Does the UK still have an 'intellectual class'?

Italy also has Roman amphitheatres and reliably hot summer, ideal for open air opera for large audience. The peak of the 19th century boom, with the many operas of Verdi, is interwoven with the unification of Italy. Opera is an intrinsic part of Italy's national identity.

See also how opera is still v popular in Italy in a way it isn't here- though ofc that's partly bc they had the 19th century boom.

Well then I think the question answer is yes, there still is, and it is probably much more elite in class structure than it was 30 years ago.

Our media is also very different. 40 years ago there was a lot of harrumphing about Rupert Murdoch and his coarsening on public debate via Sky and his press. Yet social media is Murdoch on steroids. So too is the old media that has to change to compete.

intellectual life does not have to be elitist, but we’ve made it so in the UK

The defunding of the arts in school has been a travesty.

Cost of living has also impacted; I can't afford to take my state school pupils on a coach to the theatre, because the cost of the coach is prohibitive. (Definite advantages to living in London for others)

I also worry about the intellectual abilities of my fellow teachers!

I think large swathes of the UK believe being unintelligent is a good thing.

I'd also like to know where all the philanthropists have gone? We could really do with some...

"The onus of that is not on a child. There is a societal responsibility to ensure all children have access to culture, and part of access is changing perceptions and removing social barriers. It's not just as simple as having a phone with loads of free information"

As Marx said, every child knows that a social formation which did not reproduce the conditions of production at the same time as it produced would not last a year Marx to Kugelmann, 11 July 1868, Selected Correspondence

And it would be extremely childish, or naive or even damn right outrageously ignorant to ignore the fact that working class children have no time for the culture of the middle class.

Education of the masses has always been about reproduction of labour power. Docile and willing. Except you often find that there are those amongst the working class who rebel, they neither want to be moulded into docile labour or to adopt the interests of middle class. They snigger at clever kids in class. A sort of reverse snobbery. They intuitively know, as Marx asserts, although the second point (Marx often makes two points) is that we must reproduce the social system that makes production possible and that any imbecile should know that.

But to educate children to think critically is not the purpose of education. Never was. And Gove made pretty damn certain that his reforms would put paid to left wing 70s theory, critical thinking and an approach to pedagogy that encouraged curiosity.

Plenty of working class people are very intelligent. And it isn't education they lack either, despite the arguments being made here. It is really much more to do with how we have come to define culture in very narrow terms. "high culture" good, "youth culture" bad and "culture" that arises from below as vulgar, whilst that which is elite and emanating from the "educated classes" virtuous. I love the baroque but I think Oi Pollio has more intellectual capital.

This is what has happened and my mother grew up in a mining family. She still had plenty of understanding of classical music, literature, art, and went to study fine art. The state provided all this to her generation. She was well educated.

This is not about class except it is about a class of people who don’t have these opportunities any more. Firstly they are told they don’t need it by some in their families and secondly the state agrees with that idea because these things are different and challenging to introduce to kids who expect things to be easy (not their fault).

Private schooling is still doing Latin, debate clubs, choral singing, scholastic events, historical visits and you are expected to engage in education outside the core curriculum. Now the state has pretty much given up on that and squeezed teachers so hard that they barely have the time even if they’ve got the education to bring these extra things to kids.

There has to be a bit more to education that being a lawyer, accountant or plumber, but we’ve made our educational system so limited for most kids this situation is built in for them.

@Ladamesansmerci - that is all very well, but as I was just discussing with dd, (ordinary) schools now seem loathe to bestow cultural capital. Perhaps it is because so many teachers, especially humanities teachers, are not that well educated themselves. They are hardly well placed to inspire pupils if they are “dumb-downed” people. Eg dd’s music teacher could not read music (!), and she only liked things like Mamma Mia. She told dd she was a snob because she wasn’t applying to the local (former HE place) uni (sic).

Do you truly believe there aren't barriers, be they educational, class, cultural, and social, to 'intellectual' pursuits? This country has a deeply ingrained class system, which has lingered from centuries gone by. Everything from hobbies, clothes, where we buy our food, and what we eat, is full of unconscious and unspoken social rules relating to our class. It is very difficult to move up through social classes.

Outreach programmes to support children/families in deprived areas to access things like museums exist for a reason. It's hard for children who grow up in a family who aren't interested in culture. Where the attitude has always been that you find a trade to pay your bills, and that things like art is for rich toffs.

University doesn't need to be dumbed down, and admissions shouldn't be restricted, however it is true that 'culture' is more readily available to children in private schools and to the upper/middle classes, for many reasons. I'm from a working class background and was a straight A* pupil. I'm naturally curious and intelligent. BUT when I went to university, and I was surrounded by people who were middle class, and the difference in general knowledge and cultural capital was vast. I was surrounded by people who had all had gap years and travelled across Asia, who had parents who took them to the theatre and found art enriching. I had a post WW2 mining family father who thought art was stupid and travelling to a tourist resort in Lanzarote is culture. I just didn't have expose to the same degree of culture, and played catch up for a long time.

The onus of that is not on a child. There is a societal responsibility to ensure all children have access to culture, and part of access is changing perceptions and removing social barriers. It's not just as simple as having a phone with loads of free information.

what a typical response...

I don't believe there are too many people, even in the most deprived areas, who have no smartphones / internet access. Which means they all can access any classical music / performances / books / virtual museums etc etc for free at any time convenient to them. So really it's down to individual, not circumstances.

ETA - I remember one of the threads here about private schools and uni admissions and someone posted how they were state school educated, got place in Oxbridge and felt "traumatised" when those privately educated students were talking about cultural topics that posted never heard about; what awful elitism it was and how unis should severely restrict admissions of those rich bastards so people like wouldn't feel inferior.

Excellent read, thank you for posting

(and will def read some Susan Greenfield's books)

@Ladamesansmerci

I'm not saying I see opera as pointless. It's not pointless to me personally. I love opera! And theatre is my absolute fave genre of music.

Are you talking about musicals? I was talking about non musical theatre for example Shakespeare or Pinter or Brecht. Writers who challenge you and question the world.

But what I'm saying is, in the grand scheme of things, football and opera are both forms of entertainment.

In very simplistic terms, yes. One is a sport and the other is art. One is about the body and the other the mind.

Both require skill, and both can feel exciting/uplifting to some people. I really don't think you can argue that one holds more value than the other, once you've let go of unconscious class bias.

The theatre holds more intellectual value than football.

Libraries are free, but not everyone has the internet.

Most people have the internet and it's free in libraries.

Some people (and often working classes) work shifts when the library would be open.

You can order books online and you can read books on your phone or tablet if you have a library card. The internet has countless books for free.

The vast majority of people would not be able to use (or even know of) a database or how to use boolean terms to search a topic without having university level education.

I wasn't talking about academic journals, I was talking about books which can be ordered to your local library or borrowed from the library.

And journal articles aren't typically written in a way that is accessible to the general public. Most people have no clue how to appraise an article to judge the quality of it.

I wasn't talking about academic journals.

Some people don't have an academic reading standard or comprehension ability.

We're talking about the intellectually curious who can access books for free.

There are books aimed at the public, but these are often heavily criticised by middle class academics.

So what? I'm sure people can judge for themselves.

So sure, the information may be there, but it's not truly accessible to everyone.

Libraries are accessible to anyone who can read.

It's just fact that people in deprived areas don't do as well in education. No amount of libraries will change that.

If you're intellectually curious and can read, there's no stopping you. And libraries make an enormous difference that's why people are fighting to keep them open.

It's not me who has the bias.

I'm not saying I see opera as pointless. It's not pointless to me personally. I love opera! And theatre is my absolute fave genre of music. But what I'm saying is, in the grand scheme of things, football and opera are both forms of entertainment. Both require skill, and both can feel exciting/uplifting to some people. I really don't think you can argue that one holds more value than the other, once you've let go of unconscious class bias.

Libraries are free, but not everyone has the internet. Some people (and often working classes) work shifts when the library would be open. The vast majority of people would not be able to use (or even know of) a database or how to use boolean terms to search a topic without having university level education. And journal articles aren't typically written in a way that is accessible to the general public. Most people have no clue how to appraise an article to judge the quality of it. Some people don't have an academic reading standard or comprehension ability. There are books aimed at the public, but these are often heavily criticised by middle class academics.

So sure, the information may be there, but it's not truly accessible to everyone. It's just fact that people in deprived areas don't do as well in education. No amount of libraries will change that.

The UK mainstream is anti intellectual. It always has been, but recently it has added a cultural gutter to what is presented to most.

What I notice is that people who are still well off, educated privately still have access to all this cultural capital. And they use it.

The state has given up on it. Equity is for certain people only, a patronising mush for kids, and those well off kids, they get the good stuff.

Our culture has gone backwards. 40 years ago you could access this stuff without serious money. Now it’s back to “oh you wouldn’t understand that”. And they’d be right by design.

Yes they are still there, it is just that they are drowned out in the media by the give them bread and circuses management instead of letting them share knowledge and improve the general intellect of the nation.

I've noticed the drive towards equity in the education system and society generally. I suspect this explains policies towards independent schools whereby slapping VAT onto fees makes the smaller schools untenable, resulting in an exodus into the state sector. Ditto regarding further regulation of home education and SEND policy. It just seems like they want everyone to be the same and have no individual talent or flair. As we've seen, this results in a dumbing down of culture. In the future, it means, as a society, we will fail to innovate and thrive

Yes, I agree. I come from a working class background where state primaries provided these opportunities as the norm. I learned to play the violin and guitar at school: instruments were provided and no fees charged. I can relate to filing into assembly listening to classical music and participating in productions that were-actually-high quality. I remember being taught about Greek Mythology by one of our teachers, as well. Ironically, it's when I went to secondary school to one of those 'middle-class-green-leafy-naice-Mumsnet approved' type places that everything started to be dumbed down and learning became a chore.

Also, something I noticed is that everyone seemed to own a piano in working class households: this was definitely the case for my parents' generation and still commonplace when I was young. When I moved from Scotland to the south of England owning a piano was seen as the preserve of 'toffs' which I found a bit bemusing, at first.

@MaturingCheeseball Yes, ‘equity’ is the buzzword at DD’s current primary too (I’m a soon-to-be-ex governor there). And they’ve been quite open about the fact that achieving this goal will inevitably involve holding back higher attaining pupils.

Dh is also a governor of 15 years standing, and couldn’t believe that the new head is determined to chuck “excellence” off the school’s goals as it excludes less able pupils. Surely everyone can excel in their own way? Apparently equity is all that is important, and I suppose that’s easier to achieve by levelling down.

Anyway, I think this is all symptomatic of the disdain for traditional culture and, perhaps, the distrust and dislike of intellect.

Schools today: oh, you could weep. I don’t know where to start with the dumbing down. When a governor at the dcs’ primary school I tentatively suggested that the music offerings could vary a bit, eg a bit of classical/folk/jazz - all sorts really - rather than always mega-bland pop music in assembly/during lunch. The Head looked at me witheringly and spat, “The pupils cannot access classical music and it is boring and not fun for them.”

Absolutely this, and it’s one of the reasons we are removing DD from her current school. There is an absolute obsession with being ‘inclusive’ and ‘narrowing the gap’, which manifests as exposing children only to those aspects of culture with which they are already familiar. Promoting genres like classical, jazz or anything even vaguely alternative would be seen as elitist. Academically able pupils like DD are deliberately kept in a holding pattern and not challenged, as doing so would mean that the all-important ‘gap’ would never be narrowed for the lower attaining ones. It is all incredibly depressing and results in a dumbing down of the whole system.

My very ordinary state primary back in the ‘80s had a different genre of music playing in assembly every week, with individual pieces discussed in depth, at least two full-scale productions every year (The Hobbit; Wizard of Oz; Mary Poppins), two choirs and an orchestra. Nothing even vaguely comparable to that now.

Late 30s and early 40s is me and my group of friends. We talk about everything and we discuss it with our older kids. The other day we were talking about the politics of abortion with my 15 year old niece. I think it’s not a generational thing.

We are currently looking to relocate and actually did a full about turn on moving to a particular commuter town due to the critical mass of eyebrow/eyelash/fake tan-related posts on the local FB group I joined (plus the appalling spelling and grammar). Dodged a bullet there I think; I very much doubt we’d have found our tribe there!

I very much agree with your premise OP and feel the same; even among the degree educated, professional circles we tend to mix in people’s eyes tend to glaze over if you attempt to discuss anything other than holidays and reality TV. Not a particularly recent phenomenon IME though; I’ve always found the anti-intellectualism tendency worse in women, and often end up in male dominated groups at parties and gatherings as I find them more amenable to discussing topics like politics or culture.

I think it’s being made worse at present by our education system, which often teaches to the test and involves a lot of direct instruction/spoon-feeding instead of promoting a culture of active questioning and debate. I’m seeing it already in DD’s state primary - bright kids are instantly shut down when they show interest and ask questions, as it’s ’not relevant’.

Our DC knows popular culture, does footie matches with friends but is very intellectual. He will just start talking about philosophy or French movies etc. He's not found it difficult to make friends as an adult or as a child. He's been interested in politics since he was about 7. So yes I do think there are people engaging with the past, the present and culture.

Not a UK thing this but I noticed the the weird NZ Jacquie from MAFS AU cast this year thought that 'intelligent people read non fiction' - just one of the many bizarre things she came out with.

Yes, I remember talking to a friend years ago and I used a word of more than two syllables and she commented "Ooh, big words!" Ffs. I've outgrown some friends & family because I refuse to pretend to be stupid to make them feel better/less threatened.