Is it hard being minority posh kid at inner London school?

[saucypan]

I'm not someone who wants my kids to go to a middle class socially cleansed school in London - I want them to have a proper mix that represents the community they live in. But what do the wise women of MN have to say about schools - good, vibrant, successful, but in very deprived areas. Is it hard to be the only white middle class kid in the class - or one of very few?

Do you not understand that this thread is discussing the disadvantages of sending your children to school with my children?
And how hurtful that is?

My children are lovely. They may drop their aitches and they may look different and their parents may not be professionals and have degrees but they are nice children and have been bought up to be kind and thoughtful.

I am honestly shocked at this thread. We are not different species.

Oh fgs - I didn't say I thought anyone's children were going to beat my children up. My children go to a mixed catchment primary school. I do understand that other people who haven't experienced it have fears about it, though, which are only exacerbated by the aggressive reactions of people like you.

I reckon there is a need for more mixing. SN as well.

I wasn't treated badly by children with different skin colour than me. I just stood out because I didn't sound the same as they did. As far as I can recall we only had one black child in our class and she didn't have many friends either (in fact I can remember one of the teachers telling a group of children off for being racist, and pointing out that they wouldn't like to be called any of the anti-Irish names that were sadly very common at the time). The very fat kid and the boy who struggled to read didn't do so well either for that matter. The point is just that if you don't fit in it's not much fun, and that parents should be at least a little mindful of this.

My mother told me many years later that she was very surprised that none of the other mothers ever really talked to her, but she never seemed to think that the same social divide would affect us.

'people like [me]'

'agressive'

Really?

This thread is mad. People scared for the safety of their children if they send them to a inner city primary school.
A primary school ffs.

I can assure you that I dont equip my children with flick knives until they are at least in year 7.

And I have a strict 'no dealing meth' policy. Skunk and crack only.

I do have some standards.

MrsDeVere I read this thread as being about parents who want their children to go to school with children from all different backgrounds. If anything negative has been discussed it is where a child will be different from all his classmates, whether that is because he is perceived as being posher than the rest, or less posh. Nothing has been mentioned at all about one "sort" being preferable to the others, only that a good mix is desirable.

But MrsDeVere if the school has a good mix then neither your nor my children should be ostracized because they are in a tiny minority. I want my children to feel they can be friends with any other child that they like, and that other children will want to be friends with them too. I want them to have friends with all sort of backgrounds and interests and to generally feel good about themselves. I'd like that for every child.

Who said they were scared for their children's safety?????

Thats never going to happen though is it? not when people feel the need to even start these sort of threads.

You are naive beyond words and obviouly terribly middle class or you'd not THINK of sending your DC to a school in a very deprived area....as a workng class woman, I can assure you....those schools are shit and you'd not pick them if you had gone to one.

So would I.
So why is there an assumption that there is such a risk?

It is pathologising a perfectly normal situation. Sending a child to a primary school.

If we were talking about a secondary school I wouldnt be so shocked. I dont want to send my kids to any of the bloody secondary schools round here.

But this is about 5 year olds. Do you think that wc parents send their kids primed to take the piss out of any child who speaks differently.

Look at it logically. A 'middle class' accent is no more different to a wc kid than a polish or indian one. They all sound different. Why would a 5, 6 year old home in on someone who speaks slightly differently from them?

And how else would they be aware of the class difference? They would be wearing the same sort of clothes and have the same sort of hair cuts etc.

Unless you are planning to send your kids in knickerbockers and an eton collar and think the other kids will be in hotpants and hi tops?

There are plenty of perfectly nice schools in deprived areas.

MrsD, I don't think much of the thread has been about primary school actually, certainly I said my experience of primary school was that it didn't matter at all, it was only when I got to secondary things became unpleasant.

The focus was on being a middle-class outsider because that was what the OP asked about. All the accents you mention are different if they are the minority at the school and I would expect that they would all feel like an outsider to some extent, were they the minority.

rabbit so you think discussing bullying is not expressing fear for a child's safety?

I wouldnt know, what with being a bit common and all, but does bullying not occour in private/public and 'nice' primary schools?

Or is it a different class of bullying?

Of course bullying occurs everywhere, but it's the "different" kids who get bullied, which is why it's no fun to be the only middle class (or any other class/race/religion) child in the school.

I wouldn't be so sure that a London school would be so very hegemonical. Conservation areas interlock with high density social housing, micro-communities live cheek by jowl. In our s London primary (good,vibrant, successful, highly inclusive and diverse) the overall stats indicate high levels of deprivation, there is a high level of FSM, high number of home languages, in DS's class there are 'looked-after' children, children with SEN, refugees, middle class children, wealthy children, single parent families, black british (over half the class), white, mixed race, s american, european...

DS is in a minority in his class, but because there is such a general level of diversity no-one stands out as being a minority because as one child put it 'no one is different because everyone is different' .

That is my experience of many London primaries.

Have you actually visited the school in question?

Thank you Blu. You put it very well.

Like I said - why would a child with a 'posh' accent stick out more than one with a polish/indian/lithuanian one?

Blimey, this thread has gone a bit awry since this morning.

To those that think children couldn't give a toss about posh accents here is my experience: I was stopped at the gate of my junior school one day by another PARENT telling me I was stuck up and posh. My parents (then divorced, another reason to pick on me as in those days I was the only one from my class in a single parent family! Imagine that!) originally from Scotland and Wolverhampton but they both picked up a Home Counties accent before I was born which I naturally speak with. You are right in that the kids probably wouldn't care if they had sensible parents like you that don't discriminate, but if a grown woman (and mother) can say that to a young girl then what must they say at home which their kids pick up on and use as ammunition? I'm sure it must be better now and I am not suggesting that anyone on this thread or their children would behave like that but it shows why the OP has a legitimate question.

In fact the mother of one of DS's friends calls me posh now and calls me a name related to my profession. How are her children going to perceive my children?

I never felt "bullied" regarding this but I did feel angry. And I never told my mum.

And as for sacrificing my son on any alter....we're bloody lucky to have such a happy school

I think OP's concern is because her children will be entering the school after Reception. Obviously young children have no idea about difference and then all grow up together, so differences don't matter anyway. She might reasonably worry that her older children come in sounding posh and will feel or be treated differently. I don't think her worry was passing judgement on other children at all.

9 and 10 year old children definitely notice each others' accents and are quite capable of bullying, and they go to primary school. I agree that it is ridiculous to fear this from younger children, though. I also agree that there are plenty of perfectly nice primary schools in deprived areas and the one the OP is talking about sounds like one of them. There's no point pretending that if it turns out it isn't one of the nice ones, that her children don't risk being bullied, though. I think, as others have said, though, that bullying is FAR more common in schools with a less diverse intake. I think if I had gone to a primary school with a very diverse intake (and no stupid 11 plus exams), I wouldn't have been an odd one out at all, just one of many - instead, I went to a predominantly white-British primary school where perceived social class was the only divide between the children. Some children weren't bothered by that imagined divide and others were. It certainly didn't scar me for life to find that some people disliked aspects of my being that I couldn't help, but I was certainly made aware of it. I didn't have the same problem at secondary school.

They don't Mrs D, but I imagine the only Polish/Indian/Lithuanian child in the school would suffer too.

I also read the OP as moving from a diverse school (which OP is happy with) to a less diverse school further out of the city where a difference might be more noticeable.

I am sure that somewhere, someplace, someone will always be teased, bullied or picked on because of something different, accent, poshness, teeth, whatever.

But what do we do? Shut ourselves into ever decreasing pockets of people like us? A school where no-one thinks I'm posh but certainly not one where I will be looked down on for being poorer, a place where everyone else wears glasses just like me so I won't get called 4-eyes, and I'm going to need everyone to speak with a midlands accent and flat 'a's....

But I did stick out MrsDeVere. We were all white catholic children. The only really significant difference was class. The vast majority of the children I went to school with were Irish-Catholic. I don't think anyone was particularly deprived but they lived on the local estate whereas we lived in a huge house a long bus ride away (my mother didn't like the local Catholic school).

As an adult it seems totally stupid to effectively send a child to Coventry because they don't sound the same as you do, but as it happened to me I can't dismiss it. Children can be very nasty sometimes.

On the other hand my niece was the only black child at her secondary school (which I found difficult to believe until I saw her school photo) and had lots of really good friends. Nothing is inevitable, but I really can't see it as something unreasonable to worry about.