…all of which completely ignores the point of Guy Walters’ post, which was that the JC implied he had real chutzpah as an Old Etonian, to be criticising Simon Weisenthal.

I don’t see what his school has to do with whether he’s right or wrong to do so.

Actually, there’s a simple solution to dealing with the Eton problem.

Just make sure that state education is as good and comprehensive as that on offer at Eton.

If Old Etonians then get preference, we know its discrimination and can deal with it accordingly.

Anyone see any problems with this plan?

Eton costs thirty grand per annum.

It does if your parents pay full fees. But there are 70 King’s Scholars (whose parents pay less than full fees) plus around 275 others on bursaries and other scholarships – around 20% of the school. Eton says that it is prepared to reduce fees by 100% in some cases, subject to a means test and the school says “No parents with a talented boy should feel that Eton is necessarily beyond their means.”

Many of the best known Old Etonians – Boris Johnson, Charles Moore, Oliver Letwin etc. (but not Cameron) were on scholarships.

Other top schools have as many as 30% on means tested bursaries and the trend is for more of them. So maybe you shouldn’t generalize….?

I think Guy Walters and David Cameron have done very well to overcome the deficienciesin their education.

There will always be a question whether Old Etonians get to wherever they get to solely on their own merits, or because their names were put down for the elite at birth. With Britain now governed by an Old Etonian for the first time since 1964, it is a question that more and more of the other 99.99% of us feel the need to ask.

Depends rather on where they get to. Only an imbecile would claim that Humphrey Lyttleton only became the best post-war British jazz trumpeter because he was an OE, or that James Bond was only a success because Ian Fleming was an OE, or that Wilfrid Thesiger, Brian Johnston, Michael Bentine, John Julius Norwich or Perry Anderson (to name a random selection) acheived their success only because their names were put down at birth.

How did the auditions go for House? “Well, OK, Hugh Laurie doesn’t really fit the bill, but he went to Eton so we’d better give him the part”?

Agreed with Watchman!

@5 Why have your party never done that then? Why did they reserve the best state education (grammar schools) for the brightest, leaving everyone to rot at Shitsville Comprehensive?

“Eton? That’s not a public school, its group therapy for congetial deviates”

Len Deighton, Horse Under Water

Tax private schools. Private education has always been another hidden hand out to the rich.

The people who send their kids there are in effect getting a subsidy from the govt. Because if the business (sorry school) does not have to pay tax then their costs are cheaper than they should be.

@6

That’s as sensible as you asking me “why did your party go to Iraq?” or “why did your party bring in ID cards?” – New Labour did many, many things that I disagreed with at the time. Hence why I didn’t join then. Indeed, hence why I’ve voted Lib Dem (and others) over the years.
I’ll wait to see what education policy/proposals Miliband comes up with this time round before casting any stones/setting off fireworks.

“Just make sure that state education is as good and comprehensive as that on offer at Eton.”

Lets give every comprehensive 30k per year per pupil then.

@2
Even if we could ensure that all comps give a 5 to 1 pupil/teacher ratio, they could never compete with the ‘Eton’ tag, it’s not called ‘the old boy’s school’ for nothing.

@11

Rename every school in the country “Eton”. That’ll learn ‘em >:/

oh and yes @10 – thought I suspect if that were the case children would be asked to pay for there education via some form of loan to be payed off at a later date.

Planeshift is exactly right. It just ain’t possible. Amusingly, whenever there are demands for increases in state spending on education, the rightwingers will complain about government just “throwing money at the problem”. When spending reaches £30K per pupil, I will join the rightwingers. Not until then!

Here’s amusing point, if I want to make a donation to e private school, it will be treated as charitable and I and the school will get tax relief. If I should want to make such a donation to my children’s state school, it would not be treated as charitable. No tax relief. Level playing field, anyone!

Public schools.

Remove charitable status. Then tax them.

Then say that anyone who has had for a privileged education paid for can pay the full whack of any tertiary/university education too.

Twenty years ago in the succession to Thatcher, Douglas Hurd ,an Old Etonian one of the candidates for the leadership got attacked for being an Old Etonian, it was looked on as a disadvantage, even within the Tory Party. Hurd tried to pretend he was of ‘umble farming stock.

Such is progress eh?

No 3

“No parents with a talented boy should feel that Eton is necessarily beyond their means.”

Many of the best known Old Etonians – Boris Johnson, Charles Moore, Oliver Letwin etc. (but not Cameron) were on scholarships.”

What thickie Johnson on a scholarship? I always thought the blighter was cast iron fool: talks stupid, looks stupid, acts stupid, therefore is stupid. Saw him as advert for superiority of Eton education, turning buffoon into prime ministerial material; handshakes and xmas cards for masters, kudos and more applications to school.

Now I learn that top schooling johnnies at Eton believe Johnson B to be one of UK’s leading captains in the brainy brigade.

Gasps and cheers in upper sixth, bar of club, 19th hole.
Despairing laughter among proles.

15…depends on how you judge intelligence…can you not see through the act? Being able to read, understand and comment upon Virgil and Tacitus is a set of skills that requires great intelligence but can be learned if you are sufficiently intelligent. more fool you! and of course in the past most Labour front-benchers were public school. (Atlee, Gaitskell, Crossman, Crosland, Benn etc) Brown and Blair were hardly products of the local comp…and les Millis?…no party has ever seriously tried to address the issue of education. Shirley did so by trying to level down. was that the only possible approach?:30 years ago when i was at university (note, I say university not uni, afte 13 years of new labou,l graduates cannot pronounce 5 syllable words ) engineers were woindering what they would do after….the country had no need for them. who is looking after crossrail, and all the infrastructure this country needs to catch up to mainland Europe? Not least, in terms of telecomms.

@16 “note, I say university not uni, afte 13 years of new labou,l graduates cannot pronounce 5 syllable words” and you can’t spell two syllable words. Or three syllable words: “woindering.” If you’re going to try to be pedantic, you also need to be right.

@ 14 captain swing
Hurd made the point that he went to Eton because he got a scholarship not because his parents were rich. There really is no need to lie about it.

@ 10 Planeshift
Regrettably, that wouldn’t work unless you also introduced a fairly tough entrance examination and had an ethos that encouraged academic study.
Incidentally, as Eton is a boarding school, some of the £30k is for accommodation, food, laundry etc.
However the second problem is that Eton would need to improve its performance if the state comprehensives looked like getting within a highland mile of its standards and would spend even more money to do so. A lot of the successful innovations introduced in public schools over the last century or so have been copied by the state system (the unsuccessful ones have generally disappeared) and the response of the public schools has been to add new extras with higher costs and lower added value.

@16 diogenes

“afte 13 years of new labou,l graduates cannot pronounce 5 syllable words”

What a fascinating opinion. Thanks for your input, you ridiculous, bigoted little hypocrite.

(Although, as you can see, my reply is limited to words of four syllables at most. What with my ‘uni’ education under New Labour and everything, I am incapable of being any more sesquipedalian than that.)

Children in residential care cost about ?3000 a week while it costs a ?100 000 a year to keep a teenager in a young offenders institution.

Eton by comparison is more value for money

@ 21 whatever
I don’t think that is quite fair to Etonians in general. Most of them would not be in a young offenders institution if they were not at school.

@20 “What a fascinating opinion. Thanks for your input, you ridiculous, bigoted little hypocrite.”

I was thinking something similar, but contented myself with the observation that, whilst he asserts (without evidence) that graduates of the past 13 years can not pronounce 5 syllable words, he seems to be unable to spell 2 syllable words. Not very impressive from someone who attempts to wear pedantry as a badge of honour, is it? Which of these two shortcomings do you think is more likely to be indicative of a poor education, stupidity or both?

@23

The depressing thing is that it’s quite possible he holds no emnity against recent students at all but is so desperate to score a nonsensical point against the last government that slagging off 13 years of graduates doesn’t matter.

Either way, it’s pretty pathetic.

@22

Some of them probably should’ve been, though…

[unrelated link oh and another...]

What thickie Johnson on a scholarship? I always thought the blighter was cast iron fool: talks stupid, looks stupid, acts stupid, therefore is stupid.

That’s because you’re ignorant. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, provided you’re taking steps to remedy it.

@ 24

The depressing thing is that it’s quite possible he holds no enmity against recent students at all but is so desperate to score a nonsensical point ….

…..he may not have put it very well, but when diogenes (the cynic?) went to university, only the cleverest 7% in the country did so. Now, it’s the cleverest 43%. So he’s probably right that his cohort was smarter.

@27 Are you sure? From the information he provides (he was at university 30 years ago) I surmise that I was part of the same cohort (in my case undergraduate degree 1980 – 83), so I don’t have any vested interest in arguing against him or you. The reason I AM arguing is that you’re both talking crap. Why? Well:

a.) He tried to make the point that, whilst he uses what he believes to be correct forms of English speech (university rather than uni), graduates today don’t. He clearly ascribed a negative connotation to modern habits of speech whilst presenting himself as some kind of positive example. He followed this up by typing “afte 13 years of new labou,l graduates cannot pronounce 5 syllable words” So, to summarise, he presented himself as an example of someone who can use English correctly and then demonstrated an inability to do so. He looked all the more stupid because his post was so incredibly pompous: references to Virgil, Tacitus and his own good grammar followed by a disorganised stew of letters and punctuation marks. So, no, he’s not “probably right that his cohort was smarter.” At least that’s not a conclusion that can be drawn from what he posted. (By the way, smarter means more neatly dressed, unless you’re American).

b.) As far as “his cohort was smarter” goes, just take a few minutes to think about what you’ve written. Do you mean that the average intelligence of his undergraduate cohort is higher that that of today’s undergraduate cohort? I can’t see any other way to interpret what you wrote so I will proceed on the assumption that this is, roughly, what you meant. Leaving aside the question of how to measure intelligence (that’s “smartness” to you), what you wrote is so inane as to be, pretty much, a truism. Since a larger proportion of 18 year olds go to university today than was the case 30 years ago, it’s pretty much inevitable that average levels of intelligence/educational attainment (use whatever you like here) will be lower. The point is, the comparison is meaningless because you’re comparing two different groups. Now, a meaningful comparison would be between average intelligence/attainment of the undergraduate cohort 30 years ago and average intelligence/attainment of a SIMILAR group (you say the top 7%) today. Are you saying that you know that the group from 30 years ago would score higher? If so, produce some evidence or stop making stupid, meaningless, statements.

@ 27

“…..he may not have put it very well, but when diogenes (the cynic?) went to university, only the cleverest 7% in the country did so. Now, it’s the cleverest 43%. So he’s probably right that his cohort was smarter.”

Well, yes. but in that case he’s effectively saying “after 13 years of Labour, we let some of the bottom 93% go to university!” Which, while being more accurate and less repugnant than claiming that all young people nowadays are functionally illiterate, doesn’t make particularly effective rhetoric.

We could debate around this all day, but it’s plain simply by looking at his post that diogenes is a rather sad snob who projects his own inadequacies onto other people (that might break forum rules, but if so he’s already done that by saying that I can’t pronounce long words).

28b
There is a much easier reason for the increased number of graduates – there are far more university places available. Because only around 7 per cent of the population once gained a first degree compared to around 93 per cent, this does not indicate that the 7 per cent were smarter/brighter/more intelligent. The system of selection for grammar schools was seriously flawed, and not all of the brightest children, who came from poor background could go to university, In fact, only around 1 percent of graduates came from working-class backgrounds, If we compare the educational input of Eton, for example, it would be almost impossible for their students to fail, I would also suggest, that Eton is one school which will remain elitist, even given support for scholarships.
There are also far more degrees available, as you would expect, considering the technological advances made between the 1970s and the present. A degree in the classics or science from Oxbridge, might still ring a few bells, but for the majority, degrees which reflect modern society are the most useful.