To be privileged is about far more than just a private education - discuss!

[soapbox]

I get a little bored of the endless private vs state education threads, as to my mind private education is a fairly minor part of a privileged upbringing. I don't think it makes as much difference as the opportunities that mixing in the higher social circles brings!

I thought perhpas some honest views might explain further!

Some things that spring to mind:

Socialising with judges, doctors, CEOs, FDs, MPs etc mean that finding a summer placement job is not going to be a problem.

Always knowing someone who can get tickets to the latest sports game or must see concert.

Never being unsure which knife or fork to use!

Knowing exactly what you will get when you order 'posh' food in a restaurant.

Travelling extensively and seeing history where it took place and getting plenty practice of speaking languages in their native lands.

Not having to worry about how to pay for your first car, ditto the deposit for your first city pad!

What have I missed?

[Just to make clear - being privileged doesn't mean being better - or being happy and I do realise that my children might choose to be hippy drop outs - which of course they are perfectly entitled to be]

Every time I go into ds1's school (SLD/PMLD) I remember just how priviledged all of us are. The children there have been dealt the crappest hand possible. What use is money if you can't move around independently, can't talk, can't understand anything said to you and in some cases can't eat. A working body is the greatest priviledge of all.

WTF is 'The City'? Some version of Moore's Utopia? I'm assuming you mean London? I'd just as soon go to hell as set foot there again. It's ONE city among thousands on the planet.

Besides, Mexico City is more fun!

Have just clicked on this thread, and am and [puzzled].

My children are privileged because they have two healthy parents who love them. We do not have a drink, drugs or mental health problem that prevents us caring for them adequately. We have a happy home, not marred by violence or excessive arguing. There is sufficient money coming in for us to pay for the things we need and a few of the things we like as well. The children have a healthy diet, adequate clothing, lots of books, and parents who take the time and trouble to talk to them, play with them and support them in their interests and school work.

Everything else is just fluff.

Bravo frogs. Agree totally, utterly and absolutely.

There is lots of literature on the phenomenon of interviews resulting in the selection of people who are like the interviewers. One of the reasons we need schools not to be middle class ghettos or Asian ghettos or protestant ghettos or whatever, imo. Kids need to be confident in their own identity and drink in the "difference does not equal bad" message at as early an age as possible.

blah blah blah with the ...my kids are privalaged becuase they have healthy parents and we have food,

gimmee a break! thats such a jewsish catho9lic way of looking at it 'im not poor becuase there are so many more people worse off than me...i'm so lucky to have a job shovelling shit, so many people can't even get a job shovellign shit these days'...purleaaaase

were talking about the stuff that makes having money even more unfair - the fringe benefits.

hows this...iknow someone who borrows a huge amount of money on credit cards.

she then puts it into some investment scheme - the credit cards are interest free for 6 months.

when the 6 months are up - she pays then back and stops the card.

meanwhile - she just earned 10k for shuffling money about.

tax dodges too - the rich can screw and shugffle money like no one else

Oh well, custy, 'tis how I see it, anyway.

I'm pretty happy with my life. Obviously a nice Caribbean holiday wouldn't go amiss, and if someone wanted to give me a £50K trust fund I wouldn't say no. And while we're at it, I'd like a sofa without snot stains, too.

My credit record is probably good enough to play the credit card/investment shuffling game too, if I wanted to. But you know what? I've got better things to do with my time.

I'm a bit yeahbutnobut about this thread.
I can see the point Frogs etc make in terms of appreciating what you do have, but I can see the point Soapbox is making, about biases that operate in having a successful career in the starchier professions such as law and accountancy. IME the right connections did get people work experience placements. and work experience placements can be a fast track to getting offered a training contract. Of course there are other things our children may choose to do with their lives than follow the conventional middle-class pathways to financial/career success.

yeah they will go all tie dye at 18 and denounce you whilst at uni - until they need money or you remind them you pay the rent.

then they realise that money does make the world go round and they shave their legs and put a sit on and mum or dad makes it all ok.

put on a suit*

I think the point Soapbox was making was a narrow but valid one: private education does not constitute privilege but a strand of it. Therefore if as a country we decide to abolish private education or as individuals we choose to disavow it, the impact of privlege will be reduced but it won't be eliminated.

I'm not sure how the rest of this thread relates to Soapbox's point. Compared to (i) an African child orphaned by AIDS and violence, serially raped and forced into a "children's army" or (ii) a child whose life opportunities are drastically curtailed by special needs or (iii) a child that is abused or neglected by the people who are supposed to care for it, any child anywhere is privileged. But that seems rather obvious.

That's clearer, Issymum. Thanks. I think people were getting confused and thinking that soapbox was extolling the virtues of knowing how to use the correct knife and fork and socialising with high ups at first, hence all the posts to highlight that there are more fundamental factors to living a "privileged" life.

Mm, not sure it isn't the same point, though agree the thread had become somewhat off-topic.

I was lent an interesting book a little while ago by an academic philospher on the topic of 'Should private schools be abolished?' His principal argument was that, yes, privilege is about much more than type of school, and that one could never level the playingfield inasmuch as it would not be possible or desirable to legislate against eg. parents reading to their children and helping with homework. (He does, though, conclude that there would be net benefits to equality if private schools were abolished).

I'm not convinced by the argument that there is a direct connection between social privilege wrt to contacts in high places, table manners and deposits on flats etc. and success in life. I do have reasonable table manners, but I def. didn't grow up with high contacts or a trust fund, and I can't say I've felt the lack. I think individual personality and family support are the most important factors. So I stick by my point, trite though it might seem.

I'd like to read that, frogs. I'll look out for it. Who wrote it?

My gut feeling is that those schools where there are kids from genuinely different backgrounds- class and race wise particularly (and private or state, such schools are few and far between, imo) - do have a small smoothing effect on a massively bumpy playing fields, if only because people may cease to see their differences as "other"and frightening. Integrated schools are always seen as key in areas where there are racial or sectarian conflicts for that reason, I think.

Do refined people fart? And if so what kind of a fart is it? Would it be a small tinckling kind of fart with a pleasant aroma of marshmallows? Or a rip-roaring "By Golly! Is that the hunter's bugle?" type of fart?

soapy your thread is parp tastic

socialising iwht doctors
sheesh

no one ever gave me money for a car

Soapy forgot about the wonderful opportunities you get when you can buy dirt cheap DVDs or CDs, when your house gets broken into or your car nicked, you don't call the police, you tell someone in the know and a week later you get your stuff back!

Now back to farting. How do you do yours Soapy?

Is it not better for the schools and the children in them to have a good social mix that includes "privileged" children?

That's an important part of my reasons for wanting my "privileged" children to be educated in the state sector.

can I just say that I think this thread is a fantastic example of a whole load of people all talking at once about different things....in a sense I like it. and Custy makes me laugh as ever. and Issymum summed up the orginal point very well. I'd like to ask a question - what does anyone think can be done? The problem is taht what sb is talking about is indirect discrimination - it's not a case of people being rejected directly because of their background, rather because they do not tick certain boxes - such as good work placements - and that may be as a result of their background. So is it up to the employer to modify their boxes? imo that's addressing symptoms not causes. I think the same is true with Oxford and Cambridge constantly being lambasted for the lower intake of state-educated children - on the whole I think it's the schools, not Oxford and Cambridge that should be lambasted for this. I also think this is a very Blair approach -short-term symptom tackling and not serious thinking about underlying causes. The truth is we need an elite. We need highly intelligent, motivated, educated people to do the difficult jobs. the point is that we should be feeding taht elite, as it were, from all sectors of society. I am not convinced that the elite has to shoulder all the blame if that doesn;t happen. phew that was a long one. I suspect I should probably parp myself, but having written it might as well post...

ooo Dinosaur - that's exactly what my dh says and I guess I agree. I just always hesitate to say it in case it gets taken as a bit pompous or a bit benevolent Victorian. I don;t think it's either of those things but can see that some people might

Yes, I do feel a bit po-faced saying such a "worthy" thing. And have absolutely no empirical evidence to back it up.

On a less pompous note, I am a bog-standard comprehensive school product and it never did me any harm. Which is also part of my reasoning.

'socialising iwht doctors
sheesh'

I 'socialised' w/a lot of them back in the States. We studied anatomy on each other . I never met a one who didn't pass the exams w/flying colours .

No one ever gave me money for a car, either. And my dad had it, even ! Believe it or not, some people who have financial wealth don't believe in handing their kids everything on a platter just b/c.

Yes, same here expat!

I think frogs' point (and mine- which I think was the same - just said in a different way) is very relevant. So many people spend so much time worrying about the "fluff", and what they have compared to those around them. I'm not sure that it is perfectly obvious to most people how privileged they are compared to many (who have their life curtailed by whatever factor). I could list you pages of names of people who have absolutely no idea how privileged they are. As frogs puts it, too many people lose sight of what is actually important in life. If you have a working mind, body, family then you have it made, no matter how many cars are parked in your drive or where you went to school, you can do whatever you want.

I know plenty of offspring of rich parents who have managed to totally screw up their lives one way or another. The money hasn't helped them. In some cases having huge amounts of money has made their lives very aimless (thinking of one person in particular I know) and rather unhappy.