Moving schools - taking a child out of St James

[NYC]

Making the connection clear between SES and St James schools for the benefit of parents has been a long-standing aim of many on this board.

I notice you don?t say it is an aim of current St James headteachers, governors, or the senior SES membership.

Stanton, I haven?t missed that you?ve personally been a strong advocate of making the connection between the day schools & the SES apparent? you?ve written yourself that there should be a signed form in each child?s school file, a parental acknowledgement of the tie to the SES/SoES/SoPP or whatever, and I would add that it should include language making clear that the SES is a group with a particular philosophy, and does not offer an academic survey of philosophy.

St. James will probably survive the child abuse scandal, though it may shrink?but the legal vulnerability that the current administrators are inviting by misleading parents about the spiritual education they provide could close the school. Seriously.

[CeliaR]

Deleted

[Free Thinker]

My mother taught me to iron my underpants as a child.

Oy!

[Stanton]

Yes, NYC, you're quite right. I do give importance to making the connection clear between the SES and St James - for the benefit of parents especially. I'm glad to see that the website now does this. Further links could be made but the connection is now clear on the website.

[Saint James]

http://www.stjamesschools.co.uk/ . I jut logged into there, but cannot see any clear links to SES. I see a student clearly holding a page of THE TIMES newspaper!

Stanton, can you give me some guidance on this?

The website is still very vague in my opinion, there is no mention on the fact that students spend half of their time learning this Sanskrit language which isn't exactly the most common language.

[xstJ]

As far as I can see there is no link on the junior schools website to the SES.

[mm-]

The St James School website does have a link to the SES. It is on the home page and is accessed through the 'About us' link.

I would like to reiterate though that this is only a very recent link. This information certainly wasn't available so readily a few years back.

Also I would like to point out that in the Junior and Senior school prospectuses which I have recent copies of; there is absolutely no mention of the SES whatsoever.

[a different guest]

It should be noted it is found via the "about us" drop box under the sub-head History.

[Sam Hyde]

It should be noted, that's because it was ORIGINALLY as in HISTORICAlLY founded by Leon MacLarren.....head shed of SES. Hence this detail being filed under 'History'......of school

Peace out

Sam xox

[mike_w]

...less HYSTERICALLY... I'm sure he was a distant relative of Leon McLaren, son of Andrew (a somewhat more stable character by all accounts)

[a different guest]

Sam wrote

Hence this detail being filed under 'History'......

Hardly history when the influences of the SES are very much current!

The governors are SES, the heads are SES and most of the teachers are SES. SES idealogoy underpins everything the school does and teaches. If not for the SES you would not be learning Sanskrit, pausing in class and girls subjeced to a compulsory study of "Art of Hospitality".

As Bella has pointed out, she would send her child to an SES school because she expects it to be SES, not just the same as the state school down the road.

The excerpt from the Girls School brochure posted by BoeingDriver is telling. If you absolutely nothing about the SES belief system you would think it just a warm bit of 'touchy feely'. However, read it with a bit of pre-knowledge about the SES and you see what the Headmistress is really saying.

The influence is clear and current, not history.

" It is good that our young women should be encouraged to view their potential as limitless, but we must take care to ensure that the spirit of love which is so natural to a woman's heart is inspired to meet the needs of those with whom she lives and works. If we make the mistake of rearing a generation of self-seeking young women we are heading for calamity. Women have the power to create the emotional environment in which a community lives and the need is for a loving and benevolent force, which is directed to the attentive care of all. If we could all concern ourselves more with the quality of our service and less with our personal accomplishments and status, real liberation of the human spirit - with all its amazing creative powers - would emerge. "

ETA: I was going to point Sam's new thread to this post, but I see it's gone.

and also he had gotten the "wife' bit wrong. Sam baby, YOU don't get the child brides, it's the old blokes!

[Free Thinker]

I didn't see Sam's bit about a wife, but I assure you Sam, that the school's rules would have you committing some illegal acts right now, since they believe that the best difference in age is that the man is 1/4 older than the woman. If you are 19, that would put your wife at around 15...

With an age difference of 12 years in my marriage, I obviously don't see anything wrong with a husband being older than his wife. But that doesn't mean that there should be a blanket rule about it...I wonder why 1/4, too. What would they say about the almost 1/2 older my husband's got going.

[AntonR]

Post deleted

[Free Thinker]

Uh oh - Chief Seattle again!

[Goblinboy]

Uh oh - Chief Seattle again!

Yes. Didn't want to respond, but better do it in case Anthony cops some unnecessary flack or a verbal avalanche from a source close to home.

Anthony, apparently these words are not attributable to Chief Seattle. Go to http://www.snopes.com and search for "chief seattle", or just google the name. Apparently some entry-level SES material quotes this verbatim, without acknowledging that the words are not those of the attributed speaker. It appears to have come from a film dating from 1972.

However, not a bad sentiment, regardless of who said it.