A doctor explained to my grandfather that he was happy to pay a lot to send his son to private school for reasons of behaviour alone: \u201eIt\u2019s worth it just for the way they walk into a room\u201d.<\/p>\n
(\u2026)<\/p>\n
The whole of life is riddled with unwritten, unspoken, but often exclusionary social codes, even governing such trivial factors as entering a room or closing the door. And whereas you can selectively break these codes, you will never get away with not knowing them in the first place. Moreover, these codes are becoming more discriminatory as they become less explicit, and hence more difficult to learn without exposure to people who already follow them.<\/p>\n
(\u2026)<\/p>\n
Put bluntly, a private education is a fairly reliable way for your children to acquire the necessary codes and social skills which are a lifelong source of advancement.<\/p>\n
(\u2026)<\/p>\n
We pretend through the exam system that we are selecting children for technical or administrative jobs, because it seems more meritocratic that way, and it maintains the pretence of fairness for all, but we know deep down that mastery of the unspoken codes of behaviour is what really matters in an economy where the technical questions can be left to a small cadre of underlings, while the really important work is interpersonal. As the American economist Deirdre McCloskey points out, \u2018Sweet talk accounts for 25 per cent of national income in the US\u2019; in the UK, it is probably higher still.<\/p>\n