Elitism

You have to wonder about teachers sometimes, especially Andrew Grant, chair of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, who tried to incite class warfare this week after suggesting that critics of fee paying schools ought to actually be grateful to parents who choose to privately educate their children because they are saving taxpayers’ money. He also commented that without public schools, there wouldn’t be enough officers to lead the British army, showing a desperate man using desperate examples in order to try to preserve the status quo for his beloved elite with their cut glass accents and obligatory Bullingdon Club memberships.
His rhetoric is typical of someone who wants to hark back to the good old days of the feudal system with serfs right at the bottom of the chain, grateful to the lord and master for providing permission to do anything from getting married to going to the loo.
I thought we’d moved on from all that. But according to Grant, us peasants should be grateful to the elite once again. Let’s all doff our flat caps together in unison, shall we? After the count of three.
We all know that private schools are basically processing centres for the country’s ruling elite and their very existence provides a nice stiff backbone for the class system and shores up Britain’s appalling levels of social mobility. 7 % of children in the UK are privately educated yet they end up getting 53% of the country’s top jobs. Thanks to them for sparing us all that responsibility and high wages.
Eton College, stomping ground of David Cameron and Boris Johnson and possibly the most socially divisive educational establishments in the country is a business that makes about £100 million a year educating over-privileged boys. Yet it is a charity – just like Children in Need or the RSPCA – meaning that it is subsidised by the tax payer. So thanks also for that – it’s good to know our hard earned cash is helping to prop up the Old Boys’ Network.
All of us want the best for our children, even us plebs that send our kids to the state comprehensive, but some of us believe the way to do that is by having a fair and equal society that provides opportunities for everyone, not one heavily swayed in the favour of those with high earning parents.