Prince George starts at Eton this week, and so far I have read in the national press four different accounts of what he can expect when he gets there. I am now well-acquainted with the terms “divs”, “Field Game”, “Judy’s Passage”, the “Colours Test”, the “Burning Bush” – the latter of which refers to a lamppost – and have grown nauseous from the gushing over the world of opportunity that awaits him (as if any opportunity will ever be denied him).

Forgive me, I must have missed the memo that decreed “Eton: good” because I was still under the impression it had a few problems. For the past decade (and, really, several of the decades before it) popular opinion has been decrying the dominance of Old Etonians in government, and the arts, and every other sphere of influence in British life, and how it has contributed to much of the country’s ruin and inequality. Yet we appear to have reverted to fawning about this marvellous, enviable, uniquely well-rounded education, which is nowadays so very international and incredibly diverse and, don’t you know, inclusive of students from all walks of life, some of them even from council estates!

Now, look. I am not so obstinate that I cannot recognise the obvious, immense benefits of an Eton education – the facilities, the grounds, the variety of subjects and the access to public figures for speeches and debates are all astonishing. I grew up reading The School at the Chalet, so like anyone else whose schooling is best described as “ordinary”, I understand the voyeuristic intrigue of those old-fashioned, clandestine little worlds. The thing is, though, in order to enter Eton world, you have to depart another. The real world.

When it comes to state schools, the ones attended by about 93 per cent of the population, our perspective is totally warped. Read most newspapers and you’ll come away believing that state school is not something to appreciate but to overcome: a last resort, a hardship to suffer through, an obstacle to achievement and success through which only the very gifted and dedicated can prevail. If parents must condescend to sending their child to one, thus already failing to provide them with “the best”, then good parenting advice dictates that they must compensate for it with private tutors and competitive sports and positive affirmations to emulate the confidence instilled by elite institutions.

It’s weird, isn’t it, this tacit understanding that 93 per cent of this country has missed out on something better? How radical might it be to rethink the British state education as something to value – like how Americans take pride in the traditional “high school experience” – and to consider that for all the privilege that Prince George and his classmates have access to, there is also plenty that they will miss out on?

The mix of different cultures and backgrounds and ability levels and what the exposure to all that teaches you, very young. What you gain from co-operating and making friends with different types of people – and how this happens naturally when you’re all thrown together.

Being able to walk to school, having friends who only live round the corner, developing a deeper connection to the community you live in. All this, and understanding that the world does not revolve around you, is surely better preparation for the reality of the adult world than prematurely treating adolescent boys like little gentlemen and drilling into them that they are the chosen ones. Or would be, if after leaving school Old Etonians ever had to engage with the reality of the adult world.

I am not arguing that children get a better education at state school (this obviously depends on the child and the school). I am arguing, though, that the way we talk about state schools – comprehensives especially – needs to change.

When I was 18 and starting university, I was apprised, by a disproportionately large number of privately educated students, of the fact that I must have overcome great hurdles to find myself there among them. After going to an all-girls comprehensive and then a sixth form college, I was disadvantaged, and I had beaten the odds. You couldn’t “tell” that I went to state school, they’d say, as if bestowing a great compliment. “You don’t sound like you went to state school”, they’d add, as if I’d successfully concealed something to be ashamed of.

All this was news to me: by any metric my upbringing was comfortably middle class, and my school was pretty good. But it’s a narrative that has continued into my working life in the even more rarefied world of the media, an industry in which people with state educations are woefully underrepresented and working-class people even more so. But they are not the same thing, and conflating them does nothing to level the playing field.

What will? Less frothing over how fabulous Eton is and more recognition that going to a state school doesn’t make you deprived. Britain’s classist cycle will never break until we end our morbid reverence of the posh and rich.