Sophia Waugh

State schools are ‘character building’ too

Anyway, can public schools really teach ‘character’?

issue 14 March 2015

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.

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