Education, Education, Education

“She also has that irresistibly easy charm that comes from a really expensive education.” Decca Aitkenhead Guardian 30 Sept 2011

“Eton… has a practice known as “oiling”, which is learning how to win friends and influence others, and how to clamber over them to get what you want. It’s a mixture of ambition, self-confidence and bloody-mindedness.” Anthony Seldon, headmaster of Wellington College

Upper middle-class Upwards and posh Stow Crats send their children to “public schools” (expensive private boarding schools), which are often single sex. These schools couldn’t survive on the numbers of children within commuting distance, so they have to board – and the system has to big up the advantages of boarding. Allegedly it teaches children to be independent, articulate and confident. But they have to leave their parents and families and local friends – and normal life. the parents expect the schools to teach their children everything. They can pretty much give up on parenting after their kids are 10. Or seven, if they go to prep schools. (Children of seven? Sent to live away from home? And nobody complains? What century is this?)

Caro Stow Crat explains she’s moving her children to a different private school because the one they’re at doesn’t really “stretch” them. This is code for they’re not getting high enough marks.

The parents pay huge fees – the children pay the most. Is it worth it?

Middle class parents are faced with this sum:
private school
tuition fees of £9,000
living expenses
unpaid internship
low-paid job in media
versus
foreign holidays
expensive new car
large garden
five bedroom house in desirable area
large wine bill

x thousand humanities graduates every year versus 1.5 jobs on The Guardian every year

Is their child's low-paid job in the media really worth sacrificing one of the items in column B? When will they insist that they’ll only pay for uni if the child studies law, medicine, banking, or dentistry?

Upwards are still on the treadmill of gap year (booked through a specialist company), student loan, unpaid internships. Upward children still want to work in the media, or fashion, or some other area where they make you slave till three in the morning for no pay. And their parents are still funding them to do it. Never mind that when their child eventually gets a job the pay is peanuts – the children will mix with nice people, and make nice friends, and the parents can boast to other parents. And the girls will get married (to one of the nice people they’ve met). So maybe it is all worth it.

Sam does all her children’s coursework so that they can get into a fee-paying school where the teachers rewrite the essays, paint the pictures, throw the pots etc. (In the 19th century, the drawing master produced the art work of his “accomplished” pupils.)

“Pupils from just 100 elite schools dominate a third of places at Oxford and Cambridge, exposing the "social bias" at the two universities, according to a report published today.” Daily Telegraph 2007

Upward and Stow Crat children all get into university, where they buy their essays from the Internet. Oxford and Cambridge are for the upper and upper middle classes. Exeter, Durham are for people who didn’t get into Oxbridge (and St Andrews is “the Exeter of Scotland”). They study French, history and English. Teales study tourism and hospitality.

The Guardian’s Tanya Gold described her time at Merton: “Who knew that the warmest things in Oxford were the marble buildings?”

The posh spent their time at private dining clubs and were rarely seen. A large group of students were just bewildered. Then there were “the Wannabes - the state-school kids who tried, pitifully, to buy into the Brideshead fantasy. They mooched around as parodies of 1930s Oxford students. The boys wore tweed suits and spectacles and the girls wore Laura Ashley and buns. They spent all their time in the library and dining in college wearing funny black gowns… They drank sherry and affected Celia Johnson voices. Although they usually did very well academically they seemed terribly unhappy… of the ones I am still in touch with, their careers have vanished into dust. They tried to plug themselves into an old boy network that didn't want them. The fantasy broke them. If you lose yourself to a fantasy at 19, it takes a long time to find yourself again… we all had our As at A-levels, our spidery little essay plans and our dry-as-bone reading lists. But nobody was learning. We were cramming.”

Holiday Hell for the Hoggarts

Simon Hoggart in the Guardian loves the French village where he and his family go on holiday: "There is no café and no shop, and no tourist bus has ever debouched scores of people here."

Hoggart continues: [A correspondent] and family found themselves on a wide and otherwise deserted beach on the Isles of Scilly. To their astonishment a couple arrived and for some reason selected a spot right next to them. [The writer] whispered to his son to pick a fight with his sister, which he did, causing much noise and tumult, followed by the departure of the couple. "This event has passed into family legend," he says.

To the middle-class Upwards, a deserted beach is "deserted but for us".

A friend writes: I was once at a party where there were two travel snobs, both of whom were boasting about their holidays in Mongolia, and one was showing off about having drunk yak's milk and the other said tartly "I think you'll find it was mare's milk."

Nowadays there’s a swish children’s boutique, and shops to sell you good olives and Scandinavian ceramics, muddled up with old-school purveyors of Swanage rock, plastic fairies and tat… it seems that half of southern Britain is coming to join us. So buying ginger beer and a vegetable pasty from the local post office we escape the madding crowd… While not exactly downmarket, Swanage is not the place to find boutique hotels… we stop a while at Corfe Castle. This is tourist-trap Britain, where... you can eat your body weight in locally sourced cake. The antique charm of the place still shines through… Swanage has few airs or graces; it’s more cheerful than chic. It hasn’t been “discovered” by the 4X4 brigade, like, say, Bridport…. John Bungey in The Times on Swanage, July 2011, describes his holiday destination almost solely in class terms. This is just what broadsheet readers expect. (Go to Swanage, it's lovely.)

More holiday hell here, here, here and here. And here.

Back to School

In the Guardian recently, Anthony Seldon, head of public school Wellington College, wrote in praise of... public schools. (For US readers, English public schools are expensive private schools. Yes, I know.) You see, public schools don't help you pass exams and get A*s, they teach you... character. And character is...? A pretty slippery concept. Here are a few excerpts.

"One of the core aims [of Toby Young's free school] is to instil in boys and girls from ordinary backgrounds the same edge that public school toffs have."

When Young arrived at Oxford University (the poshest) from a northern grammar school, he was bowled over by the public-school boys. "They had an assurance that contemporaries from humbler backgrounds altogether lacked" - he has probably been jealous of them ever since.

Top public school Eton "has a practice known as "oiling", which is learning how to win friends and influence others, and how to clamber over them to get what you want. It's a mixture of ambition, self-confidence and bloody-mindedness..."

"Young is right to emphasise the importance of character." State-educated youths "find they lack confidence and roundedness..." Baden-Powell described the Scout movement as a "character factory, designed to instil determination and resilience in all young people, regardless of class."

"Competitive sport is vital: it teaches resilience, teamwork and trust. Leadership training and mentoring should become widespread in schools. Young people should be given tough challenges, mental as well as physical..."

To give them "mental strength" send children on "hikes and gruelling expeditions". "Boarding... should become much more prevalent... The experience of living side by side with fellow students, and in conditions of relative deprivation, is profoundly character-building."

It looks like "character" can mean whatever you want it to mean. Public schools are often said to turn out "confident, articulate" young people. If you Google these words, you'll find they appear on the prospectus of most private schools. I like the sound of the Helen O'Grady Drama Academy in Africa, where they teach presentation, performance skills and public speaking. Because the confident, articulate child "finds it easier to make friends". If you want confident, articulate children, why not teach confidence and articulacy, rather than separating them from their families and subjecting them to gruelling hikes? It seems a roundabout method, to say the least.

Middlesex by John Betjeman

Gaily into Ruislip Gardens

Runs the red electric train,

With a thousand Ta's and Pardon's

Daintily alights Elaine;

Hurries down the concrete station

With a frown of concentration,

Out into the outskirt's edges

Where a few surviving hedges

Keep alive our lost Elysium -
rural Middlesex again.

Well cut Windsmoor flapping lightly,

Jacqmar scarf of mauve and green

Hiding hair which, Friday nightly,

Delicately drowns in Drene;

Fair Elaine the bobby-soxer,

Fresh-complexioned with Innoxa,

Gains the garden - father's hobby -

Hangs her Windsmoor in the lobby,

Settles down to sandwich supper
and the television screen.

Gentle Brent, I used to know you

Wandering Wembley-wards at will,

Now what change your waters show you

In the meadowlands you fill!

Recollect the elm-trees misty

And the footpaths climbing twisty

Under cedar-shaded palings,

Low laburnum-leaned-on railings

Out of Northolt on and upward
to the heights of Harrow hill.

Parish of enormous hayfields

Perivale stood all alone,

And from Greenford scent of may fields

Most enticingly was blown

Over market gardens tidy,

Taverns for the bona fide,

Cockney singers, cockney shooters,

Murray Poshes, Lupin Pooters,

Long in Kensal Green and Highgate
silent under soot and stone.

No lawns, honey, vicars or crumpets. Bejteman is lamenting (in 1954) that Middlesex, once rural or semi-rural, has been suburbanised. Elaine is lower middle-class - she says "Ta!" or "Pardon!" for "Thankyou" and "Excuse me" (nobody does any more). She wears a Windsmoor mackintosh and a lurid Jacqmar scarf, and washes her hair in Drene. (The upper middle classes think they're above brands and brand names and never mention them - or they didn't then.) And yes, women washed their hair only once a week!

Betjeman contrasts this neat, polite, genteel girl with the louche Edwardians (now gone) who strolled through the fields, now built over. Murray Posh and Lupin Pooter are two dudes from George and Weedon Grossmith's Diary of a Nobody; Kensal Green and Highgate are London cemeteries.

See also Betjeman's poem about Miss J. Hunter Dunn, and Phone for the Fish Knives, Norman.

More John Betjeman

A Subaltern's Love Song

Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament -- you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

Her father's euonymus shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath.
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.

On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun,
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

The Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing's the light on your hair.

By roads "not adopted", by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells
And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
Oh! Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand!

Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.

And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

The characters in this poem are middle-middle - not out of the top drawer. A subaltern was a lowly young officer.

In the 20s and 30s, Aldershot was full of new houses built in a self-consciously cottagey, olde-worlde style on sandy soil that was no use for farming. It was popular with army families, who laid out tennis courts and golf courses where there had been heath and woodland - and conifers.

A euonymus is a variegated shrub, and rather suburban - as are summer houses, verandahs and gin-and-lime. Joan's window is "low" and "leaded" in the cottage style, to go with the "oak" stairs. The pictures of Egypt were probably souvenirs of her father's postings abroad.

Joan can only afford a small Hillman car to drive down the wooded roads. Camberley may be built up - but there is enough of nature left to enchant the lovers who are quite happy to miss the dance in the Golf Club.

Betjeman shows us that a minor officer wooing a tennis-playing girl in a banal setting can be as romantic as a troubadour. No mention of lawns, vicars, crumpets or honey.

Betjeman's Phone for the Fish Knives, deconstructed.

Snobbery about Writers

I was collecting some clichés about writers, and realised that a lot of them are about class. So here's What to Say About:

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES "LM Montgomery portrayed rural Prince Edward Island as a folksy paradise where good triumphs and endings are happy, but her own life was far from ideal." (The Green Gables saga has plenty of tragedy, rural life is shown as hard, rural poverty is not romanticized. Maybe the later books are more syrupy.)

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED It’s about flannelled toffs at Oxford. (It's about how aristocratic families damage and neglect their children.)

AGATHA CHRISTIE She was “ladylike”. Her characters are all cardboard cutouts, two-dimensional stereotypes. "The latest biography shows us a fully rounded character." Her greatest mystery was her life. She was a snob who only wrote about aristocrats in country houses. (She wrote about hairdressers holidaying at Le Touquet, and typists chasing spies in Baghdad - among other things.)

GEORGE ORWELL June 09 – a BBC memo has turned up wondering if his voice would do for radio. Cue blethering about how he was an Old Etonian, had a posh accent, didn’t have a posh accent, disguised his posh accent, spoke in Mockney, spoke in “Duke of Windsor cockney”, had a “colonial manner”. We know he went to Eton, served in the Burmese police, was shot in the throat in the Spanish Civil War, admitted to toning down his accent when living as a tramp, had TB and smoked heavily; no recording of his voice survives. (His prose is often condemned as plodding and flat-footed – perhaps because he published a list of instructions on how to write that warn against being flowery.)

JOHN BETJEMAN Old-fashioned, snobbish, obsessed with the upper classes and an England of cricket matches, tea and crumpets, warm beer. (He was a precise observer of class markers and would never sink to cliches about crumpets.) “John Betjeman's soppy idylls about honey on the vicarage lawn.” Stephen Bayley Obs Mar 2 08 A Subaltern’s Love Song is B’s “fantasy idyll”. "Light verse sells. Poetry doesn't have to be miserable, deeply intellectual, tortuously emotional, or clever. But more than that, he provided simple rhymes and rhythms. Betjeman is musical, and easy, and if you'd rather call it verse than poetry, that may say something about your own attitude to taste. When poetry disowns any of the properties of music, it must take care to offer something in its place. So if you want to sell a lot, Betjeman is a good model." (Guardian arts blog - you can rely on the socialist Guardian to be more snobbish than any other broadsheet.)

Easy metre? Simple rhymes? You try writing:
Pam, I adore you, Pam, you great big mountainous sports girl,

Whizzing them over the net, full of the strength of five:
That Old Malvernian brother, you zephyr and khaki shorts girl,

Although he's playing for Woking,

Can't stand up 
To your wonderful backhand drive.

"The image must have helped. He was one of the few poets whose face was known, because of his TV work; he looked like a teddy bear and sounded harmless and eccentric. In addition he was nothing like the stereotype of the drunk hell-raising poet... He seemed cosy; in many ways his poetry was cosy and unthreatening, though not always - he could be acute and painful on death and old age... And of course his poems were accessible, they didn't make people feel stupid and they yielded pleasure in return for very little work on the reader's part. We all like that sort of reading sometimes - maybe not Betjeman, because he's very English middle-class in a way that doesn't travel far outside those parameters, but we all have comfort reading we go back to when we don't specially want our brain stretching." (Guardian arts blog)

Betjeman epitomised everything that was wrong about postwar England - its nostalgia, conservatism, snobbery, provincialism... He is the poetic equivalent of a mediocre Devon cream tea in the rain. All the palaver about him strikes me as being a bunch of people congratulating themselves on being British and middle class. (Guardian arts blog)

Classy Collecting

A friend writes: "What people like us are meant to say about Antiques Road Show is 'My dere, the greed that people exhibit, the way their eyes light up when they are told what they have got is valuable etc etc.' People like us are still supposed to be connoisseurs and collectors like people with stately homes who went on the Grand Tour."

Uppr-middle-class Sam and grand Caro despise programmes like Bargain Hunt/Flog It/The Antiques Roadshow for the above reasons, also because the people on it are common and collect the wrong kind of things. They talk sneeringly about people selling “pewter tankards” for £30.

Middle-class Jen and Eileen collect Moorcroft pottery, carved Bavarian bears and Copenhagen porcelain. Jen has inherited a set of metal goblets which she uses to serve wine to guests – then she puts them back in their presentation box.

Sam is now into Arts and Crafts – plain wooden furniture from the late 19th century. She has chucked out the Victoriana that used to clutter up her house and went so well with the flowery chintz chair-covers. Rusting advertising signs crow-barred off the side of a rustic shed are sooooo over. As are wash-stand sets (jug and basin).

The very trendy Upwards used to collect Whitefriars and Orefors glass (looks like a half-eaten boiled sweet) – but they cashed in recently and now buy distressed sets of pigeon-holes, metal chairs and school desks with the original authentic dust and ink-stains. Downmarket Mrs Definitely collects Doulton crinoline ladies, Bunnikins china and Swarowski crystal animals. The Queen collects Fabergé – little trees and animals made out of semi-precious stones. But she inherited a lot of it and I suppose she feels she can’t put it in the attic.

Why are posh accents described as “cut glass”? Cut glass is faceted like a diamond, and cut with a diamond wheel. If you can’t afford the real thing, you buy a moulded imitation. But when the real thing becomes cheaper and moves downmarket it is shunned by the middle classes. Also it’s too shiny for them. Stow Crats carry on using the cut glass bought by their 18th century ancestors.