You have a lot to learn. There’s a certain absolute depth of depravity and casual sadism in a wealthy American suburban school. It’s nearly impossible to explain to a continental European. The old English public schools had it too (and some still do I suppose), but at least in the English public school there was a certain sense of tradition, an encouragement to public service and at least a potential decent education in the classics (all of that was more honored in the breach than in reality, but still).

A big problem (though it’s hushed up) in most wealth suburban American schools is that there’s nearly always a certain clique that will literally do anything: most wealthy suburbs have a problem with that clique simply casually destroying the houses of fellow students they don’t like (this often happens multiple times a year). That clique regularly will gang rape any young woman they wish to, casually and frequently torture and beat numerous other students (in some cases managing a regime where dozens of students are beaten on a daily basis), torture and kill animals and so on. All of this occurs with the explicit approval of the entire community.

The citizens of Geneva are protected from the predations of the offspring of Russian oligarchs by the simple expedient of phoning the reliable and trustworthy Genevan police-force. Try doing that in American suburbia if the thug who’s raped your daughter and burned down your house also happens to be the quarterback. You’ll be lucky if you yourself make it out alive.

I know he’s hated on the left, and I know why, and I even suspect that it helps him in various ways that it is known that he’s hated on the left. I even disagree with, and have publically criticised, a great deal of what Labour has done in education (see my piece, eg, in the 2001 Labour Party Conference edition of Fabian Review, which pulls no punches, and all of which I stand by). I’m entirely on board with the hostility to Blair (I wouldn’t belong to a party led by him, myself, and I felt that way in 1994 and saw nothing to change my mind). Adonis is quite different, that’s all, and in my opinion deserves a lot more credit than he gets.

Well, the American idea of education, being rooted in Dewey, is more student-centered than the UK’s or the French. And doesn’t emphasize loading the head with a bunch of facts.

Disadvantages are that the process of education and starting a career takes longer: when I came to the US at 25, colleagues were surprised that I had both a graduate degree and a few years of work experience, when most of my US contemporaries were still figuring out what they wanted to be when they grew up.

Advantages are that your average product of a US education hasn’t had their confidence beaten out of them from being unable to vomit out material in an exam setting. I went to an excellent Grammar (selective) school in Norn Iron, and that system served me well, as it did the others who passed the 11-plus. But I can’t say the same from the other 70% of the population who got told they were failures at age 11.

Well, I doubt it can be any worse than large private schools here around lac Leman, popular among second- and third-tier Russian oligarchs and other nuevo rich characters. Though who knows…

Oh, sure. The same is often true of American private schools as well. (If anything, my private school I graduated from had substantively worse academics than the public high school I attended). But the true bottom depths of American character can only be explored in a public high school in a wealthy suburb. At least in the private school, the parents can choose to avoid the ones where rich idiots run amuck entirely (or at minimum, pull their kids out).

Engels—yes, of course I’m trying to irritate my left wing readers (of which i’m one). Well done! I’m in favour of abolition, myself (Swift can speak for himself). But the story around this is very complicated. Sure, its not a big step, though in soem parts of the country if this gets a grip it might make a small difference (you shou.ldn’t imagien that there are no negotiations under way with further schools). The swipe at Adonis, by the way, is quite inappropriate. He did go to a private school, I understand, but a very different one, and for very different reason, than Blair. I attended state schools for all my education, including one that has just been closed because it couldn’t get out of special measures (and had the same kind of students it had when I was there); still, overall I was much more educationally privileged than Adonis (of course, his superior intellect and capacity for hard work are undeserved, but that’s not what you meant).

Well, this is Adam Swift’s position iirc. Is he on the “very far left” now?

Anyway, do you honestly believe that buying off 5 out of the roughly 1250 UK private schools represents a serious first step towards the goal of their eventual abolition or are you just trying to antagonise your leftwing readers? At a rate of 5 a year, and on the unrealistic assumption that no new schools are created, it would be 250 years before we see the back of this country’s repulsive and anachronistic two-tier system of education. Until that happens people like Andrew Adonis and Tony Blair will continue to reap huge rewards which are denied to those more talented and harder working than they are, on the basis of cronyism, snobbery and their possession of undeserved educational advantages which are denied to the many.

Firstly, I see two major reasons for buying private education: to get a selective
school where your kid can be intelligent in peace, and as a status symbol. The
latter is an obvious Giffen good; it’s not surprising that the pure status
schools aren’t as good.

(At Cambridge I met several smart Westminsterites, some smart and musical
Wykeamists, quite a few smart people from NI’s grammar schools, and no smart
Etonians …)

Politically, there are basically two factions at play. The first lot are the “nobody
should have education better than anyone else”; this faction identifies
anywhere where a better education is given out for money and seeks to demolish
it. This is just squalid and anti-intellectual; what’s more, it will only make
the curve look worse, as the ability to buy personal tutors at home becomes
more important. That’s available to perhaps 1%, versus the private school 7%.
Also, where does this levelling down extend to? Do you ban parents buying books
for their children, as this confers an unfair educational advantage?

Bring the state sector up to the level of the private, not the private down. It
can be done; some schools are doing it. Which ones are they? How are they doing
it? The best way to get rid of the private sector is to make it unnecessary.

The second (overlapping) faction is the “if we force kids of rich/organised
parents into our rubbish state schools, they will exert political pressure to
improve the schools / their presence will raise standard”. This is not as bad
as the first, but both of the parts of it are unproven, and both parts rely on
using other people’s children as a means to a political end, which is morally
dubious. It’s also a strange idea of what “freedom of association” means.

It also includes a strange political assumption: you have enough political
power to condem private schools, but not enough political power to improve
public schools on your own, without enlisting the help of a class of people who
were a priori indifferent to you but will hate you if you try to force them
into your social model.

Evidence-based education would be great, as would education based recognising
that different children learn in different ways and therefore the system needs
to be flexible.

cian: “Where are the teachers going to go? Abroad?”

Well, yes, that’s one possibility, I’ve known people who’ve done that; or, if
you have some skills other than teaching, go to a regular job that pays better.
Someone I know has just gone from teaching to being an actuary before the age
of 30. It’s a free country.

bob b: nearly there. There’s a cultural problem with people not valuing
education. I have no idea how to fix this.

Andromeda has a very good point that’s worth repeating about private schools
for kids that have trouble fitting in in the public system.