The stigma attached to attending public school

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Clay Davis

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Hi gaf, hope everyone is doing okay and having a good weekend.

I need to vent this after what can only be described as an awful dinner last night between myself, a friend and her associates.

The subject of school came up and we all talked about which one we attended and the mood was relatively jovial until I brought up I had attended public school. The mood shifted almost immediately and I was then subjected to snide remarks throughout the rest of the dinner.

I tried to take them in stride, but they became particularly more pointed towards the end of the dinner, things like "rich boy can pay for dinner", "what's it like being a toff", "was there a lot of gay stuff going on" (this, unsurprisingly, isn't the first time I've heard this one. It's the go-to for people when they hear I went to an all boys public school) as well as other comments that had a very clear and strong undercurrent of anger and hate to them.

I don't understand why they felt the need to become so hostile. Is it really so terrible that my parents were able to afford a public school? Isn't it the dream of every parent to send their child to the best school to receive the best education? So why then do some people become angry and sneer at those who have been fortunate enough have such opportunities?

I thought it might be jealously, but these were not people who I would say were struggling, they were in good careers, which is why their behaviour really took me by surprise.
 
A lot of people are hostile in the West towards people who spend more on education.
Conversely, in Asia you almost have to go to cram school to succeed.

RedSparrows said:
N.b. Non UK readers, 'public school' means 'private school', because Britain.
Click to expand...

Does that mean Hogwarts was a "public" school?
 
Whatever not public school is called in the UK, if it's anything like American public school, is probably where you go to get a set of cajones to bust some of their balls back while also learning how to take some ball busting yourself.
 
RedSparrows said:
N.b. Non UK readers, 'public school' means 'private school', because Britain.
Click to expand...

I've been living here for 15 years and this still confuses me.

It's so dumb.

Regular UK public schools are so strict, walled off/gated and uniforms, and shit, they might as well be private schools.

Glad I was never schooled here.
 
I wouldn't blame someone for having gone to one, but I hate Public Schools in this country. They're basically institutions designed to reduce social mobility. And for some insane reason they don't have to pay tax.
 
People who I met who went to Public School happens to be snobs and relatively assholish. Maybe that is why.

My boss at school can't shut up about his children went to the 'best'' school and went to Cambridge and all of that, even though the rest of us came from respectable universities with good grades.

Thee are also designed to be handpick the ones who come from better background than the ones who don'/ or can't afford it. They have the best teachers, best facilities, etc, so obviously they will get into the better universities and hence get better jobs.
 
its like a learned behaviour from the high school tribalism days (at least here in australia), like these guys up in the north shore who spend tons of money to go to a super exclusive school with a swimming pool and tennis courts while my school could barely afford to run more sports than rugby every year. also a lot of them were giant pricks and would go to our lower class areas in tour buses to "get a feel for the culture" of the area and how we live, as if its some third world country. but then again, its high school shit.

paying for a leg-up wasn't a strange thing either, most kids in my school went tutoring (most kids were asian though so make of that what you will)
 
Ah, private school.

I think those people were jerks. Where a person is sent to school isn't really their choice, and no, you should not apologize or feel bad for having the termerity of being born fortunate.
 
RedSparrows said:
N.b. Non UK readers, 'public school' means 'private school', because Britain.
Click to expand...

MPFi2xN.gif


On topic those guys are assholes, I'd say best not to meet them again if they're going to be shitty
 
Clay Davis said:
Hi gaf, hope everyone is doing okay and having a good weekend.

I need to vent this after what can only be described as an awful dinner last night between myself, a friend and her associates.

The subject of school came up and we all talked about which one we attended and the mood was relatively jovial until I brought up I had attended public school. The mood shifted almost immediately and I was then subjected to snide remarks throughout the rest of the dinner.

I tried to take them in stride, but they became particularly more pointed towards the end of the dinner, things like "rich boy can pay for dinner", "what's it like being a toff", "was there a lot of gay stuff going on" (this, unsurprisingly, isn't the first time I've heard this one. It's the go-to for people when they hear I went to an all boys public school) as well as other comments that had a very clear and strong undercurrent of anger and hate to them.

I don't understand why they felt the need to become so hostile. Is it really so terrible that my parents were able to afford a public school? Isn't it the dream of every parent to send their child to the best school to receive the best education? So why then do some people become angry and sneer at those who have been fortunate enough have such opportunities?

I thought it might be jealously, but these were not people who I would say were struggling, they were in good careers, which is why their behaviour really took me by surprise.
Click to expand...

Some people in this thread are probably going to tell you to just suck it up because privilege.

Fuck that. Your friends were being arseholes.
 
I pretty much assumed OP was from the UK based on the title. To Americans public school basically means elite of the elite private schools. I don't know why it just is. They produce guys like David Cameron, Eddie Redmayne Tom,Hiddleston, Eggs Benedict Cucumberpatch, Chiwetal Ejiofor etc etc. I work with a guy that finds the idea of sending your kdis to private or public schools repugnant, that it leads to them not experiencing real life. Me personally, if i had the money for it, I'd do it. I had trouble naming people that were medical students in my time at uni that got into undergrad that didn't a) have a private school education b) grammar school c) got a scholarship to a private school
 
I'll just use this thread to say class system in the UK is ridiculous. Social mobility is non-existent, and public schools are part of the problem. Still doesn't warrant anyone the right to abuse someone just because they went to public schools.
 
But was there gay stuff going on OP?
Frodo said:
I'll just use this thread to say class system in the UK is ridiculous. Social mobility is non-existent, and public schools are part of the problem. Still doesn't warrant anyone the right to abuse someone just because they went to public schools.
Click to expand...
Even supermarkets.
 
RedSparrows said:
N.b. Non UK readers, 'public school' means 'private school', because Britain.
Click to expand...

For a moment there I thought I was going crazy... what are actual public schools called in the UK..?

Anyway OP, those people who made the remarks, they don't know anythinh about you right. There is nothing wrong with going to a school like that and you shouldn't feel bad.
 
To explain the terminology difference: In this regard the schools were different from previous educational institutions (like church-run schools) in that they were available to the paying 'public' to apply for, which was well before schools for the public came along.

Otherwise, it's basically your standard class divide at work, which is especially enhanced by the current trend of most career politicians coming out of public schools, so there's that divide to. It's also often taken to mean that your family felt state-run education 'wasn't good enough' for them, and thus you look down on the education most other people receive by implication.

Added to which, there are some genuinely odd, elitist cultures around some public schools (usually the very, very old ones) that promote shit that you couldn't possibly get away with - or that at least, people would tell you that you shouldn't get away with - elsewhere. Things like hazing, the grooming of a subordinate lad, maybe the occasional cult. This is why people lap up stories like David Cameron giving head to a pig's head - it's the ultimate 'rich snobs who think they're above common decency' tale.
 
I sincerely apologise for the confusion, I momentarily forgot that school systems aren't the same everywhere.

Look! The Pie! said:
Some people in this thread are probably going to tell you to just suck it up because privilege.

Fuck that. Your friends were being arseholes.
Click to expand...

I felt the same and it's why I made this thread. As I mentioned, I tried to take in stride, I know some people don't have a good opinion of public schools, but I did absolutely nothing to warrant the response. What makes it worse for me is that I feel if I bring it up to my friend, she'll tell me I'm overreacting.
 
RedSparrows said:
N.b. Non UK readers, 'public school' means 'private school', because Britain.
Click to expand...
this stuff is pretty interesting. from an outsider's perspective it makes as much sense as red being the color of the right and left/liberal being used interchangeably in the USA.
 
7threst said:
For a moment there I thought I was going crazy... what are actual public schools called in the UK..?

Anyway OP, those people who made the remarks, they don't know anythinh about you right. There is nothing wrong with going to a school like that and you shouldn't feel bad.
Click to expand...

State schools. Which can be a religious school.
 
Clay Davis said:
I sincerely apologise for the confusion, I momentarily forgot that school systems aren't the same everywhere.



I felt the same and it's why I made this thread. As I mentioned, I tried to take in stride, I know some people don't have a good opinion of public schools, but I did absolutely nothing to warrant the response. What makes it worse for me is that I feel if I bring it up to my friend, she'll tell me I'm overreacting.
Click to expand...

You are NOT overreacting. Especially since these were friends of friends (or did I get that wrong?).

I often insult and make jokes at the expense of my close friends, but they are CLOSE friends.
They know I am not serious, and they respond in kind.

I wouldn't have done it to someone I did not know very well.

in short, they are assholes.
 
I feel like if it were really good friends it might be standard fair joking around. Otherwise, it was genuine harassing, they're assholes and you gotta decide if you want to tell them off or just forget about it.
 
Fuu said:
this stuff is pretty interesting. from an outsider's perspective it makes as much sense as red being the color of the right and left/liberal being used interchangeably in the USA.
Click to expand...

In Australia the main conservative party is called the Liberal party and their colour is blue. Labor on the lefts colour is red.
 
Fried Food said:
Public school means private school? I'm curious how that came to be.
Click to expand...

History:

The term public school was first recorded in England as early as 1580. At that time it described a publicly managed grammar or charity school that was founded to benefit the public by educating poor scholars. Such schools would be funded by the king or crown, by universities and charities, by cathedrals and churches (and foundations set up in the aftermath of the dissolution of the monasteries during the Reformation), or by wealthy merchants and benefactors. By the 18th century, the reputations of these fine grammar* schools had started to spread outside the villages and towns they served, and as the schools began to accept families who could afford to board and educate their children further away from home, so the term "public school" came to mean something slightly different. With access to and eligibility for these schools no longer restricted by one's religion, occupation or home location, anyone in the nation could theoretically be educated in them (regardless of who was actually paying for that education), so they became "public" rather than local schools.

The Public Schools Act of 1868 took seven of the top schools in the country — Charterhouse School, Eton College, Harrow School, Rugby School, Shrewsbury School, Westminster School and Winchester College — and removed them from the responsibility of the Crown, the established church or the government, granting the schools independence over their own administrations and creating the first official batch of public schools. And it was this selective group of elite "public" boys' schools that gave the word both its meaning and its connotations that endure today. However, the label continued to evolve and to embrace a broader category of establishments, as other schools (mostly at this point fee-paying or privately-funded boarding schools) modeled on this elite group began to grow and flourish. Just a year after the Public Schools Act, a group of 60 or 70 headmasters** of these academically rigorous institutions of learning — mainly educating boys between the ages of 13 and 18 — came together to form what would become the Headmasters' Conference (later the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference); it was membership of this conference that defined what a "public school" was then, and that remains the official definition today.
Click to expand...
 
It's nothing personal OP (or the guy above me) but growing poor as mud working class in north west england, it was ingrained into me that only horrible rich posh people send their kids to posh rich schools where they get an unfair leg up from everyone else and fuck those people. We watched that programme sky 1 did on Harrow a few years ago, those stuck up snobs made me fucking sick.
 
Fried Food said:
Public school means private school? I'm curious how that came to be.
Click to expand...

RedShift said:
State Schools = schools run by the state.

Public Schools = schools publicly owned and run.
Click to expand...

I thought it was

State School - Government run, no fee for attending but you're kind of assigned which one you go to based on where you live.

Public School - Fee for attending, but any one who can afford it is allowed in.

Private School - Fee for attending, but they school chooses who is allowed in.

... I could google this but I can't be bothered.
 
They're called public schools because they predate the state education schools by hundreds of years, and when the first public schools were established, the alternative was religious schools, which were denominational and only accepted people on the basis of their church or religious grouping. Hence they were public in the sense that anyone who could pay could attend, with e.g. Catholics and Jews at the same school. The usage is older than the first settling of the Americas (as publican).

Britons will use 'state school' to describe... state schools, or sometimes just 'comprehensive', even though not all state schools are technically comprehensive.
 
Alright Britain, if you stop making fun of US tipping culture, we won't make fun of your ass-backwards institutional vocabulary. Truce?

Edit

SolidusDave said:
"Where did you go to school?"

"I'm elitist as fuck, I was educated in a public hospital. It cost my family an arm and a leg."
Click to expand...

Haha wait I need to make some revisions to the treaty to make hospital fair game cuz lol
 
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