Tell me about the most educated families you know

[feralunderclass]

And what their homes are like? This isn't a class thread BTW, as obviously 'educated' can be very subjective. I just love hearing about different people's (nice!) homes.
My parents both left school at 16 and worked their way up to management in their mid 30s. They both did higher qualifications along the way. We lived in a very white, provincial town (that is considered MC). Little to no exposure of different races/religions.

Our home was very ordinary, both parents read a lot, but we didn't have any non fiction books. At weekends we visited relatives and on Saturdays I would have gone to the hairdressers with DM and then food shopping. Saturday night Chinese takeaway in front of the TV. Mum watched all of the soaps, Dad liked history, but none of this was ever conveyed to us, if that makes sense?

We went abroad on holiday but didn't really leave the resort, might have gone on a few organized day trips but nothing historical. I can't ever recall going for a walk or to the park with either parent, and I hadn't heard of NT until I joined MN.

Parents were supportive of education but not pushy in any way, they would have been happy to pay for books, tutoring etc but they never instigated this. I did go to the local grammar. Neither asked about my UCAS form (it's very possible they didn't know what it was) or pushed us in any direction.

On paper, we were an educated, fairly MC family. But after joining MN I don't feel like we had an educated upbringing, when I hear stories of families eating around the table and discussing world events (I don't think we knew that there was life beyond our town!) it just seems so lovely, and weekends spent in NT properties with lots of nice books on the coffee table.

Not really much point to this thread other than to hear nice stories of families who talk about what's going on around the world and what their houses were like. Books, travel photos, holiday souvenirs etc.

Anyone?

I love visiting the home of one of my retired colleagues, the home where he and his wife raised their four children.

He and his wife both worked in the helping professions (think occupational therapy, speech and language therapy etc) - with lots of research and academic experience along the way. They were both quite noted in their fields and have mentored many other successful practitioners over the years. My former colleague in particular worked on many high profile cases and has been featured in the press (trade press and mainstream) many times.

As a result they are a fascinating couple, really generous with their knowledge and so bloody wise. Politically they are very (though I wouldn't say radically) left wing, they really live their values.

He worked his way up from a lower middle class background, whereas she is from a more solid, old school middle class background meaning their beautiful Victorian home is dotted with her antiques and heirlooms. They both love textiles, books, maps, plants and food - and their home reflects this.

The above might make them sound pretensious but they're really not. They're very humble in their approach to life, and about their achievements. I actually first met my colleague when I was brought in to manage the team he was working in at that time. This could have felt pretty weird as I was half his age and didn't have anything like the level of experience he had, but he couldn't have made it less weird, he told me he had heard all about my work and was delighted to have some fresh blood in the team at last. We became firm friends and I'm delighted to have stayed in touch with him and his family since his retirement.

I think if your parents read a lot that’s prob set a good example to you? We’re a family with a lot of books, kids have a big bookcase each in their rooms and I pick up various books for them at charity shops (and sometimes special beautiful ones for birthdays etc). But actually thinking back my dad (who did a five year degree - one of those professions) never read books but my mum always had (and still does) have her nose in a book. She shared her love of reading with us by buying us good quality fiction. They both read Papers especially the weekend ones.

I don’t think my own family is out of the ordinary educated (I’ve got a masters, husband an undergraduate degree, both my parents had degrees and two of my three siblings have masters) but my mum was good at taking us to castles/ historical and archeological sites and expecting us to enjoy them. They often played scrabble and included us and we now play scrabble with our eldest. And lots of other board games.

eldest watches news round at school and we sometimes discuss what’s going on in the world but not always. We have a coffee table covered in books that were in the middle of reading and subscribe to the economist etc. that’s about it really!

Neither of my parents went to uni, both left school at 15. Mum was a nurse, Dad was military. They were hugely determined that their kids would be academically successful - scraped and made major life change to pay school fees at very academic independent schools. We all did well, got into uni, and then for different reasons all left without graduating. Mum never, ever stopped telling us (me especially) that we were failures. Once, when I was visiting them with her lovely happy grandchildren, she looked at them and the said “such a pity you never achieved anything!” She’s long dead now, but I can never forget how that hurt, and I can never forgive the obsessive and narrow-minded ambition for status that caused her to say it.

Both siblings have professional qualifications and high-earning jobs; I went back into education later in life and got an Oxbridge first class degree and a PhD.

My upbringing was working class. My mother left school at 15 & was married at 18. She worked briefly in factories but was mostly a stay at home mother for most of my childhood.

My dad was bright & stayed in school to 18. He trained in a trade but had drive & ambition. He wanted his own business & had several failed attempts before setting up one that was eventually successful. They became reasonably wealthy & my dad enjoyed all that came with that but my mother did not. She resisted it all & didn't want their lives to change.

We lived in a very small 3 bed house in a new housing estate. My parents read books - fiction mainly. My mother loved Catherine Cookson books & my dad read thrillers mostly.

When I was around 18 they moved house to a detached house in a better part of town & it was v much understood as 'moving up in the world'.

I think if my mother had had a different attitude to life my dad might have really changed how they lived & travelled etc
They went on a few package holidays but my mother didn't love them. She preferred to be at home.

My dad wanted to see 'stuff' so for significant anniversaries- 25 yrs wedding, 40th birthday/ 50th birthday etc He arranged trips to places like Paris, Florence, Rome & he arranged personal tours with a driver to take them to see the Vatican / David/ Mona Lisa etc as he knew she would not want to undertake finding their own way around etc

We never did cultural or educational things growing up. Never went to galleries or museums- they weren't for people like us.

I starved for more - more of everything life has to offer. I went to university. I have many qualifications. Myself & dh work in the arts sector & travel widely. We're academics - our house is filled with books. Our dc have had radically different upbringings than we did & have travelled extensively

Sometimes I envy my own children . But other times I worry for them that they might not have the same drive to get out & find the world because they've had so much experience already. Its hard to know.

Both my parents were only semi-literate, having been taken out of school at 12/13 for economic reasons. No books in the house, focus on earning enough to feed and clothe children in a recession, no help with homework, pressure on children not to read (‘lazy’) and to leave (our dreadful) school at 15. In fact there was a lot of free culture, libraries, music etc in our city, but my parents thought it was ‘for rich people’. Not their fault, but it was a miserable way to grow up. I was stubborn and bookish, got myself to university on scholarships, met DH. We have seven degrees between us, I’m an academic, he’s a former academic — we have a house full of books, have a lot of academic/artist/ musician/architect/arts industries friends and DS has grown up around culture, travel, art. Everything we didn’t get! My siblings and I have something like 18 degrees between us.

I do agree with your final paragraph, @UnconventionalLife.

Growing up my kids were surrounded by books and went into the university from birth onwards (exh is an academic). They just thought it was normal to go to school, university and potentially beyond. One has graduated so far, currently doing professional training, other is currently applying for a masters. I'm also educated to postgrad level with professional qualifications in addition. Most their friends have similar backgrounds due to where we lived (if not academics they were drs or other professionals, it was a state school though). I've never once said to them they should go to university, it's just what people do here

Where I live in central London highly educated people tend to live in small flats, often in social housing.

I have family for example, a retired professor and his wife in a two bed h/a flat with civil servant daughter and son in law, flat crammed with books, paintings and papers, overflowing with arty academic paraphernalia.

A lot of artists, academics, actors and scientists living similarly in my neighbourhood: small council and housing association flats completely crammed with books and artworks.

I think we're probably the sort of family you mean. Middle class, all university educated (and most of us post-grad), lots of books, eating round the table and discussing world events etc during my childhood.

My children have the same except we probably have more light-hearted conversation along with the big stuff- both DH and I grew up with fairly combative parents and dinner table discussions could be quite acrimonious. No desire to replicate this with our own children so we're as likely to talk about funny things that happened during our days as the big stuff and we tend only to discuss politics when the children raise the subject (which they fairly often do) and try to debate with an eye to finding consensus.

I used to envy those kinds of families. My sister is totally non-academic. Frankly, I don't think she's ever finished a book, apart from the odd one about animals (her real passion). My dad hated school and could barely read. He sort of hated me reading as well. I loved him, but his ignorance used to drive me mad. I can remember being with him and grandmother and wanting to scream at how ignorant and boring they were. It felt like suffocating. The conversation never moved beyond cars, work, and the cost of petrol or alcohol.

When I was a teenager (and a pretentious, obnoxious little arse), I got into Oscar Wilde and Aldous Huxley. Their works were full of people sitting around discussing art and philosophy and ideas. I used to imagine that was what it must be like to grow up with educated parents.

I guess my own family. My four grandparents were all graduates which back then was more unusual. Knowledge and learning were considered the top priority over money. They were both dismissive of the idea of status and also in reality very concerned about academic status. Secretly they also liked money too but this really was shameful.

Constant discussion, reference books out at the dining table, relaxing with word games. Listening to R3 and R4 and discussing the ideas on there. Trips out were pretty much always educational in some form. We got poorer over time but still went to see Saxon earthworks, ancient ruins etc. Homework was our job as children, no restrictions on what we could read but lots if variety of books offered, weekly trips to the library, music lessons for as long as my mother could possibly afford it (I think my godmother was paying by the end).

Tbh I think it was good, partly because they were also positive about practical work and never undermined the complexity of skilled craft. My dad could carpenter, do electrical stuff and look after animals, my mum could mix concrete and grow our food. They just saw learning as the point of being alive, and reading as the fast track to learning what you couldn't experience.

One of my distant cousins families is very well educated. All their kids have done post grad studies and PHDs etc.
Theyre lovely lovely people, very well travelled - however they don’t seem to have any “roots”. They live up and down the country and are always moving from city to city, which obviously isn’t a bad thing but it seems lonely in a way. When we’ve been abroad with them the conversation is never light hearted, it’s always deeply political or talking about very niche subjects.
Me and my family can hold our own with them but fuck me is it boring/depressing dredging up Brexit/conservatives/NHS/mental health problems at every meal time.

It's not just how educated a family is , it's how much a parent wants to involve and develop a child.
My father took me to my first classical concert , he taught me how to read music and bought me instruments. He took me to interesting places . But he also taught me how to clear a blocked carburettor, how to change brake pads , how to drive , how to wire plugs , how to do simple plumbing , diy . He helped teach me foreign languages , and from a very early age no medical topic was deemed too sensitive for young ears . He encouraged me to learn computer programming in the 80s .

He found opportunities for me to experience roles that helped me in my university application.

His father had had no formal education beyond 14 but had a favourite historian (AJP Taylor) was fascinated by history and despite having a very bad war experience as a pow of the Germans sent my father to Germany in the 50s to learn German . The family travelled all over Europe camping with two kids sat on kitchen stools in the back of an ex po van. Both he and my grandmother worked two jobs to get musical tuition etc for my father and the house was full of books and antiques that my grandfather dealt in as a side line to being a caretaker.

I felt very strongly when I had my children I had two generations of people who invested time , energy and joy in educating in the broadest sense their children and that I should expose at home and outside my children to every experience possible.

My family is like this. Valued intellectualism and academic achievement to the exclusion of everything else. As a kid I had music lessons from 5, was put into Museum Club on Saturday mornings and holiday clubs with improving activities every summer (took me years to work out that I was the only kid there who didn’t need to he there because their parents were at work in the holidays). Every mealtime involved a heated debate about politics. I learned never to ask for help with homework, because they’d never just tell me the answer, they’d appear a week later with a pile of books the answer was buried in for me to discover myself. I rebelled against it, dropped out of university and am the only one not now a career academic with a PhD. I’m a more rounded person with better life skills and emotional intelligence than any of them, though. Life skills and emotional intelligence I picked up the (very) hard way because I didn’t learn any of it at home.

Oh, and that game you play at Christmas where you have a postit note on your head with a celebrity written on it and you have to work out who it is- that gets really dull really quickly when all the “celebrities” are Greek men who’ve been dead for a thousand years.

Thank you all, very interesting. I'm really sorry @LoserWinner that sounds awful. Yes both parents read a lot and I grew up a book worm too, but as I child I wouldn't have had access to books (apart from school) that were non fiction or showed you life outside the UK. I never went to the library as DM said people bring books into the toilet (our bathroom had a lot of books) and she didn't want other people's toilet germs 😅. She would have mostly read Catherine Cookson type of books. Dad would have read Dan Brown type of books, but again nothing was ever discussed.
@Libraryloiterer the very original series of Rich House Poor House used to show people like your retired friends. Antiques, quiet money, lovely house full of art/books but very into helping others.

I've tried to bring up my dc with a much larger worldview than what I had. Obviously it's much easier now with more diversity and Internet access, but even just going to the museum for special exhibitions and of course I've joined the NT 😁. I always go on city holidays and make sure we do educational stuff, and they do huff and puff at times but I think it's good for them (obviously do stuff they want to too!). Now as an adult it's shocking to me that I've been to places as a child and didn't know that certain famous landmarks existed as we never saw them. Can't believe we went to Paris and didn't go to a single museum or gallery.

@Lollygaggle thats why I put educated in inverted commas, because I don't necessarily mean qualifications on paper. There are families I consider well educated because they take an interest in what's going on and they are keen to pass that on.
I went to a (private) sixth form outside my town and came across girls who knew so many things that I didn't. Famous artists, poets, musicians (I played 2 instruments up to grade 5 but wasn't knowledgeable about music at all, neither parent was) and they talked about countries as if they knew them well and their political landscape.

What do you feel you missed out on OP?

We eat all meals at the dinning room table, talk about our days. I occasionally mention a news item, eg Lucy Letby case, or Bianca Williams being arrested, how I remember the Stephen Lawrence case.

Ds1 likes a good art exhibition. He's just got back from Camp America. Ds2 just likes playing football and x box.

I doubt they feel they've missed out on much. We watch endless football in this house. Doesn't stop anyone visiting any country/exhibition/reading any book, should they choose.

Which bit do you feel you've specifically missed out on? Or rather, if you've got loving parents who show interest in you, to me that's enough.

Get The Week junior magazine. It has a weekly debate page we do that around the dinner table once a week. Opens up discussions on subjects that are more relevant to younger people. Very interesting what the kids say.

There's other news it's actually quite good because it gives the good news as well as the usual doom and gloom.

So my working class parents (dad left school at 14/15) neither went to uni were actually v well travelled and therefore interested in the world. Mealtimes in my house were exactly as good you describe discussion current and historical affairs and everyones opinion was valued.

On paper my in laws are v well educated (both to post grad level) but omg they literally have no interest in anything beyond the end of their own nose and any attempt to discuss anything remotely interesting ends up with someone being offended. Lots of books pretty much all fiction.

So, I think it is about being culturally aware not just formal education. My dad frequently had his head stuck in an encyclopaedia and my parents valued education for what it could provide for you above all else.

Not really sure what the point of this thread is OP - DD went to to a well known grammar school, a lot of the most ‘educated’ families she knows (doctors, surgeons, dentists, politicians, professors etc) are also some of the most chaotic and unhappy. Yes they drive fancy cars, have lovely houses in nice areas, a posh social circle and push their kids into as many extra curriculars as possible but for the vast majority it’s all just a facade. Most are on the edge of divorce with kids that misbehave just as much as anyone else’s and worry about money in their own way. The nicest families we know are the bog standard ones!

We fall into this category - masses of books everywhere and always sat down and ate dinner together and discussed politics, history etc as a matter of course All of us are educated to at least undergraduate level with two having PhD's. I have 4 DC's but my daughter was totally unacademic and far more interested in Tik Tok etc. It has been quite hard for her over the years and it was a hell of a struggle for her to get a degree. Even now I do feel sorry for her on family holidays when we are all animated about some arcane political development and she's bored silly.

The one person that springs to mind is a secondary teacher. Two impeccably behaved and highly intelligent children. They are fairly affluent but not rich. Travel to interesting places to experience the culture. Lots of extra curriculars and music lessons. State educated but excellent state schools.

I can feel okay about myself and then I have a conversation with her and feel immediately inadequate.

I grew up in a council house on benefits, with parents who left school at 14. It couldn’t be more different to my DC’s life. They have PhD educated parents who read and play chess, sing and play the piano, paint and exhibit their artwork, publish poetry and short stories, act in plays, who always have multiple projects on the go and a wealth of knowledge to share. Lots of trips to museums and galleries, lots of books, music lessons, cultural opportunities, a home filled with antiques and stuff we’ve designed and made ourselves. I envy them really because it’s what I wish my own childhood had been like!

I think my family (and extended family) on my Mother's side probably fall into this category OP. Lots of academic post graduate qualifications, all accomplished musicians (classical), work in a range of industries from medicine, senior civil service through to IT and the creative arts. Sevral of us are international experts in our own fields. My Dad's side have much more humble backgrounds but always valued education too and in four generations have pulled themselves out of poverty into very academic or pivotal roles in my Dad's home country.

The thing is I don't think we are any different to anyone else. Yes, economically we are probably better off in many ways to other families, but not necessarily loaded from owning our businesses etc. Nor are we any 'nicer'. We are just us. We do debate things round the dining table, have well informed opinions on lots of different subjects. But we also fall out, squabble, have bad days at work, etc. I have school friends who barely have GCSEs. Their lives are very similar in lots of ways.

The one thing i have noticed however is that we do all have a ridiculous amount of books and musical instruments in our houses though! And it is assumed everyone will go on to university. I am more relaxed about the latter for my DCs but I do want them to work hard academically until they are old enough to make the decision themselves, so at least they have the option.

I have a PhD and numerous postdocs, my wife has more degrees than a thermometer and has worked in pretty much all the top Fortune 500 companies.

We lead a very minimalist life despite being able to live house-wise in something much more grand. The simple reason is that we do not have children and never will, have no interest in large houses or fast cars, and all our money goes on travelling and experiences. We want to leave the world with nothing left over.

Big houses do not mean big lives.