Quote: Sal Paradise "For public sector education to be a better standard you have to get parents to buy in and support it. Education is like health where ever it is seen as effectively free then it will never be given the gravitas it deserves. Parents take private education seriously because the costs are significant and they expect positive outputs - that doesn't just mean exam results.
I strongly disagree about snobbery - anyone can be successful regardless of upbringing - many use it as an excuse as to why they haven't been successful or climbed the ladder. Yes it might make it easier to get a job in the civil service or with a wine merchant where you can plod along your whole career but out in the private sector the quality of your contribution matters and the reward structure reflects that.'"
Maybe snobbery isn’t quite the right word, but the way we judge value and what we regard as success inevitably reflects our own preferences and prejudices. Sometimes we need to make quick judgements based on limited evidence to get through life, but they often won’t be fair or wise.
I’ve worked in the private sector these last six years and did a year back in the 90s too. I did a few months in the public sector in 2004 and around that I was in academia. Some of the stereotypes on all sides have truth to them. Across all of them I found good, talented people, and success (in terms of progression) among them seems to me to have been largely a function of ambition and right-place-right-time luck. I’m happy to say/admit that, with some ups and downs along the way, I’ve had my share of luck. People who think their success is all down to their own efforts, or that you ‘make your own luck’ I find a bit tiresome, similar to those who think their disappointments are all down to bad luck. There are extreme cases of pure good and bad fortune, but they’re the outliers. You can’t legislate for luck but it is a huge factor.
