Public school or state
I was thinking about my workmates the other day and wondering how many of them went to public school, how many went to state school and what difference it makes, if any.
For those of you who are wondering, I went to a public school called Westminster. It’s right in the middle of London, so we weren’t hidden away in the depths of the countryside, drinking vomit out of each other’s bumholes. Its location made it easy to enjoy culture and booze in quite large quantities, which was nice. I don’t know if there was any great connection to advertising, but Frank Lowe went there (I only found that out in the last few years) and when I was there his partner’s son (Leon Howard-Spinks) was in the year above. Then I went to Watford and I remember at least four ex-public school pupils out of twentysomething people in my year, a much higher rate than the 7% average for the whole country.
I then went to work at AMV and in the first couple of years another two people from my year joined planning and account management (one was Hugo Feiler, now MD at Grey), then another two girls from the year below. That’s a freakishly high average of people from one school to end up at one company (150 people leave Westminster every year), but AMV did have a fair few ex-public schoolers, some of them utter cocks. Was there a policy to hire them (mainly in account management) or was it just a case of like for like, with people at the top having been public school and hiring those people they most identified with (I don’t think David Abbott or Peter Mead went to public school; not sure about Adrian Vickers)? There might also have been a hangover of many clients being public school and the agency wanting to hire people who could identity with them, play golf with them and chat about soggy biscuit etc.
So… lots of ex-public school people in the industry, almost certainly higher than the country’s average, and that means a lower proportion of people who went to state school. So does it make a difference?
That’s a much harder question to answer (partly because I don’t know who exactly did and didn’t go to public school). Certainly, there are lots of very successful advertising people who went to state school (Dave Trott, my old boss Mike Cozens, Tony Davidson, to name but three), but has the over-population of richer, more privileged people changed the perspective the industry has on the people we’re supposed to be speaking to? Or has that education led to greater gains in certain areas?
Advertising is often accused of being out of touch with the people it supposedly talks to. The reason for that accusation is often laid at the door of our greater salaries and London lives, but I’d have thought there’s a case to be made for the greater number of ex-public school pupils adding to that distance. What is life like for a housewife in Warrington on £200 a week? For many people in this industry that’s a question that is only answered by watching an episode of Supernanny or My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding (and obviously that answer is both wrong and without substance).
Of course, many ex-public school pupils have created some quite brilliant ads (hello, Jeremy Craigen), and maybe their golfing presence in account management has smoothed the path of several D&AD winners, and maybe our different perspective on life has added some unexpected ways into advertising problems. So maybe the pros and the cons cancel each other out.
Or maybe not. What do you think? Are you from public school or state school, and what difference do you think it has made?
Holy shit, is this really what it’s come to?
I’m from Romania and there are more gypsies here.
I’m confused by those comments.
I went to state school and I’m fucking useless. I observe others – equally as useless as I – and that tells me that main difference is that they are very much better connected.
As an ex-public school person I think there’s a definite scenario where I have to override my “middle-classness” when thinking about campaigns and what it is that our mostly working and lower-middle class customers respond positively to. It’s a weakness when you don’t identify with the things the man on the street does. The majority of people think moonwalking ponies, Onesies, Compare the Meerkat or ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ are still hilarious for example
I don’t suppose it makes much difference. Allegedly, ‘we’re all in it together’. Only one of our year at Watford had been to public school (and one had been to approved school, which is not as lovely as it might first appear).
I went to a dogshit state-school in a crap town.
This is what I think.
Public schooling (unless you’re at a tiny tiny percentage of state schools that are AMAZING) gets you a better education, surrounded by less disruptive shitbags, better contacts and a confidence that you can be good enough to do whatever you want in life etc etc.
It can also turn you into a bit of a cunt.
As a parent, I think that the holy grail would be to be wealthy/right-minded enough to send ’em to public school but have the discipline/foresight to make sure they don’t turn into posh, arrogant little wankers.
Also, on the agency front, the problem is when agencies use the “old boys” approach and hire people who refer to themselves as “Bunty” and wear one of those little rings on their little finger…
I think there are arseholes on both sides of the educational divide.
I also recall that Dave Trott attributes my confidence to the fact that I went to public school. I attribute it to giant piles of angel dust all day long.
Diversity. Bringing together lots of backgrounds and experiences and different tinted glasses is surely what we should aim for. Not better not worse just different.
Public schools get lambasted because of a select few of prize see you next tuesdays, but the majority are open minded and great to work with. Public school is not evil, seems to get portrayed that way a lot. It offers a fantastic education and helps produce a huge number of hard working and intelligent individuals.
There are always going to be dicks and dicks who then let all their friends into where they work so suddenly you are surrounded by them.
Judging the man or woman in front of you because of how they act, what they can do and how they do it should be the base, the rest comes 2nd.
Now where did I put those biscuits.
As Dave didn’t go to public school, I wonder where his confidence comes from? Hardly a shrinking violet, is he?
I have it on good authority that the Beatles – all good lower-middle/working class boys – played the biscuit game together to while away the time in Hamburg.
Uurgh.
Interesting question about Dave, and I have no idea why anyone would play the biscuit game. Imagine, just *imagine* losing.
Part of the reason people from less privileged backgrounds don’t get into advertising is the practice of unpaid internships. They limit only people with mummies and daddies that can pay for them to work for free being able to do them and get the jobs.
Also most kids from state schools don’t even realise there is such a job as advertising. They don’t have that disgusting sense of entitlement and ruthless ambition that is trained into public school kids.
Public schools are completely immoral, divisive and disgusting. They are the root cause of most of British society’s problems. They’re a relic, I can’t believe they are still allowed in the 21st century.
Rant over.
To clarify for you, Ben, I think the answer to a more fundamental question might shed more light on your deeply philosophical quest: how many were breast fed, and how many were not?
Funnily enough my brother went to ‘bend me over and bugger me backwards’ school and ended up married and living in Warrington so I can ask his wife that question you posed. Perversely I went to state school and ended up mixing with the hobnobs in London Town. Btw did Dave Trott actually attend state school?
I am with poo bum willy on this one. Which kind of sounds like a public school roll call, doesn’t it?
I am not sure of the relevance of school to your ability to study people. i.e. can the minority understand the majority is really the point.
Often people believe that you have to be a certain way to understand that way. Only working class people understand what it is really like to be working class, only blacks understands being black. Only women understand being women, you can’t talk about kids unless you are a parent and so on?
I am not sure that is true though?
If you had a medical problem would you seek someone with the same issue or someone who has researched the issues loads of times and met people with the similar complaints to understand us? Some would by the way. Some people think alcoholics are better to help others and so on.
But evidence suggests that it is not necessary to be an ex-alcoholic to help someone suffering from alcoholism. In fact it maybe be a better, due to fresh perspective for example and lack of bias not to have been one.
The Frank Lowe at Westminster thing is a bit of a fudge, as he’d claimed elsewhere that he spent his school days in some Dickensian shithole on the Pennines, so he was out of his family’s way – they owned a boozer.
There’s a lot of perception, right and wrong – a lot of ‘barrow boys’ in media attended the same private school in Eltham, for instance.
I’ve spent my career doing an impression of a clever, privately educated schooled Jew from Oxbridge, when in reality, I’m a thick, Christian, comp and poly grad with a 2:2 from the north of England.
I thought Frank Lowe was at Manchester Grammar (beat us 2-1 in the English Schools Cup). For the record Conan Doyle (not http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCFVEvZvo3g) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll_-pnXC8NU went to my bro’s public school, although I don’t think at the same time.
Sweeping generalisations 1 & 2
Public schools seem to churn out guys with confidence and the chat that suits them to account management (it’s all bullshit after all).
The girls that come out of it seem to have more hustle than the guys and often are more driven, until they get to 35 and realise that this is hugely unfulfilling and they want to do something else.
State secondaries have a genius for explaining to young minds that the the world genuinely, utterly does not give a shit what they think about anything.
Private schools seem to generate a constant procession of wankers whose massive sense of entitlement is rivalled only by the massive floppy bell-ends lolling from their foreheads.
Present company excepted.
I don’t think it’s any surprise that in an industry that has been scientifically proven to be 90% bluster and bullshit, the cock-cream tends to rise to the top.
Rough northern boys work in the creative department.
Blokes called Hugo work in account service.
Thick, posh birds work reception.
Smart, posh birds work in the TV department.
And, in the good old days, you’d find wideboys from the wrong end of the District line in the media department.
And so it was and so shall it ever be.
I went to a grammar school, which is a state school that thinks it’s private (well mine did). As a creative, I don’t think what school you went to has any influence on your ability to make great work.
Not sure about the confidence side of things – I think that’s more likely to come from the home. Is it that confident people are more likely to be successful, therefore earn the money to send their kids to public school, and so on…
I think the bigger issue is access: how can you be an intern without financial backing. Or is that naive liberal thinking? Is it a case of wanting it enough to sit in an agency all day and then work all night stacking shelves?
I have never met Dave, but he went to New York, and that is one place you can’t afford not to be confident – even if it’s just ordering a sandwich.
You don’t know what you’re missing Ben.
I have no idea, or interest in, what school anyone at Wieden + Kennedy went to. It’s not something it would ever occur to me to check or to think about. Having said that, I think we have one person who went to Eton, because he gets the piss taken out of him about it all the time. He’s MASSIVELY confident, so the mockery doesn’t bother him.
Sounds like a cue for a song, Biscuit (rich tea?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ainyK6fXku0
I went to public school and I think it’s held me back. People think I am really up myself and I’m not. Well not most of the time anyway.
@Neil C
You’re talking about my old chum Jonty!!
And you are right – he’s absolutely MASSIVE.
Is he still wearing those red corduroy trousers?!
@neil c:
It’s ok for you to pretend you don’t have TWO sons of a lordship at WK and maybe you actually don’t care about people’s schooling. However, even you can’t pretend that WK in general and the creative department in particular isn’t hideously white, male and straight.
Do you think, as D. Wieden does, that there is a diversity problem in advertising?
Chinless wonders in Advertising?! Who knew?
Chavismo – ‘Two sons of a lordship’? I honestly I have no idea who you’re talking about.
As far as I’m aware, the type of school you go to doesn’t necessarily affect your skin colour, gender or sexual orientation. It’s true that W+K London is mostly white-ish, but I think we may actually have more women than men. Gay / straight / other – we have an assortment but no way of accurately assessing the proportions, even if we wanted to. Which we don’t.
Yes, we are mostly hideous, and yes, I agree with Dan.