The Student Room Group

Why is their slef satisfaction and conservatism around our school system?

Is it because England is generally self-satisfied and conservative? Or is it that the powerful and high class keep re-entrenching their privilege? I was just speaking to someone from another culture(Turkey) and it hit me how self-satisfied the wisdom you get here is. He said, if people spent half the effort on making their state schools better as they do on catchment areas and private schools, society would be so much better of. And that the privately educated dominate every single profession. And how spoilt and in a way selfish it was. The simplicity of it really hit home, and the logic of it, coming from someone with another perspective, rather than being browbeaten pompously by the usual wisdom, of the empiricist kind(it's how we' ve always done things, we're the only people on earth with the sense to do xyz, monarchism, empire etc etc-they use it about every issue) coming from the people it benefits. And it really struck me how arrogant selfish and ignorant we have always been, we have no right to lecture the Americans on it. Talking to the French, you are regarded as a bit thick and needing help if you do it, they believe profoundly in the state as fundemental to their ideals. Now since everyone accepts you need a state, you have to be in one boat or the other. You cannot reject it, so why be in a halfway house position , even where you spend a lot on it but don't truly believe in it as a collective. This is worse for everyone. Privilege and lack of social mobility is getting worse, the NHS is being decimated, people are now facing losing the right to their council homes(review every three years to get kicked out)-don't tell me that isn't happening, I know it was Thatcher's policy but obviously a bit too humane for Cameron, it didn't get reported because the press loves him and only gives favourable coverage. It was in the Mirror. Anyway, I've gone ont to other things, but I am so sick of this government and years of the same wisdom, and a social apartheid. We took a lot from the French historically, it seems they have very different and interesting ideas on health and education too. Anyway, does anyone wish to discuss the issue, of course I expect the usual deluded pompous post-imperial, Britannia rules the waves, everyone is clueless and this is how we make it happen garbage, but anyone with anything also thoughtful to say or anyone who wants to argue against them, please join in.

I am sick to death of the privately educated being every single one of my local professionals, their lame pithy having it easy tone of casual condescension and pseudo mateyness while they talk down to me , their entitlement and the corruption, self-serving evil, and or downright incompetence and mediocrity they get away with. I am so ****ed of with the deeply unjust and smug stranglehold, and yes America has vast wealth divide but this isn't the same, it goes beyond wealth, is more excluding and a tighter bind, and way more smug. It's insufferable the moral air they get away with, and the entitlement with which they act, and their patronization.
C'mon...
I am very slef satisfied :u:

Lol, jk, tl;dr.
learn to paragraphs
Original post by StrangeBanana
learn to paragraphs


Learn to use full sentences ...

Spoiler

Original post by Mpagtches
Learn to use full sentences ...

Spoiler



hohoho :biggrin:
Reply 6
Could you please summarise the first paragraph, I don't understand it.
The second paragraph - I can see why you find all that annoying, but I don't really see what it has to do with the title. Independent schools are outside the state school system. I don't think many people are satisfied with the state school system (rightly or wrongly).
People should be praised for sending their offspring to private schools, its exactly the mentality a lot of people from our poorer colonies tend to have, this idea that you pursue excellence for its own sake rather than the kind of mediocrity that a lot English people seem to indulge in these days. Their seems to be this mentality endemic among working class people here that if an individual has a rich father or comes from a dynasty then he is somehow automatically deserving of being ripped apart or that they are some sort of clumsy homosexual, whereas of course all northerners obviously are heroes that have been robbed of their vocation by the system. It seems legitimate enough for a working class lad to say oh my family we come from a generation of farmers or butchers or we support x/y/z football team but if say your dad did a white collar job then the allegations of privilege and toff get thrown around pretty rapidly. Working class people need to understand that they dont come from that tradition, that background of rarified academia that is not their heritage and they should not be thrusted suddenly in to the fold of Oxbridge on the grounds of some marxist agenda or other. Middle class Brits do have a respect for Britains industrial heritage but they tend not to flourish in environments such as construction, plumbing, front line armed forces because that is not a part of their culture and is something they instead wish to keep a respectful distance from. Likewise it is very misguided to encourage a lot northerners and inner city blacks to a environment like Oxbridge which encourages a set of values entirely incompatible with their culture, their background and their outlook on life. This marxist nonsense about social mobility doesn't do anybody any good, lets allow the classes to maintain a respectful distance/ a mutual respect for one another rather than destroy the foundations of rural southern england.
Original post by Israel Terror
People should be praised for sending their offspring to private schools, its exactly the mentality a lot of people from our poorer colonies tend to have, this idea that you pursue excellence for its own sake rather than the kind of mediocrity that a lot English people seem to indulge in these days. Their seems to be this mentality endemic among working class people here that if an individual has a rich father or comes from a dynasty then he is somehow automatically deserving of being ripped apart or that they are some sort of clumsy homosexual, whereas of course all northerners obviously are heroes that have been robbed of their vocation by the system. It seems legitimate enough for a working class lad to say oh my family we come from a generation of farmers or butchers or we support x/y/z football team but if say your dad did a white collar job then the allegations of privilege and toff get thrown around pretty rapidly. Working class people need to understand that they dont come from that tradition, that background of rarified academia that is not their heritage and they should not be thrusted suddenly in to the fold of Oxbridge on the grounds of some marxist agenda or other. Middle class Brits do have a respect for Britains industrial heritage but they tend not to flourish in environments such as construction, plumbing, front line armed forces because that is not a part of their culture and is something they instead wish to keep a respectful distance from. Likewise it is very misguided to encourage a lot northerners and inner city blacks to a environment like Oxbridge which encourages a set of values entirely incompatible with their culture, their background and their outlook on life. This marxist nonsense about social mobility doesn't do anybody any good, lets allow the classes to maintain a respectful distance/ a mutual respect for one another rather than destroy the foundations of rural southern england.


What pompous ****e. If the culture of our top universities, excludes working class people as default and always should, what kind of country does that make us? Only people with a 'background of rarefied academia' should enter it? What the hell happened to meritocracy as an ideal? And by the way, who said I argued in favour of 'mediocrity' , it's the upper classes who destroyed our high performing selective grammar schools, the moment they saw that superbly educated and able people were threatening their easy complacency. Fact is someone like my Dad would never have had the career he has and attended oxbridge from a non moneyed background after his era, it's been destroyed. It's not about mediocrity, to frame the debate like that is disingenuous(and ignores that large glaring fact that the posh keep wanting those schools to be rubbish and rather than focus on and invest time in state schools and make them better, just keep trying to get in a catchment area or buy privilege). It's about a country where those who aspire and are intellectually curious and respect education have innate ability get a shot, on grounds of that and not on class background or money.
(edited 8 years ago)
Please read about why we use paragraphs...

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/why-we-need-paragraphs/

You do this for me, and I might in return read your post... after some editions, of course.
Original post by XcitingStuart
Please read about why we use paragraphs...

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/why-we-need-paragraphs/

You do this for me, and I might in return read your post... after some editions, of course.


Perhaps you would like your quill scrubbing as well sire. Listen to you, you f-uckwit.
Not doing anything of the sort.

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