"Well ladeedadeeda!"

My point, Lizzie, is that these are the opportunities that EVERY kid gets who goes to state school. Schools provide resources, learning support and expertise which most homes and parents simply cannot. That's the whole point.


"Excuse me???? I have ALWAYS said that for many children school is great! They thrive on it."

But, didn't you say, only a few posts ago...

"Tell me, when did so many of you become brainwashed into giving your children over to the State, to have them loaded down with pressure, to have them tested, examined...and sometimes brought to within an inch of suicide, if not actually carrying that out,"

You do what you like with your kids, Lizzie. Just stop telling us how we're abusing ours by simply sending them to school.

"Life is not about trips abroad." Well, my daughter has been going abroad since she was three months old. Her passion for travel has certainly not been "dulled" through this. She has slept in a mud hut with village children in Zambia, learned to ski in Switzerland, been on safari, learned to scuba dive, camped with bedouins and visited the Valley of the Kings in Egypt - and all of this during the school term, just to come back OT. She loves travel - which is why she's raising the money to go to Japan. Have these experiences broadened and enriched her life? I think so. I am really glad, as a parent, that she has had these opportunities. Just as, I am sure, you are happy with the opportunities you have given to your children. If you find that condescending - well, sorry. But you never fail to shoot from the hip when you tell us how miserable and suicidal our kids are, as a result of us sending them to school.


Re kids who bully their teachers:

"Maybe they're also sick fed up of being so controlled, so stressed out with workloads that they don't want and often couldn't give a toss about?"

Spend a week in an inner-city secondary school. Then tell me that the really bad kids, the ones who bully their teachers and run riot through the school, are "controlled" and "stressed out with workloads". They don't DO any work, so they have no workloads, despite the schools bending over backwards trying to create tailored programmes of work and classes that might interest them and that are pitched at their level. And no one controls them. No one. Leastwise their teachers.