THE VIEW FROM GRESHAM
‘I’M PRIVILEGED, BUT I’M CERTAINLY NOT ENTITLED’
Madeleine Howell left school with an ‘irrepressible work ethic’ – but says that’s not all due to her elite education
Yesterday, I received a heavily punctuated Whatsapp message from my mother. “Have you seen the article about the Gresham’s headmaster versus snowflakes???” it urged. She was referring to the comments made by Douglas Robb, the boarding school head teacher who faced a backlash yesterday after warning that children are being “mollycoddled”, and are not prepared to put in the effort required in the world of work. Later, on the phone, she wanted to know: “You’re not one of those, are you? You were always doing menial jobs, and going on army camp in the holidays – and you had to go to chapel every morning…”
I attended Gresham’s School in Holt, Norfolk with the help of a scholarship from 2003 until 2010. Now, aged 26, I’m a fully fledged member of the avocado generation: I rent with three other inspiring, hardworking professional girls in a south London houseshare, and probably spend a bit too much money on brunch. But the prospect of paying off my student debts or saving for a deposit (or even just finding a house to rent that isn’t infested with mice, or terminally mouldy) is nothing more than a mirage. My first response to anyone accusing anyone of being a snowflake is outrage: life’s hard, we all struggle, it’s all relative, I cry – despite a lingering suspicion that the baby boomers did indeed have it easier.
As my fellow former Gresham’s pupil Rebecca Lawrence has said: “Negative stereotypes of millennials are two-a-penny and you don’t have to look far to find them.”
I’m privileged, but I’m certainly not entitled. Neither are the majority of my peers from Gresham’s, many of whom have since used the undeniable privilege of an expensive education to train as lawyers or teachers. However, it’s also true that most of my former classmates haven’t ever even had to consider jobs they wouldn’t want – a luxury not afforded to most. As public school alumni whose elite education won them places at good universities, they can cherry-pick.
While at school, I certainly resented the conservative outlook of Gresham’s. Another high-profile public school headmaster, Toby Belfield, head of Ruthin School in North Wales, received media attention recently when he “banned” pupils from having “romantic relationships” with each other, threatening teenage couples with expulsion and a bad university reference for forming relationships. In my experience, Gresham’s was similar – and I found that unhealthy and illiberal.
But despite my dislike of authority, my biggest selling point is probably my “irrepressible work ethic”, which I wax lyrical about in every job application I have ever made. I’m probably a bit too obsessed with selfimprovement, if anything. That drive, in part, can be attributed to the ethos of a school I was lucky to attend.
In the post in question, entitled “Developing grit, and a grateful attitude to work”, Robb writes: “A generation has come of age where many more individuals perceive themselves to be ‘one in a million’.”
I’ll forever be grateful to my mum for pushing me to apply for that scholarship, which gave me access to an expensive education, a place at university and a career in journalism that I love – but I’m equally grateful to her for taking on the role of unpaid taxi driver, and picking me up after a late shift at the pub in the holidays when I was 15. I suspect it was the hours on the dishes rather than the posh school meals, exam hacks, and hockey matches that gave me whatever “grit” I might have.