Oxbridge Obsession, Public Toilets, Education Scandal

 
Oxbridge

… My worst August was the one when my son, who had neglected to work for his A levels, lost a conditional place at Oxford. I was devastated: he had within his grasp the most prestigious of educational prizes, the name that opens all doors, the key to a prosperous future, the source of innumerable metaphors, gesturing towards a life full of opportunity, money, satisfaction and status – and, through his teenage fecklessness had thrown it away.

Grief, Josef Israels (1824-1911) Photo Credit Glasgow Museums [CC BY-NC-ND]

I am now faintly embarrassed by my hysteria but I think it was par for the course. Middle-class Brits obsess about Oxbridge. The effort of getting our children into those two universities consumes startling amounts of money, time and emotion in leafy suburbs and Georgian terraces.

… Why wouldn’t British parents obsess about getting their children, for no more money than it costs to go to a rubbish institution, into the best university in the world? Who would criticise me for being devastated when my son messed up?

I would, now … The intense competition to get into those two universities shape the whole of our education system. It encourages us to impoverish ourselves by sending our children to expensive private secondary schools, to coach our children to exhaustion and to drill them for exams. It fuels our snobbish tendency swiftly to judge people on irrelevant criteria and raise them up or write them off in seconds. And because our population is growing and Oxbridge is taking fewer British students, the competition is getting more intense.

Now, even if it were bad for our society, it might still make sense for us all, as individuals, to do our utmost to get our children into Oxbridge. But I don’t think it does…

(Emma Duncan, The Times, 5.8.2019)

Let’s examine some of these ideas.

Middle-class British parents obsess about Oxbridge.

Do they? Your circle of friends or acquaintances might, but that’s a far cry from what your statement implies. What evidence do you have for that assertion?

The intense competition to get into those two universities shape the whole of our education system.

The whole of our education system? I think not.

It encourages us to impoverish ourselves by sending our children to expensive private secondary schools, to coach our children to exhaustion and to drill them for exams. It fuels our snobbish tendency swiftly to judge people on irrelevant criteria and raise them up or write them off in seconds.

I’m afraid your generalisations are misplaced. A tiny fraction of the population attend private secondary schools. To educate your children privately, to tutor them is a choice to make. Weigh it all up and choose but don’t then argue you had to do it!

You write of ‘us’ and ‘our’ in the passage above when it should be ‘me’ or ‘us’ meaning the two of us.

*Sir, Emma Duncan (Comment, Aug 5, and letters, Aug 6) is right: the UK must end its obsession with Oxbridge. However, in respect of access and progression in the law, whether it be obtaining a pupillage, becoming a judge or being appointed a bencher at an inn, having been to Oxbridge is still a distinct advantage. Such attitudes need to change. The Bar Council, through its inspirational campaign, I am the Bar, is encouraging those from so-called non-traditional backgrounds to pursue a career at the Bar. The UK needs to look beyond the educational institution and concentrate more on the prejudice someone has faced, the difficulties they have overcome and above all their potential.

(James Keeley, Barrister, The 36 Group, Gray’s Inn, The Times, 7.8.2019)

*Last March, my daughter turned down a place at Oxford University, and at the end of September she will begin her degree at the University of Leeds.

… Her decision was not easy and caused her far more anxiety than A-levels did – whichever way she jumped, there would be regrets – but, ultimately, she followed her instincts.

Beyond close friends and family who have listened to and understood her reasons, Rose’s rejection of one of life’s great prizes has caused dismay, even outrage. Responses have ranged from the most frequent, a gasped “Oh no!” and “What about the networking, those contacts for life?” to “Don’t you, as her mother, have any say in this at all?” The gut-punch text was: “It’s too late now, but I think she’s made a mistake.”

… Hackney born and bred, she found Oxford’s aura of white privilege off-putting. What she was interested in was difference: a new city with a vibrant culture of its own, students who aren’t all from the south, sharing a house with eight people, cooking on a shoestring, cheap beer, a part-time job.

… It is not lost on Rose’s generation that the politicians screwing with our democracy and their future are Oxbridge alumni to a man. If our brightest young people have the self-determination to create new value systems and different measures of success from those that have defined us, there is hope.

(Sophie Hastings, The Observer, 2019)
                                       

Public Toilets

More than £26 million has been wiped from toilet budgets in the past five years, forcing hundreds to close, official figures show. Some parts of the country now have no public toilets while provision in other areas has dropped by more than 90 per cent.

In Cornwall, the number of public toilets has fallen from 247 in 2011 to 14 last year. In Wiltshire, there is only one public toilet.

(The Times, 2019)

How did they decide which public toilet would remain open in Wiltshire?

Education

Rich and sometimes famous parents [in America] are alleged to have paid between $15,000 and $6.5 million in fees, fake donations and bribes to get their children into elite colleges such as Yale, Stanford and Georgetown for which they don’t qualify.

…It is an account of parents who already hold every card – wealth, connections, good schools – going beyond legality to guarantee their child’s position. Those university places have been stolen. There is seething fury from those who fight and largely fail to get into elite colleges, who are finding that the system is even more rigged than they knew.

…In countries such as Britain, the US, China, The Netherlands and Spain, where the wealth of those at the top has soared and the returns from elite education have increased, aspirational parents are increasingly helicopter-parenting “to ensure their children have a path towards security and success.” In America the amount spent by the top one per cent on education has risen almost threefold in 20 years.

In Scandanavia parents are much more relaxed because there is far less at stake in a more egalitarian society; schools are good and lifestyles are comfortable for the great majority of the population. Here in Britain, where inequality has been rising since the 1970s, the incentives for parents to game [gain?] advantage are as powerful as in America.

…The injustice is clear, but so is the conflict between that and the rational response from us as individuals: to maximise our own children’s chances in every way we can.

(Jenni Russell, The Times, 2019)

Not quite sure I can go along with the last paragraph. Does that mean that morality plays no part when it comes to our own children? Does “maximising our own children’s chances in every way we can,” mean that we will do whatever it takes to increase our own children’s chances even if that means denying others who may well have superior talent or ability?