Oh dear, BBC, surely you can do better than this

[steepholm]

Cameron is the 19th prime minister to have attended Eton, apparently. And there were 13 old Etonians in his first front bench team.

Why might this be, do you think? Coincidence? Well, according to the BBC web site, it's all a question of the school's ethos and confidence-building abilities - the kind of thing that could be put in place in my old comprehensive, in fact, if only they had the gumption. Connections to the rich and powerful, the social position of the families that send their children there, and old-fashioned privilege, simply don't come into it. Quite the reverse, it seems, if we're to believe an ex-master, Dr Spence. Cameron's appointment "is a sign, Dr Spence believes, that the Etonian label is no longer a handicap."

You see, in this great country of ours no social handicap is too great to overcome! Only in the United Kingdom...

Comments

[gillo]

It is true that exclusive schools manage to instil a huge level of confidence in their boys. And girls, actually, though there are fewer equivalents. They seem to do that even for kids with no particularly elite connections, other than those they make at school.

And of course your old comprehensive could do the same. All it would need would be twenty grand a year to spend on each pupil, a teaching ratio of 1:8 at worse, a highly selective entrance exam and some extremely well-qualified teachers with lots of free time so they can do intensive marking and weekly one-to-one tutorial sessions.

Indeed, it's a disgrace that more schools don't do this, and it's undoubtedly on Cameron's "To do" list over the next few months. While cutting public spending massively too, of course.

Mind you, there's little that is more pathetic than an Etonian who hasn't made the grade. They also have this blinding sense of entitlement...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I wonder... even if my comprehensive did manage to instil that amount of confidence, something tells me that the newly-confident sons and daughters of brewery workers who attended it would still have failed to fill many places in cabinet. Connections are an important part of the equation, and though I take your point that there are kids who don't come to Eton with elite connections already in place, one of the main reasons for sending them there has always been to correct that deficit.