Herself_nyc raised the topic of why American schools are designed to make conformists, which got me thinking about the differences between the American system and ours. I don’t know much about the American one obviously – just the cliches that one picks up from the movies and Buffy – yet my general impression has always been that the American system must by and large be a good one for the simple reason that people who have the choice still continue to use it. Not so in this country. Consider not Buffy the Vampire Slayer of Sunnydale, Ca. but Buffy the Vampire Slayer of Raincombe, Blankshire, a small town in the Home Counties that just happens to have a highly active hellmouth.
The gang’s all there – well, not quite the whole gang, because virtually no school that I have ever heard of has a librarian. If Giles must pursue his chosen career as a school librarian it could only be at one of the oldest public schools with the endowments to support one and an archive to justify it.
Nor is Cordelia there for that matter, or Harmony, they have been packed off to boarding school since they were seven and now both speak with an accent so thick only their own class can understand them. They happen to go to different boarding schools because Harmony wasn’t bright enough to get in to the famous Highton so she attends the small but very expensive St Margaret’s Ladies’ College, where she is allowed to keep her pony. They are both currently sailing through the exam system towards assured places at good universities. Harmony is not very bright but at fees of £20,000 a year SMLC knows perfectly well that it is expected to get her into university and by hook or by crook they will get her there. Highton (also £20,000 p/a but you get fewer ponies and more Latin) could get Cordy into a good university in their sleep and since it is an excellent school they will do a lot better for her than that. Although, by a perversity she won’t be able to go to Oxford or Cambridge since the Oxbridge colleges are being continually bullied by the government to favour state school kids over the independent sector and Highton has therefore encouraged her to apply to Bristol instead. Her father’s bankruptcy (caused by the fees) will not actually affect her taking up her place since the universities do not demand the full cost from anyone. The shortfall will be made up from grants and loans and Cordy will spend the first ten years of her working life clearing the accumulated debt. But so will anyone else who goes to university.
Willow is around in Raincombe – her mother with her strong social principles would never allow her daughter to be educated privately. So Willow goes to Raincombe Grant Maintained School, the former grammar school on the edge of town with extensive facilities and a good staff of well-motivated teachers. It is a state school, but in such high demand that only those who know how to work the system can get their kids in there. Willow’s mother made damn sure she knew how to work the system. Willow is currently working like mad for eight A levels, which she is convinced will win her the place at Oxford she longs for. What she doesn’t realise is that Oxford wants nothing to do with someone who never does anything but work (Willow never has time for her computer or the childish interest in magic she had as a small girl) and will reject her for someone with only three A levels who also has a rounded personality. The headmistress of Raincombe (who oddly enough was also rejected by Oxford when she was young) will whip up a storm of outrage in the local papers at ’State School Kid Rejected by Snobby Oxbridge’ before accepting the offer of a job at the private school down the road. Willow will got Nottingham instead and spend the rest of her life with a chip on her shoulder about Oxford.
Alex Harris (he announced his name was Xander on the first day of school and got so badly beaten up he hasn’t tried it again) does not go to Raincombe School because his parents most certainly did not know how to work the system. He attends Sloughend Comprehensive, the sink school for kids from the Sloughend Estate – a part of Raincombe where none of the others have ever been, although it is quite a small town. The buildings are vandalised, the teachers demoralised, and what little education Alex is picking up is only above the din of other kids messing around because there is no effective disciplinary method of making them shut up or sit down. Alex will not be going to university.
And Buffy herself? A responsible mother like Joyce would never let her girl go to Sloughend Comp, but nor as a newcomer to the town would she be able to get her in to Raincombe School. Joyce therefore skimped and saved even more, and somehow got Buffy into St Peter’s School, the private day school where most of the local middle class kids go. Having been forced to work hard for her scholarship (they couldn’t have afforded the full fees of £8,000 a year even after Joyce had squeezed every penny she could out of Hank and any other relative she could locate) Buffy is currently studying for four A levels and hoping to get into Cambridge. Since St Peter’s isn’t famous enough for the prejudices against the best schools to apply, but is a good enough school that it knows how to train its pupils to impress at interview, Buffy actually will get into Cambridge. Meanwhile she captains the school hockey team and slays vampires in the evenings and at weekends.
Cordy, Harmony, Willow, Alex and Buffy have never met.