Guardian reader SanityRestored:
I’m prepared to judge you. Sorry if you don’t like it. But for the damage you are inflicting firstly on your own kids, and secondly on society in general, don’t I have the right to judge you?
Guardian reader NorthernLass81:
A decision that cannot really be justified.
Guardian reader ivanpope:
Every single comment you make is a Tory comment… I’m not sure that you really fit in at the Guardian… It’s commonplace for those of a leftist bent to move to the right as they get older (i.e. as they acquire income, assets and status). You are just following the norm, but I can still dislike you for that.
Guardian reader smallactsofdefiance:
Parents will perform the most extraordinary mental contortions in order to justify why their child is so special they must ditch their principles.
Guardian reader sammace:
An utterly immoral act.
Guardian reader Jonathan Staples:
What’s the article next week? Are you going to justify joining BUPA?
Heavens. And the Great Moral Horror that has these righteous souls so indignant and a-twitch? The Guardian’s education journalist Janet Murray has – oh my – sent her daughter to a fee-paying school:
I’ve been asked how I can reconcile writing about education for the Guardian with having a child at a private school… Deep down, I don’t think I ever really had a problem with private education. It just didn’t seem socially acceptable to say so.
Of course the sound of a thousand hands being wrung and knuckles being cracked has had some effect:
When I walk Katy to school in her straw boater and blazer, I sometimes sense people – particularly other parents – judging me.
And so,
I plan to send Katy to a state secondary if I can,
Whew. Her soul may yet be saved.
but if I find myself dissatisfied with what is on offer, I will go private again.
Unrepentant! Fetch the stones.
Has Ms Murray not heard the sermon of Arabella Weir, whose definition of a “good, responsible citizen” still rings in our ears and swells our hearts? And who tells us that state schools are virtuous because they teach children “who to be wary of, who to avoid” and “how to keep their heads down,” (though how these things will be learned is oddly unexplored). And what of Kevin McKenna, a man no less pious, who tells us that parents who view the comprehensive system as inadequate – perhaps because of their own first-hand experiences – are by implication wicked and that such parental waywardness is intolerable and should be banned? Has Ms Murray not been told by those who know better that children aren’t special and should be sacrificed for society and the glories of socialism? Perhaps she’s been reading those surveys of state school teaching staff in which respondents report “a climate of violence,” “malicious disruption” and damage to personal property as “part of the routine working environment.”
Clearly, the sinner must be punished. For the greater good, obviously.
And so Guardian reader AMS150 obligingly implies that Ms Murray, and anyone who makes similar choices for their children, doesn’t like brown people:
In my experience, the unsaid agenda behind many parents “wrestling” with the idea of sending their kids to private school is that they don’t want their kids to go to a school with ethnic minorities.
See? It’s the paper of the nation’s most caring, enlightened and tolerant people. Which is why several readers take comfort, indeed pleasure, in the belief that Ms Murray may soon be fired for her heresy thus leaving her unable to afford her daughter’s tuition.
At least the Guardian subscrition list may, come “le grand soir”, give us the names of some of the people to be parachuted into North Korea, there to enjoy a few nights free of planet destroying electic light, then eat grass, curse Gaia and die.
“…there to enjoy a few nights free of planet destroying electic light, then eat grass, curse Gaia and die.”
The amount of grass that grows in any given year is a finite resource. Any paramarxists who partake of eating something so indulgently green and leafy will be guilty of holding back those North Koreans who are forced to make do with consuming boiled tree bark.
I think Brian Micklethwait captures the guts of it:
For some reason, the name Arabella Weir springs to mind.
Readers may also remember the Guardian’s ostentatiously class-conscious Zoe Williams, who doesn’t approve of private education and wants to humiliate parents who can no longer quite afford it, and who does all this while omitting any mention of her own, rather deluxe, education. As I said in reply:
“So I wonder what you thought of Dorian Lynskey’s piece on the article?”
Dorian Lynskey is basically a bald chimp with a word processor (like most Guardian writers, hah). I don’t take much of what that music critic says seriously.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/is-algebra-necessary.html
Are teachers mostly all crap?
“Deliberately sending your kid to a terrible school, when you had the choice not to, is downright evil.”
Maybe. But the quoted paragraph omits half the equation. The pro-state education lefty deliberately creates terrible schools for other people’s children. As moral failings go, this is far worse than hypocrisy.
Creating the terrible schools is waging war on the helpless while preening about one’s caring nature. Should the peasants storm the castle with their pitchforks (and they should), both the lefty and child are likely die for this bit of hypocrisy.
Lefties want YOU to send your child to a state run hell-hole, but the urge is less insistent for their own offspring. For example, see how many of the NuLab great and good avoid sending their precious brood to be beaten up or watch people spit at the local fight factory.
But then lefties are always quick to talk about things that others should do. The whole subject of private education gives them a reason to moan loudly, and in endlessly talking about what others should do they neatly dodge the issue of what they themselves do.
Railing at others cunningly masks their own uneven outlook and personal greed. So if you can help bail out the slop by sending your little ones to a comprehensive but not asking about theirs, they would be very grateful.