Mumsnet in Sunday Times

[Xenia]

I cannot link because of the firewall but saw a reference to mumsnet - article about left wing people who send children to private schools.

one couple they referred to broke up their marriage because they could not agree on state or private schooling.

(When is it right to put family ahead of principle?

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/focus/article1101910.ece )

i dont give a fuck about private schooling,

Tena are you ok this morning?

I am about as left-wing as they get, and would never send ds to a public school. Dh and I have discussed it in the past, and its one thing I would not budge on. But then, our local schools are all v good.

I am about as left-wing as they get, and would never send ds to a public school. Dh and I have discussed it in the past, and its one thing I would not budge on. But then, our local schools are all v good.

oh god PLEASE lets not start one of those threads again

all personal experience, anecdotal evidence and shit and boring and private schooling and no one EVER CHANGES THEIR MIND

Tena just hide it.

sparkers you are right me old mucker

The Mumsnet reference is in the context of Guardian journalists sending their kids to private schools:

"Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, sent his children to private schools (but refused to answer questions on the subject when interviewed for GQ magazine by Piers Morgan), as has his friend Henry Porter, the Observer newspaper columnist.

Ian Katz, Rusbridger?s deputy, sends his children to a private school in north London. He is married to Justine Roberts, the co-founder of Mumsnet, the website for parents."

Loads of left wing people send their children to private schools. It's old news.

Quite an interesting list. I remember the Jeryemy Corbyn case, because athough the guy is as mad a box of frogs, I respected him as being the one leftie who actually maintained his principles instead of twisitng and turning an making 'special cases' like the nauseating Diane Abbot et al.
And for those who say ' I never would send my children to indies, luckily our local schools are all excellent' - lucky you for finding one that has been 'colonised' as described in the article - how about sending the DC to a sink school on prinicple, and then claiming the moral high ground?

Well i do think one can still be against the system in principle. I personally think it is morally wrong to be able to buy a superior education, for lots of reasons, the main one being it simply isn't fair, which I realise isn't a particularly exciting reason for xenia many people, who then trot out the Life Isnt Fair argument, to which I would argue well Life is Definitely Fairer For Some People. So I can see how some people would pay if their local state school is absolutely dire, whilst still reasoning that the whole system is ridiculous. ( And for the vast majority of the population, doing without flat screen tvs, foreign holidays, new cars STILL wouldn't pay the fees for the cheapest private school...)

However, I was/am lucky in that my 3 DCs are/were at top performing state grammar school.

Jeremy Corbyn is my MP. He is frigging ace

I admire Jeremy Corbyn for maintaining his principles. Good for him.

The guardian journalist who wrote that 'I send mine to state (Lambeth) out of principle' article lives in an area where the average house price is £840,000.

He wouldn't know a sink school if it knocked him off his high horse.

Having money enables you to buy superior lots of things. Food, clothes, housing, medical care .... if this is morally wrong, the only way to deal with it is take steps to ensure everyone has exactly the same amount of assets, not simply rail against private schools, which are merely one (statistically very small) aspect of inequality. But before you do, give me plenty notice, so I can emigrate, eh?

And there are other forms of inequality other than economic, of course. My ds has ASD and thus starts life massively behind other children. Saying this is "unfair" can only be based on the premise that there is some higher authority of whom "fairness" in apportioning life's resources can be expected. Which there isn't.

I don't have a view that life needs to be fair. If your moral principels are that we do the best with what we have whether that is ugly looks, a nasty personality, low IQ of whatever and that you can be happy with whatever hand you are cast then the whole "making things fair" argument is fairly pointless. It is not fair some children read to their chidlren or some beat them or some hate them and criticise them all the time. It has always seemed a bit pointless to pick on schooling.

What is very unfair is if you had a good parent who could do well by you, private school, good healthy diet, time spent with child, love and chooses not to give it to you. That's where the parent is at fault - in picking state schools when they could pay. Tyhey are the parents we need to criticise. Most of us are not left wing and don't want to live in communist China where at one point bus drivers were paid the same as skilled doctors which in a sense is "fair" but never much worked.

I don't think buying an education is a particularly 'very small aspect of inequality' when you see the disproportionate amount of privately averagely intelligent as opposed to exceptionally bright educated pupils who get places at 'top' universities and thus the top jobs.....Presumably this is what people pay for, and who would blame them? But no-one can argue it is actually fair and that there are equally intelligent children in the state system.

Yes, well Xenia, I rest my case.

Can't be arsed to 'argue' with you, other than there are many equally intelligent children in the state sector who miss out on top university places to those privately educated.

Equally there are some from the private sector who still don't manage to get to the top universities because they are simply not bright enough and luckily the 'left wing' admissions tutors at Oxbridge realise that, hence their own admissions tests which surpass the spoon fed straight As at A level.

I educate my dc privately. As I mention above, he has ASD, so he is extremely unlikely to get the top jobs you describe, and I can state with complete confidence that this is not what I pay for. I would go further and say that any parent who pays for education in the belief that it will secure their child a "top job" in later life is a fool (and I have never met such a parent). It is surely too obvious to need stating that just because most people in such jobs are privately educated, it does not follow that most people in private education will secure such jobs.

Lots of left wingers educate their DC privately for all sorts of reasons. This is hardly news.

Did you know there are right wing people who send their DC to state schools so they can continue to afford nice cars and holidays? Yes, really.

(Hopes Xenia comes back to state, as she usually does, how all judges, QCs, MPs, doctors, lawyers, top civil servants, were educated in the private sector).

KKK, I can completely understand why you would pay for your DC's education.

I really could not care how people choose to educate their children but frankly it makes my blood boil to be lectured by Polly Toynbee about the evils of people who choose independent schools when she sent her own children to Bedales . At least Diane Abbot was honest about and up front about it. Mind you Tony Blair was the first Labour PM to state educate his children.

I never knew this was such an issue until I started reading Mumsnet.