private school myths

I'm not usually a fan of the I, I, I school of journalism (especially set in London) but Arabella Weir has good piece in today's Guardian about why middle class families in the capital choose private over state for their child's education.

A friend of mine who lives in London and has a boy approaching school years was shocked at the snobbery which suddenly surfaced among her fellow mums. Let alone the sudden Catholic conversions.

You can see some of the same divisions even in my village. There are people for whom the primary school (which is not a star performer but absolutely fine) is not even on their radar. Freedom of choice for parents is something that middle class families exercise to the detriment or working class ones by creating an apartheid between the 'will argue' and 'wilfully ignored'.

And if you can't afford private then where's the choice? (Don't even get me started on the charitable status of private schools).

Anyhow Francis Beckett, in a sidebar to the main piece in the Guardian, answers some myths about private versus state education which is well worth a look.

Those on the right go on about class envy and the left hating people wanting to succeed. If anything breeds class hatred it's a segragated education system which rewards people because of where they were born. I don't hate the parents of pupils at public schools for wanting their children to succeed - I hate the waste of talent that happens because working class children don't get the same opportunities.

The title of this blog comes from an episode of The West Wing and there's a nice line Sam Seaborn has in one when asked about education policy.

"...education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense."

(Just for fun trivia fans: which episode did Sam utter these words?)

Comments

[SeanTB]

You read the likes of the Daily Mail and you get the impression that sending your kids to private school is the standard, mainstream thing to do, and the 93% of the country who don't or can't do it are slumming. Do Daily Mail readers all agree with this view - are they all saving their pennies accordingly, is it like the US survey that shows a majority of people opposing taxing multi-millionaires because they feel they're probably going to be multi-millionaires themselves in a year or two?
And blimey, the comments for that feature are turning into a bit of a war zone. Guardian comments usually turn in a foetid right-wing swamp after a while, and this is obviously a real red meat subject. Based on the balance of comments, why the hell do people say the Guardian is a left wing paper? Or is just something to do with the psychology of people who post comments?