Poll: What kind of school did Dissensus posters go to?

What sort of school did you go to?

  • Public School (i.e. posh, fee-paying etc)

    Votes: 13 23.2%
  • Grammar (i.e. had to pass exams / jump through hoops to get in)

    Votes: 7 12.5%
  • Comprehensive (i.e. would take anybody)

    Votes: 34 60.7%
  • commune (i.e. home schooled, brought up by hippies, Steiner etc)

    Votes: 1 1.8%
  • Other (brought up by wolves / "university of life, me")

    Votes: 1 1.8%

  • Total voters
    56

john eden

male pale and stale
Following on from the Oi thread I'm interested to know how many Dissensans did attend public schools?

Did you enjoy it?

Would you say this has had a generally beneficial or detrimental effect on your lives since?

Are there situations where you feel you shouldn't let on about it?

It's an anonymous poll, by the way.

(NB for non-uk posters: "Public School" in the UK refers to fee-paying schools such as Eton, where people's parents generally pay for their education rather than the state. Yes, I accept that this is confusing!)
 
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mms

sometimes
i went to mainly state schools - but went to a private school for a bit which i got a music scholarship for, it meant my parents could afford it, but meant i had to becomea cathedral chorister as well, which was hard work 6 days a week from 8 till 6 with school inbetween.
The experience was strange at 8 - snobbishness on both sides - some of the people i went to comp school with really turned against me when they heard i had gained a scholarship and in return there was an element of insitutionalised snobbery from some of the teachers at the private school, people were treated differently from me as they knew their parentshad influence and power etc, Infact when i started i began to tell my mum and dad wonderous fables and tales about the new school - cos i knew it would make them happy, even though i was pretty confused about it all + my sister and most of my friends around where i lived all went to state school.

The snobbishness returned when i went to a comp next - i kept it pretty quiet that i'd been to a private school i knew some people from infant and early juniors and i got a bit of a cold shoulder, which i would put down to inverted snobbery.
also the difference in standards in education were huge - i really think i benefitted from the private school education wise and i was way ahead of the majority of kids at teh state school even though i'm not particulary academic, - but from shifting thru the assumed class barriers i also think my self asteem suffered too, esp as the drop in education standards extended my alienation even further and by the time i was doing my gcses i didn't care as much as i think i would've done had i still been at a private school, where i would have been pushed much harder.

As far as not letting on about it now i couldn't care less- although i haven't got any friends who went to that private school anymore- i've got friends who went to both private and public schools and comps if they don't get on that's their problem, but i do think people who spent a long time at boarding school etc are very aware of it and some feel a bit guilty and angsty or they naturally expect the best for them every step of the way. They also have a habit of making up silly myths and assumptions about people who are working class but i think from my experience that this is something engrained during school. They also seem to resent their parents quite alot for sending them there.
 
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Woebot

Well-known member
i went to a preparatory school (between 7-13) which was a fee-paying "boarding" school. however i think something like 75-80% of the kids went onto big local comprehensives. i think this made me something of a misfit in my own "class".

it was the wrong place for my parents to send me if they wanted me to get into my second school (between 13-18) which i scraped into cos i was on totally the wrong curriculum. my second school was extremely posh. nuff said.

the other day i drove past my prep school and felt this really acute wrenching pain. indicative of how i felt about being dumped at the place aged 7. i began to settle in there aged 13 just as i was off to my second school.

at my second really posh school i was more obviously miserable, was a total outsider, thought practically all the people weren't worth talking to, and had two proper friends in five years. just painted/printed/listened to music/went swimming on my own. there's no way on earth i'd ever consider sending my children away from home.
 

stelfox

Beast of Burden
mine's a bit of a weird one - state schools all my life, but my secondary education was at a state boarding school. and no, i do not mean borstal, i mean a boarding school but part of the state sector. i think there are only two in the country now, and there were only about four back then.

(obviously that means i can't vote in the poll coz it's kinda a cross between option 1 and option 2 and i don't want to say i was raised by wolves.)

i fucking hated it. it was in the norfolk countryside and mainly frequented by middle-class kids whose parents wanted them to go to a boarding school with a good educational record (it was the best in my county at the time) or by kids whose parents were in the services and stationed in places like germany or cyprus.

the pervasive tone was very snobby, looking down on kids from other state schools, but with a strange added inferiority complex that it wasn't a proper private establishment.

it was also incredibly white - about 4 kids of hong kong chinese heritage, 1 black kid, and 2 asians out of 1,600 pupils. these poor kids got no end of grief. and i remember my buddy and roommate being chased around the house with people yelling "coon" at him to this day.

bullying was rife, with older kids permitted to dole out punishments to younger kids, and i was alway in trouble, constantly in fights and generally didn't have a great time.

the only times i was really happy there were when i was doing athletics, because it was the one chance you got to do anything for yourself or claim a victory that wasn't team-based.

however, i made a few of my very best friends there and passed a lot of exams that i would otherwise probably never have even turned up for if i'd been at a regular school where bunking off were at all possible.

still, i'm with matt. aside from probably never being able to afford it, there's no way in the world i'd ever send my kids to a place like that.
 
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mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
I went to fee-paying but non-boarding schools in London, and the experience was extremely mixed. I was very, very hard work and I think would have been wherever I had been at school, though I avoided expulsion by being kinda good academically. I was awarded a bursary ( fee-exemption ) to stay on there to do my A levels and turned it down. I remain very proud of that.

I generally hated the experience, and hated the factory-type model I perceived I was in with regard to status and expectation. I left at 16 - one of two people to do so out of maybe 200 kids - and have been very, very wary of education ever since. I don't like talking about school at all, and view it as essentially prison. Teachers I view with the same mixture of distaste and fetishism I would if they were prison guards.

I don't know many solutions - home schooling I think is problematic with regard to socialisation - and don't want any kids of my own, though have been heavily involved with bringing up my ex=partner's daughter. She didn't want to go to school one day when she was 6 and I said that she had to, and would have to for the next ten years. She burst into tears, and I knew exactly how she felt.
 

swears

preppy-kei
I went to a Grammar on the Wirral, (one of the few places left with Grammar schools) and I loved it. No beatings from ruffians, good standard of education absolutely free, nice location in a leafy suburbs, lots of kids into music and films, it's own swimming pool....
*sigh* I miss school. :(
 

Gabba Flamenco Crossover

High Sierra Skullfuck
I went to a comprehensive in cheshire. My dad's a head teacher in the state sector, and my mum was sent to a secondary modern after fluffing her 11-plus because she had flu (the mistake was corrected after the first year), so both my parents had ideological reasons for wanting me to get a state sector education. Plus our local comp was fairly decent academically, so there was no pressing need to consider alternatives.

I drifted through school, and I can't remember much about it. Obviously I'm aware that I attended for 5 years, but I cant really relate any anecdotes or sketch any characteristics of the people I met there - I have lots of vivid memories of my childhood & teens, but they all take place out of school. I got decent grades in all my exams without ever pushing myself very hard, and I left school without any real sense of who i was or what I should do with my life.

I sometimes wander how it would have turned out if I'd gone to a school which pushed me harder, and my conclusion is that the rewards could have potentially been greater but the risks would have been more acute. i could have been a captain of industry by now, but i could just as easily be a acid casualty in a home somewhere - i dont always react well to pressure. Generally I'm happy with what I got.

I share mr. sloane's suspicion of education - I hung on for my A-levels just about, but i left to get a job at 18. I've only just gone back to university (at 30), doing a very vocational, trade-oriented course & it's working out OK.
 

Don Rosco

Well-known member
stelfox said:
still, i'm with matt. aside from probably never being able to afford it, there's no way in the world i'd ever send my kids to a place like that.

I'm the same - I went to a fee-paying school, but I wasn't a boarder. There were boarders there, and it would have done my nut right in. For a start, bunking off would have been impossible, and some of my happiest memories from those times involve the massive feeling of freedom you get from not being in school when you're supposed to be.

However, my girlfriend went to boarding school and absolutely loved it. Possibly because she was from a country town and she got to live in Dublin, but it at least shows it works for some people. I couldn't imagine it though *shudder*

Gabba Flamenco Crossover said:
I hung on for my A-levels just about, but i left to get a job at 18. I've only just gone back to university (at 30), doing a very vocational, trade-oriented course & it's working out OK.

I'm pretty much the same, I just finished a vocational course at the age of 32. In school, I ground out some super average results in my Leaving Cert (a-level equivalent), and went to college for about a month before realising it wasn't for me. 18 is a terrible age to decide what you want to do with your life. I got a job in my friend's record shop where my real education began!

Interestingly enough, my friend with the shop performed terribly in school, he was in the lowest stream and was always in trouble for being a cheeky cunt. He went on to make a packet with the shop, which put him through flight school, and now he's a commercial pilot. Shows you what teachers know :p


(although, I don't think the Prison Guard analogy is a fair one for a lot of teachers who are trying their best to educate kids)
 

D7_bohs

Well-known member
Slightly off topic, but Don Rosco's post brought it to mind; when i was at school, relatively few Irish kids went to fee paying secondary schools; currently state sector schools in richer parts of Dublin are closing due to lack of numbers while fee paying schools expand hugely - the reason? while the country is obviously richer than it was in the 70s, but a factor is the abolition of university fees in the mid- 90s - at just about the time they were reintroduced in Britain. Instead of raising working-class participation in third level education, the main effect of free access to college has been that middle class families spend the money they would previously have spent of univesity fees on school fees to get their thicko offspring into university, thus making the universities even more like bigger boarding schools (and lowering standards, since half the kids only got there through cramming), whereas working class families still prefer to have the kids earning as early as possible - and with inadequate grants for poorer families, a job will always win out over 3-4 years accruing debt
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
State primary, (mixture of backgrounds and incomes, lots of fights but relatively good fun) then Grammar Skool from 11... very good place academically, but I despised it pretty much from beginning to end, as did large numbers of people there... all boys, school on a bloody Saturday morning... basically they ran it like a fee-paying school without the fees, there were even boarders, (poor sods)... utter utter hatred... I dont feel ashamed about telling people about it. I probably would if I went to public skool tho... (the one's I feel sorry for are public skoool kids who went to shit, unfamous public skools, the ones whose results are pretty mediocre. They just look like chumps... they were sent there purely for the old boys/girls network... the swines....)
 
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S

simon silverdollar

Guest
Gabba Flamenco Crossover said:
I went to a comprehensive in cheshire. .


me too. where were you at? ( i was at helsby high, btw. it was alright, i guess...)
 

jenks

thread death
An all boys comprehensive that used to be a grammar but thought it was a minor public school. We had a quad that you could only walk round clockwise, teachers in gowns and doors that only certain people could enter.

As well as this we had an upper band and lower band and never the twain should meet, except for games. Where, of course, matters of social injustice were resolved in the time honoured fashion.

I was in the upper band but was conspicuous by being the only boy from my council estate who had made it into the illustrious heights. My time at school was horrible - i was bullied by both sides and regularly had my lunch stolen. At no time did the school intervene and because i wasn't one of the super bright kids i was never pushed, instead i was left alone to bob along.

maybe being raised by wolves might have been more productive, at least i would have learnt to fight for my lunch more effectively.
 

sufi

lala
Top thread! – disclosure most timely in view of the education thread also,

I was a boarder at posh public school for some years - in fact as a likkle pickney of about 8 i shared a dorm with woebot :D :D
i was naturally a righteous rebel at every opportunity, i won school elections on anarcho-syndicalist ticket, & as a repeat offender was forced to share a room with another recidivist who’s now a-list bollywood celeb – it was that type of deal :rolleyes: as I boast no such distinguished ancestry I was then unceremoniously booted out,
I found the whole experience extremely trying, the level of snobbery and bullying was an utter misery, but I did leave with as much kultural kapital/baggage I could fit in my wheelbarrow which in many ways has stood me in good stead I guess, though it has taken many years of intensive narco-therapy to rehabilitate myself to society
 

Lichen

Well-known member
Boarding school at 7; deleriously free and exciting at times, utterly, dreadfully frightening at others .

Posh school thereafter; barely touched the walls, last three years a blur of Courage Directors, B&H and soap bar.

Sent home just before A-levels to which I commuted .

University a total waste of time.


I'm a disgrace but WTF :D
 

mms

sometimes
swears said:
So nobody apart from me liked school, then?

yeah i liked bits of school for sure.
it would be foolish to say that every day was misery. mostly hanging out with friends talkign about girls and music and films
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
So nobody apart from me liked school, then?
I thought that it was ok. It was the local comprehensive but I guess it had a fairly good reputation. I was never bullied despite being in all the top sets, I think that being in some of the sports teams afforded me some protection as a lot of people did experience various levels of bullying. Kids are really cruel I think and looking back I wonder how I got through so unscathed, it certainly doesn't take much imagination to see that it could be a living hell for some people. I much preferred sixth form and university although with hindsight I realise that in some ways I reacted badly to the relative freedom of university and I regret not working harder towards my degree.
 

tryptych

waiting for a time
tiny state primary in the countryside, miles from home, chosen by my parents which was absolutely wicked - only about 20 kids in my year, forest out the back of the playground we were allowed to make dens in the summer term, big adventure playground...

then local grammar school from 11 - sounds similar to gek's, all boys, some boarders. ambivalent about it really - some of the opportunities were fantastic, learning to sail, studying ancient greek (our teacher set the greek GCSE), getting massively supported in our university applications. at the time it seemed quite fun, although i was pretty depressed around 15-16.

in hindsight, what i liked least was being at a single sex school. having virtually no contact with girls your own age from 11 to 16 can do some pretty heavy damage to your social skills where females are concerned. but then i would probably not worked as hard in a mixed school... eh, who knows.
 
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