I am not the person who does this. Our society pays people according to certain levels. That does not mean we don't respect all individuals regardless of income but there is status and to assume there is none is just wrong. (Also class and income do not go together always in the UK either but that's a separate topic).
The UK has much better class mobility than many other cultures and although apparently it has got a bit worse than the 60s it is not impossible to move class in the UK and much much easier than in many places on the planet. We're very lucky.
Here is a very interesting Times piece from today which I would like to see the subject of a class discussion for every set of 14 year olds in the country next week.
-00
Teach the young to talk and they might get a job
Stefanie Marsh
November 19 2011 12:01AM
"What kind of face, voice, demeanour can get you a job in today?s ever tightening market? If you?re a woman, a deep voice will apparently garner more respect; clear skin, regardless of gender, will allow you to sail through an interview more effectively than a face full of acne.
But there is another way to boost your job prospects, one that is so obvious that no social scientist would bother to investigate its merits, and yet nobody dares to speak its name. The ability to talk in good, clear, polite English would turn round the job prospects of thousands of young people in this country.
Social and youth workers know it; councils know it. (I?m not entirely sure teachers do.) But whoever does know it won?t say it. Not in public, anyway.
So when Boris Johnson asks why Pret A Manger doesn?t employ more British people, he is being disingenuous. The reason why our quite considerable service industries employ so many foreigners is not because the British are workshy or too proud to pour coffee or because, in some quasi-mystical way, foreigners are ?taking our jobs?. It is because the Spanish or Polish barrista speaks better English, more politely, than many of her British contemporaries.
I have worked as a volunteer with young people over the past few years and and am not the only person to have been struck by how little they learn about locution at school. Talking to youth workers, parents and charities about unemployment among young, economically disadvantaged people, I ask what single thing would improve their lives most. The answer, as weird as it sounds, is always the same: ?Elocution lessons.? Always followed by an anxious ?but you can?t print that?.
Why can?t we say it? We wring our hands about maths, reading and spelling, but say nothing about locution. As a culture we seem to confuse such ideas with classism or racism. A couple of people I?ve met even claim that it is ?patronising to young people?.
In other countries it is normal for children to speak a standard form of the national language in schools, regardless of what is spoken at home or on the bus. Yet here, many children do not have two registers. And to suggest that they develop a more formal style of speaking is seen as an attack on their sense of identity.
Of course, in this country we?re burdened with that toxically polarising phrase, ?the Queen?s English?. Can someone please come up with a more neutral equivalent?I?ve met maths prodigies in pupil referral units who find it hard to string a sentence together ? nobody has taught them how. I?ve met highly intelligent girls who are totally unable to articulate their feelings, much less their vision of their future. They languish, jobless, while the majority of shops, cafés, restaurants and hotels across Britain are staffed by eloquent foreigners.
What is worse, and this is a horrible truth, is that young people of disadvantaged backgrounds who cannot speak well treat anyone with a posh accent with deference. They feel diminished by it.
This matters now more than ever. In a world where large numbers of graduates are unemployed, the well spoken and the badly spoken are competing for the same jobs. I hate the idea that an eloquent thickhead will get the job that rightfully belongs to their less privileged peer, purely on account of their intonation and body language.
What to do? There is another group of workers who have been hit hard by the economic downturn and find themselves on the silver scrapheap ? horrible little phrase. If you?re over 50, redundant and face the prospect of being unable to find work in future, you?re on it.With time on their hands, these are exactly the people who could be so effective as volunteers in schools and youth clubs, although they are glaringly absent from these roles currently.
At a time of creeping, widespread unemployment, we understand that all that most people want, regardless of background, is a job. Having the language skills to get one is what every young person deserves."