Response to the hatred and criticising of Public/Private schools/schooling/attendees:
I went to a private school. It was a very small private school and a very good one. We had girls attending from very varied walks of life. Not as varied as would be ideal, but we were not, as popular opinion would like you to believe, ‘all rich upper-class twats.’ That sort of ideology is uninformed, ignorant and classist. To believe that just because someone goes to a private school, makes them a ‘posh twat’ is frankly an utter load of rubbish. Just the same as making the assumption that because someone goes to a state comprehensive they are a 'yob' or because someone goes to one of the fast disappearing grammar schools, they are a 'middle-class rar'. These assumptions are all as stupid as each other. But I am focussing on the idea that private school = rich twat, because this is the one I find personally most insulting.
First of all: because of the very nature of private/public schools, they are all incredibly different from each other. There are sports based schools, drama based schools, finishing-school styled schools, fiercely academic schools, schools where you are discriminated against for not knowing the right people, and schools that will accept you regardless of your background as long as you can pass the entrance exam.
At my private school, there were girls in on scholarships and bursaries (myself included), those whose parents’ companies paid their tuition, those whose parents scraped all their savings together in order to send their girls there, those whose parents could easily afford it and those girls who had their fees paid by the armed forces. There were international students there, students whose families were old upper-class families, girls whose parents had worked their socks off to get to where they were and girls who were just spoilt rotten.
And there was me.
I shall talk about me because I know about me. And to talk about things I don’t know is stupid.
I am from a family that is not upper-class in any way, shape or form.
My mother’s family were proud working-class Yorkshire folk and my mum was the first in all her family to go to university, thanks to the free tuition.
My dad’s family emigrated from Ireland and his granda ran fruit and veg from the farms to the market stalls in London early every morning. My dad was also one of the first, if not THE first in his family to go to university.
My parents have worked hard all their lives to give me and my sister the best education they possibly could. It is for that reason that I was home-educated until the age of 11, so that I could learn at my own speed. I am slightly aspergic and Home Education was the option that best suited me at the time.
It was my decision to go to a boarding school. I had tried the local state school for less than a year, leaving because I was bullied and because the school was unable to provide an education suitable for my level and way of learning. It was a good enough school. But not right for me.
After much searching we found a private school that I felt at home in and my parents could see me doing well in. I will never regret going there.
The school had less than 500 pupils in the senior school and about the same in the junior school. It was a girls boarding school with the junior boarders aged between 8-11 and the senior boarders aged 12-18, although with the way it worked out, some of the international students were aged 19 when they left.
I got into that school on a partial scholarship, the rest paid for by the generous redundancy package paid to my dad when he left his job at BP. That is how they afforded the fees. We were never exceptionally well off and when my dad was made redundant thanks to BP cutting jobs across the board we were not very well off at all.
For personal reasons I will not disclose, my mother cannot hold down a job and was up until recently reliant on the disability living allowance for her independence. She has since ceased to receive this benefit. My dad eventually took on other jobs but (again for reasons I shall not disclose) never again had a high-earning job. Since then he has been a gardener, a tree surgeon, a pest controller and a delivery van driver. All of which are good jobs, when the work is available.
Is that the typical background you’d expect from a private school girl?
I don’t think it is.
This is just me; other people have other stories and were at that school for other reasons. I’m not going to speak for them and claim I have a right to tell you all about them. But I will say that there is no justifiable way someone can say ‘oh you went to private school, you must be posh and rich and a bit of a snob.’
That’s just wrong and stupid.
If you are going to speak about private schools as a group, make sure you have done your research; make sure you have spoken to the pupils and teachers who attended and worked at them, make sure you speak to the cleaning staff and the cooks and the maintenance staff and gardeners if applicable. Speak to everyone, because everyone has a different angle on it. Even better, go to these schools and have a look around, even better, try living in them, just don’t pass judgement on what you haven’t experienced.
I came away from that school, not having made a great number of friends, not wanting to send any daughters I may have there, but appreciating that it was the right place for me at that time, and that it was a very different school to the other neighbouring private/public schools. [A.N The Public Schools being the older established schools, the Private Schools, being those which are also independently run but are not as old as the Public Schools.] Each school is like a separate person, so while one school might seem mainly attended by rich students, another might have many of its pupils in on full or partial scholarship, another school might have a vast number of armed-forces students in attendance. Every school is different. By their nature you can only group them by their independence from the state system. Some are a lot ‘posher’ than others. My school, was not exactly ‘posh’. It had its quirks, and it wasn’t ‘rough’ but it wasn’t as ‘posh’ as some of the other schools nearby and in some ways was not as good as the local state secondary school which some of the GCSE and sixth form students left our school to attend.
The private school sector is so varied it is crazy. There are the faith schools and the charity schools, the ideological schools, the schools which focus on a certain subject or group of subjects, on sports or drama. Each school is attended by very different people. And to say that because one school has a reputation for being a certain way, every attendee of that school must share its reputation is, again, stupid and ignorant.
People tell me I shouldn’t take attacks on private schools personally as these criticisms are not directed at me but at the private schools as a whole, but how can I not take an attack on something I am part of as anything but offensive, it’s like saying to a Chinese person ‘I don’t hate you, but I hate your race.’ Would that sort of attitude be tolerated? I don’t think so...
Just as if someone discriminated against the 'working class', or someone who counted themselves as a member of the 'working class', this would be seen as unacceptable and intolerant. Yet it is somehow acceptable to group those who attend private/public schools into a group entitled ‘rars’ or ‘posh twats’, how is this not equally as unacceptable? Because it is just as classist as if a ‘middle-class’ or ‘upper-class’ person discriminated against someone because they were ‘working-class’.
It is far too easy to group people into ‘classes’, and in my eyes this is just divisive, the whole anti-cuts campaign should not boil down to an idiotic class war. There is no reason to exclude the ‘upper’ or ‘middle’ classes from a battle for education for all and public services for all. Someone from a private schooling background has as much a right to fight for free education as someone who has been home educated or state-schooled. We all live in this country, we all abide by its rules, to break this campaign down into a list of people we hate and will not work with is ridiculous. To discriminate against a perceived ‘group’ without knowing them or having lived beside them is ridiculous. To condemn the private/public schools on the grounds of MPs we disagree with having gone there, is frankly ridiculous. There are more unexpected people who have attended a private/public school than you would realise, there are no grounds for letting the few speak for the many. Is that not what we are fighting this campaign about; because the few in charge are harming the many?
The same can be said for those who give private schooling a snobbish and bad name; there are far more people who have attended these schools who are perfectly decent and hard-working human beings than those who take life for granted, and just because some rich people are in attendance, does not mean that all who attend are rich.
And lets be honest, just because someone is rich, that is not a good reason for hating them. Wouldn't we all like to have money if we could. A lot of 'rich' people have worked hard to get to where they are, is it right to begrudge them the fruits of their labour?
It is our duty to inform ourselves about the issues we have opinions on. So the next time you think about slagging off a private/public school; go and do you research properly and come back when you know what you're talking about.
18/12/10
I do apologise (yes another apology) for the lack of posting, recently, I've been ill and had essays galore! Evil essays.
But we have some more great articles on the way from people who haven't written for us before and I look forward to seeing them.
We also have reached the point where this blog is being read all across the world, which is incredibly exciting.
These are the stats for the blog thus far into it's life.
UK:867
US: 23
Germany: 8
Croatia: 7
Singapore: 5
Hong Kong: 3
France: 2
Ireland: 2
Austria: 1
I am dead proud of this blog!! Keep reading and keep campaigning!!
11/12/10
Apologies for the rant on David Cameron's press release, was feeling somewhat irritated by the fact that we'd campaigned so hard and they still passed the vote. However, we are not going to be depressed by such things, and we are not going to give up so easily!
A short rant is acceptable for getting rid of one's frustration.
On a much more positive note, we are gaining more national contacts and are pleased to welcome our London correspondant Ben Scicluna, a History graduate of Queen Mary and Westfield College; University of London.
We are also trying to make contact with the Students Of Ireland group and other neighbouring universities. We are already working alongside York uni and the University of Leeds and have plans to attend the meeting of North Eastern Universities on monday.
On the whole, we are doing very well! And we have great hopes for the future of this campaign!
Keep on fighting!
EA Alderdice [Editor]
