Double standards in public life
in Purgatory
Shirley Williams died last week. There have been many laudatory comments about her integrity in public life.
There was a time when she was actively promoting the benefits of comprehensive schools for everyone whilst at the same time sending her daughter to an independent school. Within the Labour Party at the time, Jim Callaghan and Harold Wilson (to name but two) did the same - a route subsequently followed by Tony Blair and Diane Abbott who sent their children to schools outside their home area.
To what extent do these personal choices affect the legacy or even our view of "leaders?" Thinking too about the comments from Philip Mountbatten described as "Uncle type banter" which some of us would classify them as racist/sexist.
There was a time when she was actively promoting the benefits of comprehensive schools for everyone whilst at the same time sending her daughter to an independent school. Within the Labour Party at the time, Jim Callaghan and Harold Wilson (to name but two) did the same - a route subsequently followed by Tony Blair and Diane Abbott who sent their children to schools outside their home area.
To what extent do these personal choices affect the legacy or even our view of "leaders?" Thinking too about the comments from Philip Mountbatten described as "Uncle type banter" which some of us would classify them as racist/sexist.
Comments
Where leadership does come in is that he might have realised the changing cultural attitudes and measured his behaviour and opinion.
IMO an individual should not disadvantage her children for the sake of her principles. I'd say it was the duty of parents to get what they consider to be the best education they can afford for their kids. Diane Abbott was absolutely right in my opinion to do what she did. If her constituency party didn't approve they had every right, maybe even socialist duty, to de-select her and her constituents to vote her out in a general election. One might add that a number of West Africans send their kids to school in their country of origin to avoid the low expectations of them in the UK. I make these remarks in the knowledge that Britain is a meritocracy in which there is no structural classism or racism. Incidentally, we also know that the quality of state education varies enormously and is not unrelated to residence, though there are notable exceptions.
If they were working hard to give the same choices to everyone that would help. But who can blame them for trying to do what’s best for their own children?
We also had choices. We believed comprehensive was best. At the time we were on excellent salaries and could very easily have gone private. Several of our friends did. We chose the comp five minutes down the road, in the worst catchment area in an already run-down town (Rochdale). The headteacher was top-notch, we were very relieved he chose not to be head hunted to a ‘better’ school.
We were right. Our sons grew up being able to mix with anyone from any background. They both got good degrees and Masters degrees. One is an airline pilot (still, despite the pandemic). The other did a nursing degree (in German) and couldn’t be happier with his work. We are enormously proud of them both.
I think this is the nub of the issue, and I'm sure, Boogie, you meant "best for your children", which is why Diane Abbott got it right: she placed what she saw as in the interest of her child above the cost to her political credibility. If Corbyn did the opposite, he got it wrong, though, in fairness, his decision may reflect the crappy private schooling he experienced, himself!
Exactly the situation my Labour councillor father found himself in in 1979, resolution of which saw me taking the Bursary exam for a local public school...
Plus it depends on your kids. A particular school might be a "good school" but not a good match for the needs of one of your children. I haven't made the same schooling choices for my kids, because they're not the same people.
This.
If I was so sure, why do you think I began my observation with "if"? The point I'm making is that if he prioritised his political maidenhood over the interests if his offspring, in contrast to Abbott, then he got his priorities wrong. By referring to his own education I suggest that might not have been the case. Sorry, if I wasn't clear.
By going the Direct Grant route they could (and did) allow the public to think their child(ren) only went to that school because they got a scholarship when, by-and-large, that was not the case. Looking at you, Douglas Jay (daughters), Jim Callaghan, Peter Shore, Harold Wilson, John Diamond, Richard Crossman, etc.
Douglas Jay's sons went the full private route - the Dragon and Winchester.
The argument that a politician is "forced" to make a choice of school different from those they support politically for the sake of their child doesn't hold water. If they admit that some schools are inadequate for their own offspring, how hypocritical to then insist that they're fine for other people's.
I think to be truly consistent, a socialist should also add to that "So my government will now provide vouchers to all parents who want to send their kids to independent schools, until such time as we attain good quality comprehensive education."
And if someone wants to reply "Well, that would seriously undermine the state school system", be aware that you are then essentially saying that you're willing to tolerate a few rich people undermining the system, but not the masses.
They didn't. What they said was (and it's still true) that while a private option exists, there is insufficient motivation amongst the powerful to ensure that all schools are adequate.
Abolition of the private education sector is what is needed to force the PTB to make all schools adequate, not pretending that they already are.
My father and I had to fight this misconception of left wing thinking and the associated (not to mention generally smug) accusations of hypocrisy for years.
The difference is that you can still get an excellent education in the state sector, including at comprehensive schools, in the UK. I did. Too often the impression with private education is of buying an unfair advantage through social connections and prestige rather than achievement. Buying health insurance in the US is just doing what almost everyone does.
Hard to make that argument if you're one of the powerful (e.g. a cabinet minister). If you believe in forcing people to improve the public system by removing alternatives, but aren't prepared to force yourself to improve the public system by denying yourself the use of alternatives for your own family, then you're still not living by your own principles.
In addition to what @KarlLB said above; I don't think any particular hypocrisy should revolve around the decisions that someone's parents made for them.
Well, the US currently has public health-insurance for senior citizens, which they are free to use or not use.
However, any politician who chooses to go the private route is essentially saying "The insurance I can get privately is better than what we're providing to our citizens through the public system."
Which is maybe okay, if the politician in question is doing everything in his power to make the public system as good as what he gets privately, but being thwarted by entrenched interests?
OR...
Maybe if he's a conservative who thinks public insurance need only be a last-ditch safety net, with no real obligation to keep up with the private sector(like eg. council flats aren't obligated to be as nice as a posh country home).
I gather Ms. Abbott would regard herself as being in the first group, ie. doing everything she can to improve the system, with no success? If so, fair enough, but I have to wonder...
She was part of a government that was in power for 13 years. Was that not enough time to bring British schools up to snuff? Or did they in fact bring it up to snuff, and then the Tories undid all their good work after Brown got tossed?
I may not like Rees-Mogg but I did apricate the hypocrisy he exposed on Question Time when the host sneered at him for going to Eton, and RM pointed out that he was there at the same time as the host's son.
Or you nationalise the private schools.
Yeah, I do have to wonder. How bad ARE the British state schools, that even the people who run them don't want their kids to attend?
I grew up in Canada, in a province that allows people to send their kids to private, fee-collecting schools. But even at my middle-brow public school, there were one or two kids who were the offspring of cabinet ministers, and I knew of a few more at other schools.
And I'd say Canada's school systems(each province runs its own) don't have HALF the glorious reputation that British schools do.
She was part of the party in government. To say that she herself was part of the government would be a stretch. Usually the government is deemed to consist of the ministers, junior ministers, parliamentary private secretaries and so forth.
In any case the London Challenge did improve attainment significantly in the capital (mostly by increasing funding, unsurprisingly), but that programme only began the year Abbott's son started secondary school.
Same goes for health care.
It's very much a post-code (zip code) lottery as to whether the schools near you are good, bad or indifferent. Wealthier parents can afford to plan years in advance and buy houses near local schools that are good (which then gain from a cohort effect of a greater than average number of such parents in the local area), poorer parents are down to the limited choice around where they live.
Love the doublethink here!
There are some inner city areas where the state schools struggle - the big problems being that the undesirable neighbourhoods mean that all but the most dedicated of best teachers opt for more pleasant areas to live in (and, thus schools in better areas often get the pick of teachers) and that the catchment is impoverished (parents much less able to support the education of their children, children with more issues that need to be addressed along with teaching them etc). Investment in these schools isn't necessarily the problem (quite often throwing more money at failing schools is the easy option for politicians), the real issues are often elsewhere - locally high unemployment rates with what jobs there are low paid with little advancement opportunities, low quality housing and community amenities etc.
He did what he thought was best. Smug accusations of hypocrisy really don't help matters.
Sending your child to a private school while attempting to close fee paying schools isn't really hypocritical unless you're making plans to keep the private school to which you send your own child open.
Spot on. Private schools are no better - except where cronyist, elitist, connections, perceived prestige etc etc are concerned.
You know full well that that's not possible - the independent school system does not have the capacity to absorb a large increase in numbers. And if you did suddenly declare open season on vouchers and asked the independent sector to double or triple in size overnight, do you expect that whatever qualities it had would be maintained? I don't.
And I'll repeat again my claim that children are not all the same. A particular school may well be a "good school" and have excellent results for many children, but be a poor fit for a particular child. That's OK.
One of my kids doesn't like burgers*. This isn't a value judgement about whether burgers are good food, or whether burgers should exist, or whether people who don't like burgers are food-elitists, or a statement that other people shouldn't eat burgers. Different things can work out well for different people, and that's OK.
*amusingly enough, the one that just got a job at a local burger restaurant.
I'm sure he was doing what he thought best and I don't condemn him for that. I do think that we can self justify an exception in my case, rather too easily.
It doesn't square with mainstream labour beliefs either then or now and, like Shirley Williams and others, he was in a fortunate position to be able to do it. Lots of other parent who wanted the best for their children weren't in that place and had no one to fight their corner.
Well that neatly pulls the rug from under all those, including some on the Ship, who lambast Camerin, Johnson, Rees-Mogg, etc, for the fact that their parents sent them to Eton.
And while some state schools are good that doesn't apply to all. Until it does, there can be no good argument against people sendung their offspring to a better school.
I went to a private boarding school after a state primary because my father was posted abroad.
The biggest difference in terms of opportunity for attainment was the very small size of most classes and the supervised classroom based homework (prep). That and many children knew their parents were paying alot for the school and felt a pressure to achieve.
Resources were good but not spectacular compared to a large state school.
The down sides were the massive attachment issues, the social conservatism, not living in a family, the impact of living in a total institution, opportunities for sexual abuse etc
The usual point is not so much that having attended Eton is blameworthy, as that having attended Eton means that your experiences are rather different from what might be called the norm. And that having a government that is full of people who had this rather unusual experience is not such a terribly good thing.
Having white people who care about the rights of BAME people in government is a good thing; having actual BAME people is a much better thing (otherwise it's hard not to fall into the trap of paternalism). The same thing applies to the Eton-educated. If most of your government was educated at a leading public school, it can't have the same range of experience, or the same internalized knowledge, that a government that contains people drawn from the whole country has.
As I understand it in the US it's not just vetting students but dealing with the fact that schools are public property so it's harder to restrict the press from getting access.
Also Eton is a boarding school, with all the emotional damage that implies.
There are a handful of private schools that provide unusual opportunities, Millfield for sport, the Cathedral schools for choral singing, Islamic and Jewish religious schools so students can learn enough Classical Arabic or Ancient Hebrew to serve their community in a religious capacity (an FE college I worked for provided secular courses for students at one such school, the senior students would work on Islamic theology and Arabic all day and then spend 3 hours in the evening studying A-levels).
Of course the state sector can be set up to offer such opportunities, like the traditional music centre in Plockton where many students board so that they can study the regular curriculum while getting a top class musical experience.
There are similar discussions about the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court. With the exception of Amy Coney Barrett (Notre Dame), all of the current Justices got their law degrees from Yale (Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh) or Harvard (Breyer, Roberts, Kagan, Gorsuch). Prior to Barrett the last Supreme Court Justice that didn't come from either Harvard or Yale was Sandra Day O'Connor (Stanford), who was nominated in 1981.
An acquaintance of mine went to one in Norfolk. It was especially good if you wanted to become a pilot in the RAF as they had their own helicopter. They'd take you up and then switch the engine off. The pupil then had to restart it before it hit the ground. Presumably the pilot would take over before it actually crashed though?
Apparently it's one of the tests you do at Officer selection, so it gives their pupils a leg up on the competition. I imagine the health and safety sign off at a state school would be a nightmare to obtain, not to mention the cost?
Any shipmates want to admit to going to Eton or having close male relatives who are old Etonians; fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers or cousins?
There seems to be an underlying suggestion by a number of shipmates that the best state schools offer just as good an education as the better public schools. If that is the case then there are a lot of parents wasting money on Eton and Winchester et. al.. There is also the danger that a politician might argue that if state schools are performing as well as the public schools their case for better funding is diminished. My guess is that pupils at public schools are significantly advantaged through the greater resources they enjoy across a variety of activities which the state system will never be able to employ. The fact is that only with great difficulty would the state be able to invest the per capita spending undertaken by the top public schools, and were they to be abolished the state schools would be unable to continue the quality of education they afford. The argument for public school abolition is less about improving state education than removing an institution that helps to underpin structural inequality in British society.
Ha. My husband went through a test just like this but with an airplane during training for the Vietnam War. Apparently the training instructor spoke to him rather rudely as the test began. Anyone who knows Mr Lamb will not be shocked to learn that as a result, he stubbornly refused to lift a finger to restart the plane and just sat there, arms crossed, until the instructor swore and restarted it himself.
Mr Lamb has mellowed slightly over the years. Slightly.
Smaller class sizes.
I suspect that classical Arabic or Biblical Hebrew are also likely to be subjects that won't be followed to any great extent until 16+ education, add in classical Greek and the like. Approaches to teaching these through sharing of resources between state schools could be developed, without needing to have private funded schools that provide these options among more regular subjects. Or, they could be provided within FE college environments rather than schools, with options for part time formats opening these up to people who are in employment and pursuing these subjects in a self-supporting role (much as many Christians will do part time and distance learning courses at Bible colleges, or doing courses to be accredited preachers).
I'll concede that choir schools are so dedicated to developing those specific musical skills that take a lot of time every day that they may be one of those small number of exceptions to providing something state schools probably can't - though, maybe a hybrid scheme of a choir school running the musical lessons with those long hours but attending a mainstream school for all other subjects. Some sports could be in the same category, although most top sports people didn't come through highly specialised schools but put their training into time outside regular schools.
When I was a child a local squire mentioned his “neighbours”. His neighbours were Other People Like Them and his nearest? Nearly thirty miles away.
In both cases? Not local riff raff.
It all stinks
As well as the smaller class sizes already mentioned, I’d add an expectation of success and a drive to get the best possible result for every pupil. Too many state schools are content to let the brighter pupils coast to a handful of Bs because they have to put all their efforts into helping the dimmer ones get one or two Es.