Class Politics

I see that bonkers education secretary Michael Gove is back to that hoary old favourite of the reactionary right - that state schools need to be more like private schools if they are to improve their standards.  All of which presupposes that private schools are 'better' than state schools in the first place.  I've argued here before that the alleged superiority of the private education sector is a myth, an illusion perpetuated by the privileged elites that attend them and consequently occupy positions of influence in politics, industry, finance and the media.  Central to the myth is that the private school system imbues its pupils with a degree of confidence which allows them to advance themselves and occupy these top positions, beating their more numerous state-educated contemporaries to the top spots time after time.  Except, of course, that their success has less to do with the standard or style of the education they receive, than it does with the fact that they generally have wealthy parents whose contacts can ensure them a leg up in life, in whatever field of employment they choose to enter.  Moreover, having spent several years at school mixing with other privileged and wealthy offspring, they build up their own network of well-placed friends and contacts: the so-called Old Boy's Network.

Then there's the question of whether private schools really do produce better results.  It wouldn't be a surprise if they did.  After all, they have smaller class sizes, far more resources (all paid for by those exorbitant fees) and frequently have better facilities.  Yet, in truth, they don't produce significantly better results.  Despite all the other advantages that money can buy, it can't buy the best teaching talent, it also can't buy intelligence - many private school pupils are, to put it bluntly, thick as shit and academically useless.  In truth, as I've said before, what the private school sector is good at is in teaching its students to have an overwhelming sense of entitlement and instilling in them the idea that they belong to some deserving elite.  They exist to reinforce the status quo and  prevent 'social mobility'.  In reality, they are the ones who could learn much from the state sector: that education isn't just for an elite and that everyone's aspirations should be encouraged.  But that isn't this government's mission, which is instead to drag us back to feudal society with an ossified social hierarchy where the peasants are taught just enough to be useful as cheap labour and al know their forelock-tugging place.