That is the attitude I imagine from many many lovely mumsnetters, tbh. And it sounds innocuous enough but it can and does lead to unintentionally patronising attitudes to the said others. After all these are the kids that have to go to the school that isn't good enough for you/your child. They are therefore different, poor, disadvantaged; maybe they are even rough, badly behaved, scary, with parents who, sadly, just don't care about their education. They are OTHER OTHER OTHER. In less kind, non hand-wringing circles they are underclass, non Englsih speaking, stupid, asbo chav-scum. Well, that's wrong and harsh on mumsnet but certainly they are not like you. They are not the people you spend your time with and there are good reasons for that, aren't there, no matter how sorry for them you feel? Subtly this is a red flag for developing a sense of entitlement and superiority, imo. Social movement in a climate where richer people and their children are at high risk of holding such views is never going to be easy.

Scummy, you castigate people who send their children to private schools on the basis of attitudes that simply don't exist.

My personal attitude is that fee paying schools can push and stretch the children further and provide more help for them to realise their potential. They also offer a broader range of subjects and more extracurricular activities. I think that is my choice. I don't criticise other people for NOT sending children to private schools, or for sending their children to faith schools (another form of division).

You are not correct in assuming there is an us and them mentality. You are not correct in suggesting that private schools are racist. You are not correct in suggesting that we spend our time exclusively with people who educate their children privately.

If this is a Guardianista perspective, it is a perspective that is not informed by logic. More by dogma. No?

I didn't castigate anyone or say or assume that private schools are racist. I said, and believe, that they are systemically divisive and that where you fit into a system necessarily influences your personal views in subtle and not so subtle ways leading to divided communities. And of course you cannot criticise people for not sending their children to private school since most people do not have that choice, which is the basis of the systemic divisiveness of which I am speaking.

Actually a some parents do criticise others for NOT sending them to private schools. Look at Xenia's posts. I have heard mutterings about parents who spend lots of money (eg on cars houses and holidays) but not on their children's education. It does exist.

Sorry if I misread your post but I read "they are underclass, non Englsih speaking, stupid, asbo chav-scum." as suggesting that private school attendees thought they were the reverse of that, therefore class snobbery, intellectual snobbery and racism implicit. Which of course it is not.

But I'd argue we're riven by division anyway, not as badly as the castes in India and not as badly as 200 years ago (we have reasonable social mobility) but still riven by accent, looks, IQ, background, religion etc. Choosing an academic private school can mean your children learn well and mix with children from lots of different religious, racial and other backgrounds, some very rich, some struggling to meet the fees so in a sense you buy inclusion in a way you don't always get in state schools. The only thing you don't have is the very poor because they can't afford them but mixing rich and poor isn't the only mixing you want so we can let that one lapse in ensuring other mixtures you might not get in many state schools. A win win situation.

Also children knowing they are better than others and some things and not at others is surely just how life is - some are pretty, some are ugly, some clever, some thick, some from rich families and some not, some neglected, some loved. I don't think school really makes them think they are better any more than the fact they have two parents at home rather than being in a broken home or other differences.

Xenia, glad you're back on. Was discussing this the other day with the lady who shares my school run. She was ever-so-subtly criticising a family around the corner for having a corkingly large house, holiday home, ridiculous toys for children, mega-mega cars but not paying for school fees.

Obviously did not join in the sniping - that was the easy decision - and who are we to judge anyway? So that bit was okay. But there was a little bit of squirming underneath.

If you think a decision is right about something like that girls should have careers or force marriage is wrong or female genital mutliation is wrong then I don't see why people shouldn't stand by their views and push them otherwise we're condoning a wrong. So if it's right you give your children the best education you can in the private system why not say so? Too much fluffy I support all parents whatever they do as women don't do conflict around in the UK....

Yes. Too fluffy of me. I am a bit fluffy actually. But don't like messianic zeal, whatever the cause.

What made me squirm was confronting own educational snobbery. The eyewateringly wealthy family had not had any form of higher education. Therefore when being subtly invited to snipe, part of me did tut and think "Hate cars. An Aston Martin now but they won't pay for education! Not they!" a nasty little thought that I am only able to share because Mnet is anonymous.

lol

< Quatt - I'm going on a sabbatical after today.

I shall report back for duty soon >

Oh Tn! Will miss you lots - come back soon - where on earth else am I going to find an MC expert to aspire to beat? And one who loves poetry too! Come back really really soon. xxx

Scummymummy, state education isn't good enough for my kids, I doubt it's good enough for your kids. The average isn't good enough for anyone's kids.
I have no problem with my kids thinking of themselves as socially different provided that is part of striving to better themselves. We live near some crap bits of London, and my children are told that if they don't study at school like Daddy did, then that's where they will have to live.

That's not to say I approve of social divisions, but since they exist, I want my kids to be on the right sides of them.

It is the state's fault, not mine, that they provide inferior education that supports existing class divisions. I started off on the hard side of them, didn't like it.

I'm guilty of a patronising attitude to the state system and those who see their own little sample as validating the dopey idea that it's good enough. It's not.

I don't think I'm lucky, I'm smart and worked hard. DCs are left in no doubt that the nice life they lead didn't "just happen".

Although I would welcome greater resources, and more efficient use of them on fixing the underclass, the fact is that a good % of them are violent stupid thugs. That doesn't mena they can't be fixed, but "fixed" in the operative term.
Since the government does not apply enough resources to making these kids less dangerous (and I mean that in a real, physical sense), and uses policies that it knows can't work, I don't see why my kids should be exposed to toxic waste.

Why should children think they are better just because they go to a different school? My own dc's go to private but do not understand that we pay fees, just that it is a different school from the one round the corner because they do not teach science and Daddy is an engineer. Also diffrernt from other neighbours' dcs who go to their Daddy's old schgool.

They have no sense of being 'better' in any way and love to play with all the local children.

The only 'snobs' around here are the state school mafia who will not talk to us or let their dcs play with ours because ours go private; incidentally the same ones who lambasted a WOHM mum at their school for buying 5 polo shirts etc to save washing every day

Wow. That's exactly why I chose to send my children to state school. So they don't have to mix with children like DC's who are brought up to think they are better than others simply because of the luck of the circumstances of their birth. My children have been taught that ALL human beings are worthwhile and just because someone didn't have the right parents or enough money or live in the right neighborhood, it doesn't mean that it's ok to call them names or treat them as beneath you. And what an awful thing to teach your children...that children who are unfortunate enough to not have the privileges that your children have are likely to be "violent stupid thugs." Oh this is all too depressing....just so glad I came back to the USA where for the most part people really do try to give people who don't look and talk like them a chance in life. Where my ds will get to grow up to be a scientist even though his daddy comes from the wrong part of town and looks like a "violent stupid thug."

Just imagine you are taking part in a reasoned debate. You take a position, you argue it to the best of your ability, you engage constructively with other people's ideas blah blah.

Then along comes someone who "supports" your position yet by articulating certain ghastly points of view manages totally to undermine your case.

Perhaps I should go back to the poetry thread.