Experiment: Private school and Political Views
Between longer and more abstract blog posts, this evening I decided to conduct a little experiment. I decided to look at the Political Views of the people I went to High School with.
My secondary school was independent. It was hardly Eton, but it still qualifies as private. My method was to go through my Facebook friends list and pick out all of the people I knew from the school in order to look at their Political Views. See the graph:
You’ll notice a few things about the sample, the first being that it’s quite small. The reason for this is that I had 38 profiles that had not listed anything in the field. The assumption can thus be made that an overwhelming majority are either totally apathetic (highly likely) or embarrassed of their real political views (also likely). I thus had to remove them from the graph to level it out.
The graph also shows an “Aren’t I funny!” column, this is for the profiles that had something inane listed as an attempt at a joke. It’s safe to say these are similar to the Not Listed column.
The one person listed under “Labour Party” is me.
Of the people listed under “Liberal” (Not Liberal Democrat), two of the three were teachers.
So, unsurprisingly the graph shows that most of my classmates were Tories. Does private school make your right wing, or is it just that right-wing people tend to go to private school?
As with anything vaguely scientific, it’s probably some of both.
Disclaimer: Obviously this doesn’t prove anything or have any scientific basis.
December 13th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
I think there’s clearly a stigma attached to sending your kids to private schools in Labour circles – although I’d do it if I felt I had no confidence in the schools available to me for my kids (fortunately there are some rather excellent schools available). This would seem to suggest that kids in private schools are more likely to have Conservative voting parents, and to meet other children with similarly voting parents.
However my pal Kiran whose father was an eminent surgeon (& Tory) went to some exceptionally posh private Jesuit boarding school, spent every waking moment trying to escape (once managed 100 miles !), every holiday trying to persuade his parents not to send him back, and grew up to be Labour to the core – and in fact persuaded me (working class Grammar school oik) to change my vote from Liberal to Labour
He claims that he learned nothing academic at private school, but learned how to be self confident and persuade other people that he was brilliant and to do things for him. He was certainly correct about that.
He changed my mind about private school people – it was no more his fault that his Dad was wealthy and sent him there, than it was my fault that my parents weren’t, or it was someone else’s fault that they were born into abject poverty – the point is what you do with it.
In relation to David Cameron – it’s not a problem that he went to Eton – it’s a problem that he thinks he can represent the whole of society with a cabinet made up almost exclusively of public school boys.
I’ll have to do a poll like this on my facebook site
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December 14th, 2009 at 12:03 am
I did my own survey on this (that is with my Friends on my Facebook site) – you can view it here :
http://northernheckler.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/political-views-private-and-state-schools-and-facebook-friends/
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December 14th, 2009 at 12:05 am
[...] Views, Private and State schools, and Facebook friends Having read Hadleigh Roberts blog : Experiment: Private school and Political Views I thought I’d try the same thing out with my own Facebook [...]
December 14th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Hadleigh,
You question is: does Private school breed Tories or do Tories attend Private schools?
My answer: I think it is a bit of both, I went to private school, and while I haven’t done extensive Facebook research on it, I would say that most of the people I went to school with would be sympathetic to the Tory party – myself probably included.
My opinion on schools is that there should be a choice. If you want to spend money on your kids education, you should have that choice – if you think your kids will get a good education at a comprehensive or old-style grammar school, send them there. Ultimately, the kid should decide where to go to school. I had friends from school who were essentially forced to go to school because the family boasted 3 generations of pupils at that school – you can’t force a dog to be a cat.
The fact that a lot of private schools offer scholarships and, in some cases, bursaries and grants means that they aren’t necessarily inviting people with a Right wing back-ground – I know quite a few people who aren’t Tory-minded and went to private school, their views didn’t change, if anything, they got stronger.
You, Hadleigh, are living testament to the fact that just because you were private-school educated, that doth not a Tory make.
In my area, there are two of the best secondary schools in the country – Reading Grammar and Kendrick School for girls. Now, neither of which are expensive by other Private school standards, but both are excellent schools. Now, I probably was not smart enough to attend Reading Grammar, so my Parents and I looked elsewhere. I also live near the fabled Eton, but again probably wasn’t smart enough to get in there either, and didn’t really want the stigma of being an Etonian – actually, the real reason was that it wasn’t the right school for me! That left me with two choices – find a local grammar or comprehensive school, or go to a local boarding school which was fee-paying. I chose the latter, and believe that while a lot of pupils there need a huge reality check and in most cases – a slap, everything else about it prepared me adequately for life after school. Now only time will tell if my parents and I got our value for money, but I would say that so far, so good.
I would agree with another poster that going to Private school gives you a huge stigma to carry around – it is weird, people have heard that I am from a Private school and so carry a chip on their shoulder before even meeting me! I would say the majority of my friends from uni are not private school educated, and I would say most people feel they are discriminated against for job applications or university places due to their school background.
I would say if you went to a private school, you stand a better chance of getting into a good university or getting that job you want – that is sadly still the reality, despite efforts to counter-act it. State and grammer school pupils feel that universities and firms prefer private-school kids, due to the old-boy elitism that sadly still exists today, but with a revamping in the last few years (notably Bristol University) and universities being under more and more pressure to accept State school pupils – now private school kids feel like they are no longer preferred to state school children – when I went to a Bristol open day in 2006, I was speaking with the head of languages, doing my best to impress her. However she was more interested in which school I was from, rather than my potential career choice or even course selection. In fact, when I revealed that I was private school educated, she said “well, we don’t tend to accept very many applicants from private schools anymore” – needless to say I thanked her for wasting my day and caught the train home.
Either way, the best way to eradicate this is to accept the best candidate! Regardless of school.
You should always have the choice, if parents want to pay for education, let them. If they don’t want to, there should be other schools there too – however this does not help the discrimination factor.
But I think political views (if existent) are shaped mostly after school, since I didn’t have any until I came to University – when you are a little bit smarter and a little bit wiser.
On Facebook, it says my political views are “Richard Shuttleworth”, a bloke in my class who I find insightful, ranting and hilarious when speaking about most topics – so I think I’d fall under your “Aren’t I funny!” category…
An interesting debate though… will have to investigate further on politics and school, and the ties that bind the two…
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Hadleigh Roberts Reply:
December 14th, 2009 at 11:47 am
There is a school of thought when it comes to blogging, that you really have a high quality audience when the comments are better than the post on which they comment.
Also, congratulations on being Comment Number Three Hundred!
I don’t intend to argue or even disagree on much, but I think you’re right to say that most people gain political views at university or after 18, one reason why we shouldn’t lower the voting age, but that’s another story!
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