Why does everyone want to judge my choice of school???

[Betsy8]

My children are both in Independent education for very good reasons. It is tough on us financially but we are coping. Why do some people at state school have to be so judgemental about this? I have never commented on someone else's education choice for their kids. My husband's family always make comments about it, with my sister-in-law smugly telling us how her kids walked the grammar entrance from a state primary - She is a teacher and spent a fortune on tuition! Another friend, from a very, very middle class, predominantly white village announced smugly that she wanted her daughter to see 'all walks of life'!! My daughter, who was miserable, now smiles at the beginning and end of every day. That is worth the one car, the holiday every other year, and minimal shoe closet that I have, and the other sacrifices that we make. Why can't state school parents accept this? What really annoys me is that my husband spends so much on tax each year, he is actually donating two places at our offsted rated primary school to another child!!! My kids are not spoilt. They have to work hard for their pocket money, they both have to help out around the house with everyday chores and my daughter, now 9 is learning to cook meals for all of us. This surely flies in the face of my friend's recent comment "private school kids do not know how the real world works". It is as though once you decide to pay for a good education you become a moral punchbag and your feelings do not count any more. Does anyone out there have experience of this and if so, do you have any good, polite retorts that I can use as I am running out of patience now...

Whoops I apologise, even seems referring to the shool as independent is also a faux pas these days; apparently the correct term we should be using is PRIVATE.

snappedwife - Bravo

You appear to have a problem with your choice. If you were comfortable with it, and were overjoyed with the quality of your children's education, you probably wouldn't be bleating on about your sacrifices.
Now that your daughter is happy going to school, enjoy it, or your attitude towards it may sour her experience.

I fully support your choice of how you spend your money and wish you luck.

But in your choice there is an implied judgement by your choice which says "What you think is good enough for your child isn't good enough for mine". Yet you want everyone else to be so very careful of your feelings.

And as for the tax, your husband could lose his job tomorrow. Who would pay for your children's education then? So you need to pay for that state safety net. (And probably pay a bit back for your own education too.)

In sending my children to the local state school, I see myself as freeing up spaces in the local independant schools for your children.

You can thank me later

Agree with mellicauli.

As for tax, we all pay tax and we use some things and not others. If as taxpayers we choose to pay for education, healthcare, whatever, because we judge it better than what the state provides, then we should just pay for it. We are not doing anyone else any favours.

Because you are buying them privilege and advantage which means they are more likely to succeed, and which means the comparative life chances of the DCs of those of us who genuinely can't are more f**ked than usual.

Now, if you're justifying it to people who have decided that they can spend the school fees on something else, or just bought a house next door to the greatest school in the world (TM) then I get the gripe.

But this is a public forum, you have a choice whether to screw our kids over by using your money to help yours. Why you should expect sympathy is beyond me.

My db definitely judged my educational choice for my Ds. He could have done the same and regrets the choices he made. I would never dream of criticising other people's choices. However there does seem to be a point if view that those who have chosen private have done so because they didn't consider the state choice to be good enough. Not at all the reason for the choice I made.

I migght have had more sympathy if you hadn't mentioned the "predominantly white' village school.

And the "paying so muck tax" comment.

MollieO

"However there does seem to be a point if view that those who have chosen private have done so because they didn't consider the state choice to be good enough."

Well, it costs money doesn't it? So if it isn't any better then why pay the money? And if state schools are 'good enough' but private ones are simply 'better' for your DC, then why might they not also be 'better' for the DCs of others who can't pay?

Waffling about 'choice' and 'my money' is simply insulting-not everyone has your choice, and there's no general rule about not criticising how people spend cash when it damages others.

Can you and the OP not understand, that a public thread is not the same as a nice argument with a db who'could have made the same choice' are not the point-the point is that large numbers of children are less able to achieve and advance towards their goals because of how you spend your cash?

Adela the choice was a simple one for me. I either gave the same amount of money to my CM and then tried to negotiate with her if Ds wanted to do an after school activity which required him being collected at a different time. Or I paid school fees and know I don't have to do that negotiation on a weekly basis.

Where I live the state schools are excellent however none offer wraparound care - they tried but there was no demand and the service wasn't used enough to maintain it.

It isn't always a choice of whether you spend or don't spend your money. The alternative choice would be for me to be a SAHM and live on benefits. Not a choice I'd be comfortable with at all when I am more than capable of working.

You have a childminder who charges the equivalent of private school fees????????

I want that job!!!!!!!!

Yes! It was my existing CM whom I had assumed would continue to be ds's CM when he went to school. However she revised her entire charging structure and wanted to charge me £45 per day for term time and £55 a day for holiday. When I costed it out I realised that the cheaper option was school fees. For primary school fees aren't that high when compared to secondary school fees.

MollieO I hope you will forgive seeker and I our scepticism. I have two children in nursery (technically 7.30-6.30) and the cost of that for each is equivalent to prep fees (it's advertised like this on the radio), so I found it hard to believe looking around would not have produced an option that cost less. But you know your own childcare options better than us.

I supported the private system by getting a scholarship at 16 and then doing well in exams, others do it by paying for DCs, some go further by vocally defending their 'rights' to do so, others further still by repeatedly lying about its essential superiority. There doesn't seem any way to me to argue that, however understandable, what we do isn't essentially wrong and selfish: the system is destructive to the chances of so many more children than it helps, and those it helps are 'us' in past lives or those closest to us.

So why, anyone feeling hassled here, if you want to do this, since nobody is actually stopping you, not just pay your money and hide your complicity in this evil? Why ffs feel the need to defend what you do, or feel that you are nastily picked on for it?

Complicity in this evil?? Using money to screw other peoples children over?? Extreme comments like this exemplify the OPs point perfectly. The context of state v independent education shouldn't make people feel that it is OK to be unrestrained in their criticisms and accusations. How are comments like these less insulting than 'waffling about choice and money'?

Why would I care what other people think,we are free to spend our money as we wish

AnnaMolly

They're not less insulting, they're just truer. I don't think this makes her a bad person-we are all complicit in all sorts of evil on a daily basis, from the moment we support dictators by filling up the car with petrol or buy clothes at cheaper prices because they are produced abroad. And, if you're going to be complicit, doing it because you want the 'best' for your kids seems an admirable and wonderful reason to be so, and probably makes you a decent person.

But it doesn't change the fact that the thing you do is bad for other people (not the people who make different choices with their money but the 90% who have no such choices) but good for you, is essentially selfish and damaging to others. So if you start posing on a public forum as a big victim in all this, and pretending that you are somehow 'donating' places to the plebs or that there is nothing 'wrong' with what you are doing because you haven't had a holiday in a bit, then you will be judged for it (and insulted), just as you would be if you said 'who cares if Indian children are not getting an education and are working ten hours a day, as long as I get my cheap frock, at least I keep their families in food'.

I'm not judging the poster, just her attitude and opinion on one issue. If she doesn't want such criticism, she shouldn't post like this on this issue.

I'm really judgy of those who go private round here, because by rejecting our local (excellent, but very very mixed economically and ethnically) primary school, they've implicitly judged my choices. If my neighbour says to me 'well there was no point us looking round it because it's a inner city state school', and I ask her what she means and then she gets all arsey about being judged, well frankly I don't care, because she has in so many words told me I'm not as good a parent as I'm prepared to throw my child into this 'inner city' hell hole.
So yes, prepare to be judged just as you've judged the 93% who are prepared to trust in their children and their teachers in the state system.
And stop whining about your taxes. If you get ill, I'm sure you'll be glad of the NHS.

I have sympathy with you to a degree it is bloody annoying when someone else criticises your parenting choices. You are in a fortunate position of being able to send your children to a fee paying school and you have made that decision because you believe you are giving them a better education. If people criticise you I would tell them to mind their own business.

However you do sound somewhat smug in your op, going on about how your dh pays enough tax to fund two state school places. Perhaps people are criticising you because you come across as bragging and superior?

I don't really get this whole state school/private school debate. My children will attend state schools because we live in a area with good state schools and can't afford private school fees. If we could afford private school fees we would probably still opt for state schools because we live in an area where the private schools are infiltrated by snobs and the state schools provide a good enough education. If we lived in an area where the state schools were all crap and we could afford private we would go down the private route.

Apologies for vehemence.

Fact is, from my point of view, if the OP wants a 'polite retort' then her opening sections give her one, she can simply say 'Look, I'm doing what I think is best for my kids. if you have never used money or other advantage in ways I couldn't to help yours, throw stones all you like. Otherwise examine your own choices a little too'. Not snappy, but gets there. And like others here I don't like the way this choice becomes a touchstone-as if someone living in a million pound house next to a really good state school paying for tuition is intrinsically a better social actor than someone without such a choice scrimping to send their kids to a private school. There's a brilliant Armstrong and Miller sketch where the upper-middle class discuss schooling and one goes 'I was so middle-class my parents sent me to state school' which sums it up, and to which the OP could refer her attackers.

But if you start defending the system itself to justify the compromise you make, or see no compromise, if you believe your husband to be a social benefactor because he pays taxes (as does everyone), or that the system is fair and open because some relatively less well off people use it by going without some luxuries, then you will piss me off.

Point is not whether you use the options you have, but whether-if push came to shove and someone legislated to stop you using your money this way-you'd defend the system itself. I think the OP would, and that's what annoys me.

AdelaofBlois - While I disagree with the 'donating school places' view, I don't see why the OP shouldn't voice her dissatisfaction with people being rude to her. I don't think a 'true insult' is any less offensive, or any more compassionate.

I get a lot of stick from my extended family about educating my DC independently.

In some ways I understand it. My DC are getting better than theirs, and that hurts. We all want our kids to have the best don't we?

But attacking me and my DC won't change anything. It won't even make them feel better ultimately.

AnnaMolly

The OP shows absolutely bog all compassion or empathy in her post. She assumes this debate is for all readers as it is for her-an upper-middle class squabble about how best to help kids (when for most it just isn't an option); justifies her position in ways which make no sense and are not just 'leave me alone' but 'think what general good I do'; and ends not with a plea to understand the views of the attackers but just with a plea as to what to say to shut them up.

Bad as it is of me, I'd be much more inclined to be 'compassionate' or empathetic if some similar feelings to likely readers were shown. wordfactory I might disagree with, but she's got it down to a tee, and I wouldn't respond th her similarly.