In tough times, we have to be persuaded to buy the non-essentials in life. While no one would deny an education is essential, many parents are beginning to question whether paying tens of thousands of pounds for a clutch of GCSEs is really worth it. Therefore public schools are having to come up with ever more selling points to draw in the punters.
Anthony Seldon, the never willingly underquoted Master of Wellington College, has a new reason to encourage you to send your children to his school. He claims that his establishment, and others like it, can offer to teach your children ‘character’ in a way that no state school can.
What is ‘character’ anyway? Can it really be taught by a bunch of soldiers coming in and telling you about their time in Afghanistan? The word coming as it does from the Greek charakter ‘engraved mark’, or ‘symbol or imprint on the soul’, we should immediately raise the questions a) whether a school can and b) whether a school should be imprinting our children’s souls. Are they not meant to be educated — led out — rather than stamped upon? Yes, there is such a thing as an (invisible) Eton hallmark, but do we really want our children hallmarked so young?
The phrase ‘character building’ is not a new one; it is usually applied to difficult, stressful situations, to rejection or failure, to sorrow or strife. It suggests that your character is strengthened through your experiences, not through listening to a talk, however moving or inspiring that talk may be.
Those of us who work in state schools become increasingly frustrated with this kind patronage from the public schools, who pat us on the head and tell us there, there, they know it’s hard for us, but we don’t really work with the same material, do we? What can we expect? Well, we expect very much the same as you do, Mr Seldon.
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