Originally Posted by whofearstospeak?
Fee paying schools or rugby schools as you call them don't discriminate according to that report.I can't see anything wrong with that.Do you think they should oppose equality?
Can you point out where that article mentions the word 'rugby'? Or can you tell me when the Loreto order schools started playing rugby? Actually, come to think of it.... can you even tell us how many of the 400 schools represented by the JMB play rugby?
Or did you just want to stir the pot with your thread title?
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I dont understand the "the typical rugby schools headline" i reckon there as many private fee paying hurling schools.
I really don't know about the brightest. I went to a rugby school and many of my fellow students carved out successful careers in business, and as lawyers and other professionals. There was an old boy network in place to support this. I can't really think of anyone, however, who has made any sort of outstanding contribution in the field of science, literature, or the arts. I can't think of a single academic well know in his field. And this is looking back over several decades. Not an intellectual to speak of ...
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!
Wesley and Belvedere what's the first word that comes to mind ??? Rugby !
Whats the second word that comes to mind ..... Wealthy
If your not rich you dont get in
How dare a school seek out clever students! All Irish geniuses should be left to stagnate for 14 years in mediocre schools, ensuring that no-one ever shows up the rest of us for our utter stupidity.
Wesley is one of the weaker "rugby schools". It is certainly not synonymous with the game.
I don't have the numbers but from experience at another Protestant fee-paying school many students at Wesley will be funded by the state and the Church of Ireland due either to lack of parental funds and to lack of Protestant schools in their home area.
What is wrong with private schools anyway? If you pay for the service, in general you get a better product.
Oh, for God's sake of course they cherrypick. It is mainly a south Dublin phenomenon. Schools down the country have been revolutionized in the past 20 years. Where once you had the Tech, the Mercy convent, the posh convent, the Diocesan College, all with their own class-based clientele, now they have mostly been amalgamated into one Community school where all the local kids, the rich kids, the settled travellers, the academic kids, the special needs all go. It has been very successful, even from an academic point of view. Teachers' skills are kept up as they have to deal with such a mix.
Now look at South Dublin, its back to the class-based snobberies of the 19th Century: elite schools which use every trick in the book to evade their responsibilities, while talking po-faced nonsense in public "Oh, Mrs Smith, we know you live beside the school gates, and we'd love to take your special needs child with the behaviour issues. But, you see we just don't have the resources. Now, of course it's up to you, but don't you think you should send him to that wonderful, marvellous dumping ground, er, I mean, Community school with Deis status 3 miles away. They have such wonderful resources. Now, if only we had the resources...It's such a pity, as I know you sent your other two sons here, the well-behaved academic boys who got the 500 points which info we passed onto the Irish Times along with the rest of the league table results. Such a pity, such a lovely boy..."
This behind the scenes exclusion of difficult or different children is rife in Dublin. The old "we don't have the resources" argument ignores (or deliberately lies about) the fact that the resources follow the child, and if you can wiggle out of taking children with special needs, or poor, difficult or traveller children, you will never get resources and bingo, you're home free.
Ideally, all schools should take the children in their catchment area instead of overloading a few schools with problem children. Difficult children can be integrated in any school provided their numbers are small. There is a critical mass which, once breached, can lead to the school buckling under the weight of too many problem kids.
The hypocricy in this area is beyond belief and has not been tackled by any government. It is not all the schools' fault. Nothing amuses me more than seeing the way the middle class flee a school as soon as it takes in a family from the local Corporation estate or, horror of horrors, a traveller child. Sometimes you see these very parents posturing in the media about equality and how pubs and local estates in Clondalkin should accept travellers.
This is why you have complete educational apartheid in certain areas of Dublin. It is a clear choice in which everyone, schools, parents, the Minister, the craven media distracted by "feeder schools", is complicit. Rugby is a side issue and has become code for "school where my child might befriend the right striving middle class type and acquire the right accent". Not all parents are like this. Their kid might like rugby (a fine game) or they live near the school. Parents may want to pay to give their kid what they perceive to be social advantage and that is their right. But the lack of honesty around this issue from all sides is nauseating.
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