A long but fascinating article

An insightful read. Thank you for sharing. It struck many a chord with me, especially the apparent juvenile lack of either shame or responsibility.

I've never understood the desire to send your children away. Surely if you have the money to pay for the schools you could afford the help to keep them at home while you pursue your glittering career.

Thank you, very interesting read.

I read that yesterday and wondered if it should be posted on the News and Politics forum since the products of these dreadful stunted childhoods seem to predominate in our political milieu.

I shall have a read at that, thank you. I have never understood packing children off to school, unless career needs dictate it such as multiple army or diplomatic postings.

Deedaa

I've never understood the desire to send your children away. Surely if you have the money to pay for the schools you could afford the help to keep them at home while you pursue your glittering career.

Nonsense, Deeda. It's character forming and ensures that you develop a network of all the right people which will be invaluable to you in your future career.

This has been recognised by the Elite for at least the last 200 years and, looking at the origins of most of our 'great men' has worked an absolute treat for them.

thank you

but golly that beastly article is rather sexist
boys male teachers male politicians
anyone care to recount their time at roedean or at benenden darlings

Lillie

thank you

but golly that beastly article is rather sexist
boys male teachers male politicians
anyone care to recount their time at roedean or at benenden darlings

I don’t see your point. The writer is speaking about his experience as a male. The majority of powerful people are mail.

When I saw the title of your thread Moorland, I knew it was going to be that article.
I had that very conversation with my partner yesterday and sent him the article.

It is sobering reading but insightful.
The writer confirms what you thought you knew/suspected.

GNs ... I concur that it’s well worth reading.

Male, not mail.

I was at a boarding school because my parents were posted overseas. I’m afraid my all-girls public school was not hugely different to the boys’ schools cited in the article. Its main aim was to produce ‘X-school girls’ rather than develop us as people. They tried to remove every shred of individualism by punishment, humiliation and shaming until we conformed.

Example: tampons were forbidden in case they compromised virginity (!). We had to queue up each month for our ration of STs from the matron, and woe betide you if you had irregular periods because you faced an inquisition about why your body wasn’t working exactly to a 28 day clock. In one house assembly, the housemistress held up a used tampon that had been found floating in the fifth form toilet. She told us the whole 5f were gated until the perpetrator identified herself. The following morning, the poor girl was named and shamed in assembly for her moral degeneracy, and the tampon was handed over to her to dispose of.

We were groomed to be very high academic achievers who could get a good job until such time as we married a diplomat, high-powered businessman or minor royalty, at which point we were expected to abandon any personal ambition to become perfect housewives who could single-handedly pull off afternoon tea parties, cocktail parties and dinner parties. We had to be able to make or repair expensive clothes, including complicated tailoring. Goodness knows why - if we were to catch a wealthy husband, repairing haut couture originals or Savile Row suits would presumably be done by someone else. To this day, I instinctively spot deviations from the ‘correct’ form of dress for formal occasions. A white bow tie with a DJ or the wrong length dress for a black tie dinner scream ‘wrong’ in my subconscious.

I changed schools at 16 to a much smaller, more liberal boarding school, and was shocked to discover that it wasn’t normal to be unhappy at school. I’d just assumed that the controlled misery I and my peers at the first school experienced was the way things were.

The article is spot on. I refused to send my own kids to public schools when my parents offered to pay. They were seriously offended, but both of them had been to state day schools, and they never really understood how dire my life had been. No sane person who has been tortured would willingly inflict the same on their beloved kids.

It’s amazing how many well known people have been to boarding school. I don’t read many biographies/autobiographies but read Clare Baldings and John Peels (two people that I really like/liked and admired), and they both went to boarding school which they hated. If I remember right they were bullied, too. I wonder if ((naming no names) it’s the bullies that rise to the top? I’ve never forgotten seeing a group of very young boys on a train on their way to prep school and my heart just went out to them. It reminded me of the children that were sent away from their families during the war. I could no more have chopped my own arm off than send my children away. It was bad enough when they went to uni. I used to sit and cry in the garden ( my neighbour told me years later that she heard me) in the run up to my daughter leaving home. And she only went to a uni 30 minutes drive away!

I think the fact that Johnson is damaged is very clear to see, it isnt just the boarding school, lots of alleged disfunction in relation to his father.

Deedaa

I've never understood the desire to send your children away. Surely if you have the money to pay for the schools you could afford the help to keep them at home while you pursue your glittering career.

I think this is part of the ongoing tradition from the middle ages. If your parents wanted their son to become a knight, at about seven years old, they would send you to be a page in the home of a knight. It was an apprenticeship for the upper-classes. Around 15 years old a boy became a "squire" to be trained in warfare and fighting. Even thinking about that makes me think of "fagging".

Thank you MoorlandMooner for sharing. Sadly Philip Larkin (who didn't go to boarding school) did get it half right in This Be the Verse. However, time with our parents, extended family, and others allow us to work more out for ourselves.

Thanks for posting that MoorlandMooner. This seems trivial but I did think that the picture at the top must have been posed by actors for some comedy on TV or something. But no, its our esteemed PM and his pals.

I think David Cameron at least showed he had a human, emotional side when he wrote of Ivan - his late son. How he wrote was no different to anyone else who had a child with a severe disability - even if his domestic situation would be wildly different wrt care/help.

Alegrias1

Thanks for posting that MoorlandMooner. This seems trivial but I did think that the picture at the top must have been posed by actors for some comedy on TV or something. But no, its our esteemed PM and his pals.

I thought that, it was such an odd photograph

An excellent, insightful read - thank you.

Why isn't anyone horrified that these are the men who predominately run our country, administer our justice and control our armed forces?

I think many are Maizie. The problem is what to do to change it.

MaizieD

Why isn't anyone horrified that these are the men who predominately run our country, administer our justice and control our armed forces?

I've never failed to be amazed at how people who did not have the sort of education described in the article could vote for Johnson and the rest. It strikes me that they must think their "betters" are cleverer and know more "stuff" than they do.

Years ago we flat shared with an old Etonian. He had left at 16 and gone to art school and then to London Contemporary Dance Theatre at which point in his life we met him. It was obvious that he came from a privileged background but he was very different from others that we met who were public school educated.

We were talking one day about our schools and how special trains were laid on to take children to Stratford upon Avon to see the RSC. He recounted how carriages taking Eton boys was badly damaged by the occupants. Had it been done by state school children the police would have been called. Because it was Eton it was hushed up and the parents coughed up.

4 of our friends in Suffolk (two couples) were teachers in the state sector who sent their children to the local private schools. One of the boys, who was sent because he was removed from his state school for setting light to a child's hair in the chemistry lab) referred to state school children as oiks. I don't think that any of the children achieved what their parents had hoped.

Thank you for posting the link MoorlandMooner. I found the article interesting and wasn't surprised that the higher percentage of comments at the end were from people who had suffered at school.

That article did fascinate me! I have often heard Boris Johnson being accused of putting together a government of old public schoolboys.

Before I read the article I never understood the explicit character of the indoctrination in the English public school system.

MaizieD

Why isn't anyone horrified that these are the men who predominately run our country, administer our justice and control our armed forces?

Another horror is the terrible loss to the country of those from other backgrounds who have more aptitude, skill and emotional intelligence but who never get a look in because this particular set of boys, regardless of ability or suitability, are a shoo-in straight to the heart of power.

I think we’re still a class driven society. That Two Ronnies sketch, the ‘I know my place’ one springs to mind.