To think that going comprehensive is an exit from the middle class?

[VolvoMo]

There may be a few minor exceptions (due to wealth or ideology) but doesn't going comp take away your middle class badge and worse, give your kids the chance to carry a big chip on their shoulder for their adult life.

But people do, SoupDragon, you only have to open your mouth to be judged! It doesn't bother me, but threads like this irritate.
Selective schools are for the well above average. Most DC s are average, most middle class DCs are average, and surprisingly enough, most MNetter's DCs are average, that is what the word means. If most people had an IQ of 130, that would be the new average.
Comprehensives are the only state schools on offer in most places. In the days when 11+ was standard the secondary moderns had plenty of middle class pupils- they couldn't all afford to go private. On the whole middle class DCs from secondary modern schools did very well.
It may have escaped OP's notice, but private schools are closing (2 in my area in the last few months), people are having to take their DC s away, schools are having to find ways to help with fees, and meanwhile they are full of Chinese students.
The middle class are alive and well in comprehensives and always have been. They are not all like the ones portrayed on TV!

Further more, DCs don't have a chip on their shoulder, they enjoyed school and it got them to top universities ,as it did most of their friends.

compos what you say is patently untrue. This thread is overflowing with posters declaring their middle class credentials for fear of a stranger on t'internet even thinking they might not be middle class. I mean it's pathetic really isn't it?

Cory you have hit the nail on the head. People constantly sneer at working class people who have been more successful than they have. Their sense of superiority can only survive (in the face of all evidence to the contrary) if they deride their choices of what to do with their success and how they live their lives.

I suspect it must come from the fact that it stings a lot when someone with far far less advantage than you ends up having achieved more than you. It's not how things are meant to be is it?

Oh, I know some people do worry about it - you only have to look at the number of people on threads like this saying "oh, I'm X class because of ..." and I think "I don't give a shit" :)

Depends where you live. In Scotland, all secondary education is comprehensive and there are no private schools in my LA area, and only one within a 40 mile radius of the main town. This does not mean that we have all become working class.

"compos what you say is patently untrue. This thread is overflowing with posters declaring their middle class credentials for fear of a stranger on t'internet even thinking they might not be middle class. I mean it's pathetic really isn't it?"

Actually, I think this thread is cheerfully full of people taking the piss out of themselves and everyone else- because the op is so bizarre that the only possible response is a joky one. Perhaps you are taking it a liiiiiiitle too seriously?

If you say so seeker.

Perhaps where you come from calling being working class a demotion is utterly hilarious. Probably so.
Perhaps sneering at the ways working class people speak, what cars they drive, what clothes they wear is all funnier than Simon Cowell's hair. Probably so.

Cecily believe me, the private sector is alive and well in Scotland and always has been.
But the emphasis on class is much less and a flippin relief for this English person.

I am with wordfactory here.

This whole 'oh, the middle classes are so secure they don't need to bother with outward social signifiers' is so tiresome.

From LeQueen very openly sneering at those who buy pricey handbags and high end vehicles whereas 'the vicar's wife' is just so earnest and middle class and would never notice any of that stuff. To those claiming all the upper classes drive beat up old Land Rovers because they just don't care what anybody thinks of them is just rot. The upper classes can be as snooty as the middle classes who can be as snooty as the working classes (inverted snobbery).

Newsflas! All classes contain idiotic people like the OP who make judgments on crappy outward signifiers.

How many times does this need to be said? Decent people make friends with people they get on with, people they respect, people who are fun to spend time with. What car they drive / where their children go to school / what they call the toilet / loo / lavatory is Not Important.

FFS

I still maintain that the op was so incredibly snobbish and ridiculous that the only possible response was jokiness. I must have missed the sneering.

This seems like sneering to me:

The families at our local prep school have tonnes of money...they drive round in Bentleys and Range Rovers, live in 1.5 million McMansions, are dripping in Gucci and D&G.

But, very few of the parents are educated, they F and blind, their spoken grammar isn't great, and they're not remotely...well, cultured I suppose you could call it?

And posts like this (no offense, Exotic) reek of middle class angst, whilst all the while purporting to show the opposite:

Buggies are no clue. They are something that gets the child from A to B and I only ever had second hand ones. I would say that I was middle class and all the talk about 'which buggy or pram' leaves me cold. The baby is one time that you can get away with everything second hand, they don't care. My first pram came from my neighbour's loft.

Of course, it is deeply, deeply middle class to have a second hand pram. A major signifier. And here we have a poster shouting it from the rooftop. It is just as significant as a working class mum bring proud of a brand new, shop bought roam costing hundreds.

And yet, the myth that the middle classes don't care continues.

And that the upper classes don't care, either. And yet, Eton is rife with upper class boys because there are some outward signifiers which are hugely important to the upper classes, too.

Let's just drop the 'only nouveaux and working class folk strive to be perceived as a certain class' crap.

The OP was snobbish and ridiculous, but responding to that with snobbishness is baffling.

The idea that people consider themselves superior to others based on what their parents did rather than their own achievements is crazy. And belittling the achievements of others because they are not PLU is crazier still. Yet you'll see it constantly. If they're a working class woman who has been successful, all the big guns will come out and everyhting from her dress sense to her accent to what she calls her kids will be fair game.

Still the complacancy of the english middle classes (so certain of their superiority) does leave the door wide open for all the immigrants/working class folk etc to snatch what's on offer

I must have missed all the sneering and I'm better than you, word factory. I was just entertaining myself with the whole ridiculous system. I didn't think anyone was taking it seriously except the OP.

Wonder where the OP is?

op you sound like you have a chip on your shoulder

One thing I think it pertinent to mention right now is that although OP clearly means to identify herself as middle class through association with volvo, wasn't there a piece of research that found that the volvo estate is the only car which cuts through the entire class structure, it is driven by the underclass to the aristocracy and could perhaps be seen as the comprehensive of the automotive world.... It is so cliche though that i suspect it is a prank... I mean "volvomo" posting about comprehensives ending middle classness and how in her area everyone who is anyone goes to private school dahlink, the consequences of state education are simply unthinkable! Just too good to be true surely... heh-heh "volvomo"

It's just a ridiculous OP. The idea that of all the (quite contentious) signifiers of class that people use, going to a comprehensive is the most important and trumps everything else, and the idea that this is an irrevocable move which actually matters anyway, all other things being equal, is just mad.

In a way I suppose that you are right about the pram thing, I know that I could take an interest in the fashion in prams if I wanted- so any old pram will do for me. It is like shopping in Lidl - I sing their praises but I can shop elsewhere too.

It doesn't negate the obvious fact that most middle class DCs are in comprehensive schools and that comprehensive schools in middle class areas are very successful.

Now here's a little thought then. Eton wanted DS big time and DS thumbed his nose at them . Not boarding see. Didn't like their rugby team see. Was for 6th form.

Oh, and the dc had a McClaren Carry cot/pram thing - I thought the Silver Cross one was too expensive and too flowery. In the days when prams were absolute yuk - all pastels, flowers and bulk.

The word 'exit' makes me laugh. Like being middle class is a great big six lane motorway and you can leave it instantly and incontrovertibly and no-one will let you back in, just by taking the junction marked 'normal school'.

Trestle Well in that case how did anyone become middle class. That is utter nonsense and it makes me laugh that people actually consider middle class to be something so sanctified that no one could possibly reach those heights through money alone.

As a properly posh young lady; i shall enter the pram debate.
It's certainly true that we upper class people don't care about such trifling matters - after all; i shall only see my future children in the nursery - the rest of it will be left to the Nanny.
And cars - personally i don't care about those either - i let the Chauffeur decide which one of my cars we shall travel in.

But OP, really, your child is more likely to EAT chips in a Comprehensive than to get one on their shoulder.

LeQueen if you own a chunck of Derbyshire are you not upper class?????

I think what this thread shows is that everyone has a different idea of what constitutes which class and for that reason the class system in the UK is on its way out!