I’m thinking Latin, opera singing, perhaps French cooking? The less common the better, but it’s all interesting!

30 comments

  1. Not me personally but we had Ancient Greek, Japanese, and Russian on offer too.

  3. I went to a normal school that had Latin lessons, and got talked into entering a Latin speaking competition by the teacher.

    We were the only kids from a comprehensive school that were there, so I can confirm Latin is common in private schools.

  4. I did have Latin class, but it was only for 1 year and that year there was a choice of different subjects. Business, Modern Studies etc… When I was there we actually had a smaller selection of classes than was offered at a state school, because the expectation was everyone would take more of the classic big subjects which were valuable for university applications.

    But the main thing you get from private school is the expectation that you will succeed in life and the arrogance to get you there. An entitlement to the best things in life that means you ignore barriers.

  5. I attended a state selective (i.e. grammar) school and Latin was one of the languages I could choose, so that’s not quite as uncommon as you might think.

  6. I knew someone who went to a Steiner school and ended up learning Nordic runes and firewalking. All useful skills, I’m sure.

  7. Latin, chess, loads of poems by heart, how to waltz and polka, embroidery, calligraphy (I was absolutely terrible at that), some folk songs, lacrosse. Not hugely useful honestly!

  9. A lot of Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, Japanese, Classics. Remember doing tests in Scandinavian languages to test pattern recognition and language aptitude

    School had a big emphasis on music and had bands (like brass band) that’d tour the country and go to international competitions.

    We had our own swimming pool, too. Not sure if that’s rare or not

  10. * Latin
    * Ancient Greek
    * mandarin
    * fives
    * sailing
    * cadets
    * international baccalaureate (bleh)
    * how to pluck and cook a dead chicken
    * how to navigate a house gauntlet when a drunken housemaster is making you drink vodka and whipping you

    EDIT: more

    * chapel choir
    * fencing
    * having an armoury on school with old SA-80s (no semi-automatic though – boo)
    * being an archivist as part of extra curricular
    * having abandoned WW2 tunnels under the school houses
    * having personalised hymn books
    * having intra school hymn singing competitions

  11. Tbf Latin was the only one that was different to the comp in the village. And rugby. Our school though was probably the cheapest private school I’ve ever heard of though, albeit still a fortune for most folk.

    Latin, French, and German were all compulsory until year 9, when you could drop languages for GCSE.

  12. The main thing I learnt at boarding school was that we are all just humans. I made friends with every colour, race and creed. Big Nigerians with huge facial scars to small Japanese who handled a blade well and everything in between. There was no race or colour predudice, we were all in it together.

  13. We had a really nice music recording studio, including control room and sound booth. I did Music Tech as an AS-level which was just an excuse for me and my band mates to record ourselves jamming.

    We had our own swimming pool (pretty common in the Middle East) so we had a strong school swimming team as well as did water polo and other things in PE.

    The kids that did the Silver and Gold Duke of Edinburgh awards got to go abroad for the camping expedition. My brother went to Mauritius which looked amazing.

  14. The private school next to where I grew up had a firing range and used to do clay pigeon shooting as a PE lesson and would take sixth formers for an annual grouse shoot at a local country estate.

    Naturally as a scruffy street urchin, I never got to do any of that, as I was sent to the local comp with the rest of us plebs, but I did make friends with bored boarders who’d venture out into the village to mix with the natives.

  15. Did Latin to Advanced Higher along with 4 other languages in 6th year. It was great being able to study what I wanted and not just be forced into STEM.

    You get more of a variety of sports too like lacrosse but in 5th and 6th year we also got to choose aerobics! That was fun.

    Other than that there wasn’t really much out of the ordinary. A lot of private schools aren’t at the Erin end, they’re basically just normal schools but with a better selection of subjects and sports.

  16. 1) Well, singing and other instrumental lessons are increasingly offered privately rather than through school. You can’t learn to play instruments or sing very easily in a group. Therefore, it’s more about privilege or interest than going to a private school as such.

    2) I did learn Latin and Ancient Greek to a high level at school, to the extent of blooding having to write verse in them. But I was at a state school, albeit one that went private while I was there, though I still counted as a state school pupil.

  17. I had to do a couple of years of Latin. I hated it.

    Our French teacher had lived in Japan for 7 years and at the end of one year, he taught us a bit of Japanese and how to write our names in Kanji. He was a funny bloke: from day one, he only ever spoke French in French lessons, except to provide a translation for individual words in English. Although, his method worked.

  18. Conventional: I did O-level Latin. Less-conventional: Learned pig-rearing, and won a number of prizes in machine-gun competitions (thankfully, these two activities were never combined).

  19. I went to an independent school, we didn’t get special subjects. But we did have to do handwriting and recorder up to year 9. You know, two things that most kids get to stop being forced to do in primary school.

  20. My kids go to a private school. No Latin, but they do karate, sword fencing, sailing and horse riding. I think they are looking more towards knocking out MI6 agents rather than Radio 4 talk show guests.

  21. I think the only “weird” thing we learnt was Latin (caecilius est in horto, m i rite?). Alongside that, we did Roman mythology as a subject for a year, which was honestly really interesting.

    I also remember briefly doing “art history”, which was the most dry subject you can imagine for a teenager.

    My girlfriend (at the time) went to a different private school, and they did all sorts of posh shit. Fencing, archery, and shooting were all part of PE lessons, and they had a choice of all sorts of languages outside of the standard French and German, like Russian, Japanese and Chinese.

  24. The big difference is that there is a focus on how to pass exams. Private schools live and die on their results. They just show the formula to get through the exam in a way that are marked highly.

    Maybe not less common, but that is how they set you up.

  25. I worked at a private school for years and the curriculum was pretty much the same as you would find anywhere with a few add ons. Latin was compulsory for a year and you could take basic greek and then Classical Civilisation. Virtually everyone at A level did the same as the rest of the population but there was perhaps more pupils taking the perceived hard ones like maths and physics.

    It was the extra-curricular activities where the eccentricities stood out. There was of course a chess club, a Go club, swimming club, book club etc but you could also go to Chamber Choir, Schola Cantorum, Textiles Club, Barbershop Quartet, Symphony Orchestra, Jewellery Club, Cheerleading, Cycling (track), Sax club, Warhammer Gaming Club, Minecraft Club, Charity Committee, Jazz Band, Yoga, Cipher Club, Environment Society, Eco Club, Virtual Reality Club, Guitar Rocckestra, Ceramics Club, Technical Theatre club, Psychology and many many more. That plus cadets, Duke of Edinburgh, volunteering, Ski trips, Physics trips to NASA, Cricket to South Africa, Geography trip to Iceland, Languages trips to Spain, France and Germany and well over 100 other day trips a year.

  26. Based on my husband:

    The ability and confidence to innovate and just do what interests him, then convince his employer that this is what they’ve needed the whole time and thus that he is completely invaluable to them.

    How to completely quash his emotions and feel like he’s never good enough, no matter how well he’s achieving in life.

    It’s definitely been a double edged sword for him.

  27. Man this thread is pretty depressing. As someone who went to a comprehensive that “requires improvement” (Ofsted), you see all the things you never even had the chance to do or even thought would be an option (and even considered normal!) for others.

  28. Zulu beadwork was probably the most surprising. Taught by this eccentric english lady who lived in Africa for a while. Most useful was how to hide the fact you’re drunk from authority

  30. We studied Latin, I was pretty good at it. One thing I really appreciated and it seems uncommon these days, was that we had separate subjects for the main branches of science. Different classes and exams for Physics, Biology and Chemistry, we’d typically get about two hours of lessons per subject per week, so about six hours of science all told.

    Most other schools seem to lump them all together in a generic “Science” class, but I’m a nerd and I appreciated being able to study each branch in depth on it’s own terms.

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