Play date with mum who agrees with education tax

[BonnuitMy]

Please let me know if I’m overreacting. I recently overheard a new mum at school talking about a local private school closing down due to the education tax and how this is somehow a good thing. She’s now invited my DD for a play date, would you accept?

I wouldn’t be surprised to be honest, it’s very much culturally a no no to express hate towards a group of children at dd’s primary school (they have a massive push on anti bullying etc) and this was at the school gates.

Haha, what a funny comparison. And I'm guessing you've reported her "hate speech" to the school, right?

Charming. I assume you went to an expensive private school in the SE. Most private schools churn out teachers, doctors, nurses etc. I say that as a teacher who was privately educated and who has also taught in private schools!

Ha ha, no it wasn’t that bad and to be honest the school is massively OTT on things like that especially as some of the affected children will be joining our school now.

It will be interesting to see the way this girl treats her new clsssmates in September given her mum’s distaste for the children.

There's no reason to think the mum will stop her child playing with someone with different views from her. So they will probably be fine.

Plus of course there are plenty of PS families who support the business vat on PS. So just because they move schools doesn't mean they're going to agree with you.

The concern is obviously not that the mother would stop her child from playing with her new classmates, but that the child would take on board her mother's nasty views and try to bully the new children.

It sounds like the school - and hopefully other existing families - will be alert to that risk.

Likewise if the mother had been heard celebrating harm to immigrants, they would be alert to the child bullying children joining the school from another country.

Except that expressing a critical view of private schools and celebrating harm to immigrants are not in any way equivalent.

Celebrating harm to children is equally abhorrent, regardless of the group of children.

Strange how blind posters are to their own prejudice against these children, and their willingness to excuse behaviour which they would normally condemn.

I can’t think of a less reliable source to just trust than a business looking for excuses, but ok.

The mum’s distaste for the children? As I understand it she expressed distaste for private schools, not the children.

It depends what the "harm" is though doesn't it. And if you think that privileged children moving to a different school is a harm equivalent to the types of issues immigrant children routinely face, that is actually really problematic.

In that case, surely the school will view the exclusion of this woman's child on the grounds of the mother's political views as bullying?

This woman's daughter isn't responsible for her mums political views and behaviour and if they lead to this child being ostracised and excluded because of who her parent is, this would be as bad as excluding a child because one of their parents is in prison or because their family is on benefits.

The comments are really quite weird and I don’t believe it’s possible they are genuine. It’s very rare in the real world to meet parents who think it’s ok to dislike a group of children based on the school they went to, it’s unnatural. I don’t think these comments are coming from parents engaging in good faith discussion to be honest, probably need some sort of better system to weed out bots/bad faith political actors commenting.

The thread isn''t about the situation of the chuldren. It's about an adult celebrating children being harmed, and whether that is abhorrent enough to consider avoiding a playdate.

To many posters on here, it seems that the answer is "it depends on which children are being harmed"

Unfortunately, after many months on the VAT threads it has become apparent to me that these opinions are genuine, and that we live in a far nastier society than I previously realised.

Has anybody said they dislike the children? I don’t remember if so - they dislike the system. Thinking the system is bad does not equal thinking the children are.

She isn’t celebrating children being harmed though! She’s expressing the (totally mainstream) view that private schools are not a good thing.

Personally I think it’s pretty nasty to believe some children deserve a better education and better opportunities than others just because someone in their family has enough money to pay for it while others just have to put up with what they see as sub standard. That seems more like celebrating children being harmed than someone being in favour of the end of private education.

I'd love to know how you cope with people who disagree with you on other issues @BonnuitMy. Do you think they're stupid and bots? It seems like you're really struggling with the idea that people have different views on paying VAT on private education. Surely it's not a surprise that many people agree with it and accept that it will lead to less private schools? It was in the winning party's manifesto.

This is so weird.

I wish no children were at private school. I wish our send provision was good enough that no children needed a PS and I wish all children who don't need support were in PS.

Does that mean I wish harm on children? You're really reading a lot into a woman who doesn't agree with private education.

You could be right, in which case it’s extremely worrying. But it goes against parental instinct and my experience of living in the U.K. for 25 years, I just don’t buy it,

Strawberrybubblegum is a deep psyops from the Socialist Worker party attempting to make private schooling as unpopular as possible as a prelude to future class war.

https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/over-half-britons-support-labours-plans-end-vat-exemptions-private-schools Your assumption is wrong

I think that anyone celebrating (as the OP says this mum has done, “over the moon”) the closure of an employer and the accompanying job losses, and disruption to children’s education (we don’t know how many children might have been at this school because of problems in other schools which they may have to deal with all over again) is probably an unpleasant piece of work, and may well be passing that into her child. Maybe, maybe not.

Many years ago a friend from my private school was at the Polytechnic of North London, which, unknown to us, was a hotbed of Militant. She spend 3 years lying that she went to a private school and lying that her father was in the forces to the other young adults there. Because she would have been roasted otherwise.

Some people like to teach others that the “wrong” choices of a parent must be made punishable on the child.

As has been demonstrated several times on this thread, a lot of those support the policy despite not understanding the very basics. If the survey had asked “do you agree with a policy which will make private education even more exclusive, increase state school class sizes, and not raise enough money to make any meaningful difference to public services” I suspect the polling outcome may be somewhat different.