Private School

[araapatlio]

I don't have the time to look up the relevant figures (so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!) but the number of people with private educations in the government are over-represented in terms of what would be expected just through chance. This is also true of CEOs in the large publicly listed companies.This comes about as a result of the connections formed and acquaintances met during school - this is acknowledged to be a major advantage of the best private schools over state education.

It is not by chance, of course, but again, correlation is not causation. If you are from a rich family with connections you are more likely to go to private school, it is not the school so much as the background. Ed Miliband went to a "state school" (strictly true, but to hear him tell it you'd think it was a bog standard comp) but he got to his position in the Labour party due to his parents connections and the fact of the environment in which he was raised led him to that career.

It seems a little ironic to be support the idea of private education as a freedom when it is in fact one of the mechanisms used to ensure the elite remain in the positions of power they're accustomed to.

I object to positions of power, not to the class of people holding them. I don't care if Cameron's dad was a bin man or a billionaire, he should not have power over my life.

 

[araapatlio]

No it didn't - the Blood Transfusion Service, which was part of the NHS, did and it did so on the basis of the medical evidence available at the time. The European Union then also introduced a ban which Britain had to comply with anyway.

I take your point, but the NHS is a state service, it was a de facto ban as there are no other blood providers to my knowledge.

I did not realise the EU had banned it (the EU is an institution of the state).

Yes it did. The UK is a ratified signatory to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights and to the Sixth and Thirteenth Protocols to the European Convention on Human Rights

Who did it "ban" from carrying out capital punishment? Itself?
It is not a ban, considering that it only applies to the state.

 

[MontyVeda]

It is en vogue to bemoan the "Old Etonians" but it simply isn't true - ...

in 2011, the bbc magazine wrote:

Cameron, Clegg and Osborne all went to private schools with fees now higher than the average annual wage. Half the cabinet went to fee-paying schools - versus only 7% of the country - as did a third of all MPs.
After falling steadily for decades, the number of public school MPs is on the rise once more, 20 of them from Eton alone - five more MPs than the previous Parliament.

(source)

 

[araapatlio]

Selective use of stats. The fact is that only half the cabinet went to private schools - which is less than previous Conservative governments and only one went to Eton - the PM.

We have always had a problem with vast swathes of our society (not just politics) dominated those who went to private school, this is not really getting worse.
The solution is not to look at private education and ask what it going right and how do we destroy it out of spite, it is to look at state provision and ask what it going wrong and how can we make it better?

 

[PK99]

I object to positions of power, not to the class of people holding them. I don't care if Cameron's dad was a bin man or a billionaire, he should not have power over my life.

What form of government would you prefer?

 

[araapatlio]

I suggest you sit down, take a deep breath and consider what a tit you're making yourself out to be...

You can think what you like, it doesn't change the fact that the state legally prohibiting itself from doing something doesn't constitute a ban. Was there another institution in society at the time that was carrying out capital punishment? No. This is up there with the idea that the state abolished slavery - when the state was the very institution that was maintaining it.

 

[araapatlio]

What form of government would you prefer?

None. That is to say self-government, a society that revolves are voluntary interaction amongst free people rather than force.

 

[PK99]

None. That is to say self-government, a society that revolves are voluntary interaction amongst free people rather than force.

I think I will leave this aspect of the discussion at this point!!!

Let us know when you next visit planet
reality.

 

[araapatlio]

I think I will leave this aspect of the discussion at this point!!!

Let us know when you next visit planet
reality.

That's cool

 

[MontyVeda]

None. That is to say self-government, a society that revolves are voluntary interaction amongst free people rather than force.

being an anarchist at heart... i can empathise with that vision... but due to the fact that there's always going to be greedy gits wanting more, and nasty gits just being plain nasty, and manipulative gits being all manipulative, it won't happen.

 

[araapatlio]

being an anarchist at heart... i can empathise with that vision... but due to the fact that there's always going to be greedy gits wanting more, and nasty gits just being plain nasty, and manipulative gits being all manipulative, it won't happen.

It won't happen in my lifetime, but that is the goal

1000 years ago, democracy and people agreeing to relinquish power would have looked like a ridiculous idea to people used to Kings retaining power by force, so I have hope

 

[MontyVeda]

what we need is more anarchists in fee-paying schools!

 

[araapatlio]

what we need is more anarchists in fee-paying schools!

Homeschool FTW

Free schools (and Academy schools before them) are a really positive addition - but totally at odds with the rest of Gove's "Let's pretend it is 1950 all over again" education policy.

 

[Brandane]

I went to one, and now I am a postman

But at least I can read some Latin

I can trump that; I went to one, and I'm at the very bottom of the food chain .... a taxi driver . And I have done considerably better than some of my old school mates. At least I had a proper job as a Police Officer for 20 years. One school mate was last heard of sitting in a prison cell somewhere in the far east for drug smuggling. Another cleans bus shelters; some don't do anything at all.

I went to a small private boarding school in the Scottish borders, at age 11. My parents were living abroad, working for HM Government and part of the deal was private schooling for family. I had been at a private school in Kingston, Jamaica. Mostly geared to Americans, but I was doing well enough and enjoyed it.

September 1973 I went to this 80 pupil, all male, all boarders, school in Scotland. What a culture shock.... I spent the whole of my first year bored stupid, because despite being one of the youngest in my class (ended up sitting some "O" levels at age 14) I was miles ahead of the rest of my class in just about every subject, thanks to my previous school.

The school was run not by the teachers but by a small group of lunatic 6th year pupils who instilled discipline with various forms of brutality. As they left the school at the end of 6th year, they were replaced by the next group who were determined to outdo the previous regimes brutality, and so the cycle repeated itself every year.

The food was disgusting (e.g. 1 pint of milk between 8 pupils at breakfast which consisted of corn flakes and a buttered roll). The heating was switched on only between the end of October and the beginning of March, and even then it was barely noticeable. Many of the pupils were vicious, horrible, thieving little scrotes who had been sent there by parents with money, who simply wanted them away from under their feet.
These are just a small sample of the things which in this day and age would be contrary to human rights and would get the place shut down pronto. Fortunately the place went out of business in the early 80s and saved it from such a fate.

I left school in June 1978, 2 weeks after I was legally allowed to do so, and chose my career as an Officer Cadet in the Merchant Navy on the basis of only needing 4 "O" levels to gain entry. No way was I spending another year at school to try for sufficient grades to get into Uni, despite the fact that I was reasonably good at exams and could probably have done it.

There are good private schools, and there are bad private schools, in the same way as there are good and bad normal schools. Far, far better to be in a good local authority school than a bad private one. Private school or not? Well I think you can guess my answer!

 

[MickeyBlueEyes]

Be involved with rhe school give good home support, that matters more than some poncy private school unless you think your kid is to good to mix with the locals.

It's not that I think he is too good to mix with locals at all, and, it's not as though the local school is not very good. What I should of mentioned is that he is only 3 at the minute (he has been at the school from when he turned 3) and the local school's starting age is 5. He knows things now that he would just be learning about should he start school at 5 and I think he will get bored quickly.
We read, write, do sums and things with him every day, don't get thinking I'm the worlds most pushiest Dad, he always asks to do it, he enjoys it. When he makes his own games up he loves to involve numbers, spelling, words, whatever, just to make it more challenging.

The schools facilities are second to none, I know we have started off a good thing. We are not made of money, but are putting most of what we have into sending him there. I just wanted people's thoughts as to the difference between the two educations, as he is, and will be, my only child, I have no experience of either.

Some really good replies, thank you.