Life in a fish bowl

This is an angry post. Don't read it on a sad day when things feel unfair.

I recently read an article praising the fact that a very well known private school in England, one that apparently is 'producing' prime ministers (I won't mention its name) was hosting pupils from local public schools who's parents were key workers during the Coronavirus pandemic lock down.

Are they now?!

This article made me inexplicably mad.

I mean social inequalities, especially in the area of access to education, is a massive bug bear of mine!

Why would any society not focus primarily on educating its people? Why would that not be the main purpose of government? To allow its citizens to enhance themselves, to grow and therefore enhance the society in which they live. The answer is quite simple: smart people are harder to manipulate, harder to convince to vote for you without factual information, harder to govern, just bloody generally awkward! In fact why would you focus on education?!

But let's get back to the private school business... Why do we even have private schools? Why do we need them? And why would anyone send their child to a private school... ever?

Imagine this: your child will go to a school where he or she can only see people like them. Likely same social status, same family dynamics, same well manicured gardens, same skin colour, same bloody 3-layer, soft, scented toilet rolls from the same supermarket shelf! Why? When the world is so beautifully diverse and alive?! They will be missing the whole spectacle. And later on they'll go out into the world thinking everything looks and thinks like them. And some will become prime ministers and have no fucking clue about anything else but their tiny little fish bowl worlds. And not the smallest empathetic capacity for people unlike them living in the big blue ocean.

No ability to understand that their privilege and opportunities are not a right they've earned or worked for, but just a lucky draw they could have missed in the blink of an eye.

Nobody, not one soul is able to choose the family, country and social circumstances they are born in. Nobody can control that. Therefore being born in a good family with access to every opportunity there is, that's not a merit nor any sort of quality to be looked up to. It just happened. And the reverse is also true. Being born in dire circumstances, in a struggling family, in a poor society or neighbourhood is nobody's choice either. Think about that for a minute.

Therefore, when educational opportunities aren't opened to everyone in equal measures, as a baseline, they stop being an asset to society. Like this private school. They haven't earned my respect by gracefully opening their doors to key workers' children. But that wasn't the aim anyway.

Rant over. For now.

Thanks for listening.

Now go and enjoy the beautiful, diverse world out there!