The Great Party Question

‘Tis the season to be jolly and the merriment is in full swing. The cava and wine has been flowing and the room is growing steadily jolly, as the middle- aged party goers hum along to half forgotten punk classics they could once have pogo’d to. Everyone is relaxed, comfortable and stress free. These people share the same prejudices and values, but someone asks the inevitable question. “Where are your kids going after Primary? Then it is war.

Calling it the great education debate is to give the mob a dignity they don’t deserve. Local schools are always dreadful, and full of “neds” (otherwise known as other people’s kids) who don’t want an education. It’s easy however to strip the rhetoric apart. The unspoken belief is that we are middle class, we want our children to be middle class and to grow up into the consumers that we have become.

That means that our children have an entitlement to the best education that money can buy, either through the direct purchase of private education or the purchase of a home in a “better” catchment area or providing the means to travel to one of the “better” schools. It is why long forgotten religious practices are suddenly re-enacted in a mechanical fashion to impress the local priest, rabbi or other pastor.

If someone asks innocently, as to whether local parents supporting local education might not be a good idea, then the clincher is always the same. We can’t force our beliefs into our children; we have a duty to do what’s best for them.

Sitting quietly listening, there is a tendency to simply want to smack the smug little faces that make the great pronouncement. These people would call themselves socialists and vote on the left of the spectrum. But, faced with a decision about whether to do the best for their community and fight for a better standard of education for all, or to ensure that their own offspring win in the education lottery, all principles go out the window.

Educationally, it is true that involved parents make a difference both to the individual child and to the educational establishment the children attend. It is however easier in an establishment where we all have the same (middle class) values.

So why is the idea of not forcing your values on your child seen as such a good one? By fetishizing the right of the middle class child to their rightful middle class heritage, a choice is being made that says that the values of individualism, of self seeking, of placing self above community are the right values- the values of the capitalist society that those self same parents seek to despise.

The ultimate comeback to me usually when that point is made is “well, communists act that way as well”. All I can say is –not the ones that I know- who practice what they preach.