Would you Abolish Eton?

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Would you Abolish Eton?

Yes
11
26%
No
27
64%
Maybe
2
5%
Dont Know
2
5%
 
Total votes: 42

landsurfer
Posts: 5327
Joined: 27 Oct 2012, 9:13pm

Re: Would you Abolish Eton?

Post by landsurfer »

At 8 year old i was supposed to go to the Masonic School in Dublin ...
It's now a hotel ... ...
I would have loved to have gone there .. however .. my Mum said no ....
The life i now lead is amazing, my loves, my experiences are only because i DIDD'NT go to that school !
“Quiet, calm deliberation disentangles every knot.”
Be more Mike.
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landsurfer
Posts: 5327
Joined: 27 Oct 2012, 9:13pm

Re: Would you Abolish Eton?

Post by landsurfer »

Mike Sales wrote:

Do you have a source on public school history?


No he doesn't, if you want a source go look for instead if challenging others that post on this site in good faith ........
“Quiet, calm deliberation disentangles every knot.”
Be more Mike.
The road goes on forever.
Mike Sales
Posts: 7883
Joined: 7 Mar 2009, 3:31pm

Re: Would you Abolish Eton?

Post by Mike Sales »

landsurfer wrote:
Mike Sales wrote:

Do you have a source on public school history?


No he doesn't, if you want a source go look for instead if challenging others that post on this site in good faith ........


I wasn't meaning to be contentious. I just hoped he could recommend something.
I always try to give a reference myself.
I was not attacking his good faith and I'm sorry if that is how it came over.
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It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
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reohn2
Posts: 45158
Joined: 26 Jun 2009, 8:21pm

Re: Would you Abolish Eton?

Post by reohn2 »

landsurfer wrote:At 8 year old i was supposed to go to the Masonic School in Dublin ...
It's now a hotel ... ...
I would have loved to have gone there .. however .. my Mum said no ....
The life i now lead is amazing, my loves, my experiences are only because i DIDD'NT go to that school !

It didn't do your spelling much good though :wink:
-----------------------------------------------------------
"All we are not stares back at what we are"
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reohn2
Posts: 45158
Joined: 26 Jun 2009, 8:21pm

Re: Would you Abolish Eton?

Post by reohn2 »

landsurfer wrote:
Mike Sales wrote:

Do you have a source on public school history?


No he doesn't, if you want a source go look for instead if challenging others that post on this site in good faith ........


How do you know,have you asked him?
-----------------------------------------------------------
"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
drossall
Posts: 6115
Joined: 5 Jan 2007, 10:01pm
Location: North Hertfordshire

Re: Would you Abolish Eton?

Post by drossall »

My old school was set up for the orphans of local warehousemen and clerks. I think the supply of orphans from those professions pretty-soon ran out :D so it pretty-soon widened to other deserving cases, but it still works hard to take pupils on bursaries and so on.

At the time I went, the local authority was paying for places for some pupils, me included.

I'm no expert, but I get the impression that the situation is more complex than often portrayed.
Cyril Haearn
Posts: 15215
Joined: 30 Nov 2013, 11:26am

Re: Would you Abolish Eton?

Post by Cyril Haearn »

Line from film 'Heidi'

Petr was a lad herding goats
Petrs mum: "you must go to school, you cannae read nor write!"
Petr:"nor can you"
..
Like to read more about peoples time at school
My best times were school trips, to Germany, Brechfashire and The Motorway City of the Seventies :?
After o-levles there was a fun trip to Brechfashire, the others went by bus, I cycled
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Ben@Forest
Posts: 3647
Joined: 28 Jan 2013, 5:58pm

Re: Would you Abolish Eton?

Post by Ben@Forest »

Mike Sales wrote:We have not talked about the emotional damage that these boarding schools do to their pupils.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/12/stiff-upper-lip-by-alex-renton-review


That review points out that Renton mixes anecdote with history and often criticises practices which have long gone - the way a public school in 1830 may have treated children has little relevance now.

Also Renton didn't go to a state school so has nothing (in his believable or not anecdotes) to compare it with. I went to state schools, I am in with the roughly third of the adult population who, when asked, say that they did not enjoy school. I saw a cruel primary school teacher (though not cruel to me) and had a series of uninterested secondary school teachers. There was bullying at both schools and of course sexual assault or abuse may have happened that we don't know about. A teacher did have to leave after starting a relationship with a sixth-form pupil - something that would make the tabloids now. So l don't believe that public schools are necessarily worse at messing up kids.
Hobbs1951
Posts: 480
Joined: 15 Apr 2014, 10:48am

Re: Would you Abolish Eton?

Post by Hobbs1951 »

Mike Sales wrote:
Do you have a source on public school history?


There are many.

John.
Oldjohnw
Posts: 7764
Joined: 16 Oct 2018, 4:23am
Location: South Warwickshire

Re: Would you Abolish Eton?

Post by Oldjohnw »

Hobbs1951 wrote:
Mike Sales wrote:
Do you have a source on public school history?


There are many.

John.


It is simply an uncontroversial fact that the ancient public schools (not 20thC private schools) were founded, often by merchants, to give people an education at no or modest cost. They were not for the wealthy elite.

And no, a source is not necessary. Google would do it for you. But you don't need a source to confirm which political party is in government or what colour the sky is.
John
Hobbs1951
Posts: 480
Joined: 15 Apr 2014, 10:48am

Re: Would you Abolish Eton?

Post by Hobbs1951 »

Oldjohnw wrote:Google would do it for you.


Not for me would it do.

John.
Hobbs1951
Posts: 480
Joined: 15 Apr 2014, 10:48am

Re: Would you Abolish Eton?

Post by Hobbs1951 »

Mike Sales wrote:We have not talked about the emotional damage that these boarding schools do to their pupils.

The Old Etonian John Julius Norwich, asked for a memory that he thought summed up the spirit of his school, offered the following: after a boy had killed himself “the housemaster summoned the whole house and asked if anybody could suggest a reason. The young David Ormsby-Gore put up his hand and said, ‘Could it have been the food, sir?’” This strikes me as appallingly funny; or funny and appalling. It captures – in its black bad taste and high-stakes insouciance – some of what public schools teach their students. Nothing is so serious it can’t be a joke – and the joke, as Alex Renton notes, both fences with authority and obscurely reinforces it.
In 2014, Renton wrote in the Observer about his experiences in the boarding prep school Ashdown House, describing how he was sexually molested by a teacher; and how, when his contemporaries complained about abuse, they were themselves savagely punished for sneaking. In response to his article, he heard from hundreds with similar stories.


Here is a wide-ranging inquiry into the phenomenon of boarding schools in the UK. Renton paints a picture of class-based groupthink, made-up traditions, contagious snobbery and – in Larkin’s phrase – man handing on misery to man, and it deepening like a coastal shelf. It is striped with pungent quotations from those who have been through the system and been hurt by it. What’s most odd is that parents who had themselves been deeply unhappy at school went on, generation after generation, to send their children to the same places. Renton suggests that “normalisation” – rationalising the pain by deciding that it was good for you after all, or that your parents knew best – may be the psychological mechanism at work.


https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/12/stiff-upper-lip-by-alex-renton-review

Perhaps this is why they inflict "austerity" on the rest of us so blithely.


Renton lacks discipline, and is lazy. The Larkin quote is out of context as it is not about school: and hardly a wide-ranging enquiry, just the rantings of an impoverished schoolboy, rarely these days are there legacy places at public schools (i.e kids going to the school their parents went to), many of the better - and lesser - schools have large(ish) populations of foreign pupils and from new money homes = wealthy working class parents.

John.
Psamathe
Posts: 17650
Joined: 10 Jan 2014, 8:56pm

Re: Would you Abolish Eton?

Post by Psamathe »

The underlying issue I have with the Public School system is that it maintains the privilege through wealth. Merit and ability are irrelevant but rather it's a system where the wealthy maintain power and wealth at the expense of everybody else. In part it's the advantages alumni get through wearing "the school tie" meaning more capable people are overlooked ... and that has knock-on consequences for everybody else way beyond those who don't get the job or promotion.

Ian
reohn2
Posts: 45158
Joined: 26 Jun 2009, 8:21pm

Re: Would you Abolish Eton?

Post by reohn2 »

Psamathe wrote:The underlying issue I have with the Public School system is that it maintains the privilege through wealth. Merit and ability are irrelevant but rather it's a system where the wealthy maintain power and wealth at the expense of everybody else. In part it's the advantages alumni get through wearing "the school tie" meaning more capable people are overlooked ... and that has knock-on consequences for everybody else way beyond those who don't get the job or promotion.

Ian

That'll be about right.
-----------------------------------------------------------
"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
mercalia
Posts: 14630
Joined: 22 Sep 2013, 10:03pm
Location: london South

Re: Would you Abolish Eton?

Post by mercalia »

seems to be a lot of Old Etonions on this thread :wink: or people with more money than they know what to do with :wink:
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