To think that Owen Jones is a fraud.

[soul2000]

I watched the R.T.S Lecture he gave last night on representation of the Working Class on Television, i have never heard such opinionated rubbish.
There are three questions i would like to act Owen Jones

1. Despite having an Oxford Education why do you deliberately mispronounce

certain words, in a kind of "STOCKNEY" accent.

1. Which Comprehensive did he attend , anybody who knows Stockport knows there is a huge gap between Poynton/Bramhall and Brinnington.

3. What class does he think he is with is Oxford education and two University lecturer parents.

i love Owen Jones, i am his biggest stalker fan.

I want to state a couple of things,

1. people who pick up others on their grammar as a way of counter argument are badgerfuckers and B) have to pick up the point about grammar schools. I do not understand advocating for a better education for a minority. All children should get a decent education, surely this means advocating for more teachers, paid a decent salary, smaller class sizes and real investment in education instead of fucking about changing schools to academies so they can be more streamlined and business focused

Custardo - yes to what you say about academies!

DD has started secondary this year. The school we got her into (not our first choice, we recently moved) has merged with three primary schools over the summer to become an academy, with a private investor. They have four campuses, but the Principal wants to move them all to the local business park! Planning permission has already been refused but she's fighting it.

The campus DD is at is small and a bit run down, but she loves it there. I think treating schools like a business is completely missing the point and I am totally against merging four campuses into one giant one. On a trading estate, ffs.

From reading this thread it seems as though your biggest objection to the guy is that you think he's faked his accent because he doesn't sound like he comes from wherever it is he grew up?

But people's accents change long past the age of 18. I sound nothing like my brother. You'd never know that my dh was Welsh unless you heard him on the phone to his parents.

You also pick up accents from your peers as a child. When me and my brother were teenagers we represented the West Midlands on a sports trip abroad. We were the only ones without a Brummie accent. After 2 weeks we came back with Brummie accents. According to my mum they took 3 months to fade.

Accents are funny things. Because dh and I speak quite differently to each other and very differently to the local accent where we now live our childrens' accents will be a right old muddle. Doesn't make them fake though.....

Social Science. An introduction to the social sciences , in this part of the course (60 UMS points) Politics, Psychology , Economics , Social Mobility.
yes i am only at level 1 : I have only been studying this course for 3 months
I don't think anybody on my course will have a clue about Bernstein .

You say i have a closed mind, it seems the people on this site are closed in their minds because they only want to listen to other Graduates.

Only 20% of the population have higher qualifications in this country and many people on this site think they speak for the other 80% of people.

regarding Bernstein i have just been on my course website and "the Facebook page " we use to communicate. , I asked my fellow course mates if they knew about Bernstein or the Latin Phrases , out of 15 responses No one knew anything about Bernstein or Pierre Bourdieu and only 2 knew the phrase "Ad Hominum"

Soul - I know your course! I started it (once upon a time, a long time ago, had to drop out ).

I'm not having a go. I did an Access course a few years back and we had to choose different modules. One of mine was Education (because that was the area I wanted to go into), so we had to study educational theorists, such as Bernstein and Bourdieu (remember very little of it now though). Other people did Sociology (more your kind of thing).

My point is, just because you and people on your course haven't heard of these theorists that doesn't make it intellectual snobbery that other people have. I'm sure you're covering theorists that I haven't heard of (but I bet Marxism has/will come up ). Different people study different things.

I hadn't heard of the Latin phrase either, but DD is in her second half term of secondary school and will be starting Latin very soon! Not a grammar school either. She's a brainy little wotsit and in the top set for English, they get a lesson of Latin each week. Mad!

Oh, and I loved the psychology! Fascinating stuff, all the experiments (and sad, in some cases too). Really interesting, but tough to write about.

garlic. I had 3 bars and a NightClub, My dad owned a 80 Bedroom hotel/a couple of Nightclubs and some Commercial property. We over leveraged ourselves with debt and were lucky to get out with what we did. I have talked about this in a drunken post from last week. I had very little interest in education for myself, but was very adamant of its important for my Niece and Nephew. Believe it or not certain friends who are Doctors/ Accountants / Lawyers have said i would enjoy and benefit from study, for years i was not interested. I am sure in time i will get to know and understand the relevant
Latin phrases and the work of Bernstein and Bourdieu, but to expect me to know that now is very unfair.

I think it is fucking patronising and insulting to talk down to people - to presume that working class, or poorer people will have no idea about anything remotely intelligent, intellectual or academic, etc. You seem to be annoyed with Owen Jones for refusing to talk down to the working classes, to speak to them, or about them, as though they are ignorant, unclassy and thick. And he is a journalist, a highly intelligent one at that; he would be failing in his job if he did not produce well-rounded, well-researched and intelligent copy.

As for you and your classmates not knowing who Bourdieu is (or whatever), well, um, aren't you studying? Aren't you supposed to be expanding your knowledge?! Study is to find out more, and to discover things, facts, ideas and people that you have never heard of. If you are affronted by people talking about figures you haven't heard of, then study is possibly not the best choice for you.

I'd personally rather read an article that stretches me, that maybe makes me have to go and look up a few things (and that's hardly arduous in this day and age), than to be spoken down to. You don't support or challenge anyone by patronising them or keeping them in their comfort zone. Why should Owen Jones pretend not to be highly intelligent, well-educated and knowledgable?! What an absurd thing to be offended by!

importance. Sorry ...

"the work of Bernstein and Bourdieu, but to expect me to know that now is very unfair."

Woah! No one did assume that you knew it. creamteas suggested you might find these people's work useful to read and learn about.

And your reaction was, essentially, "If I don't already know it, it can't be important.

That's quite extreme defensiveness - and you're personally aggressive with it.

Learning new things is what study is for. To get the most out of your degree course, you'll have to manage to tone down that defensiveness, or it'll get in the way of your learning.

The only way any of us learn is to realise there's stuff we don't know, and avidly seize it when we come across it.

Best of luck with your studies. Sounds a fascinating course.

Personally. I can't fault him. He's open minded and none judgemental. xx

"This has been a real discussion between those on the Right and the Left". OP you are aware that technically Owen Jones is neither of those right Personally I would like to research a Journalists' whole Ideology before criticizing them. Many posters on here have said to you "he stands for many more things than benefit cuts". I wanted posters to tell you then seen what they were doing. Research it for yourself. (Iraq War. Syria. Nhs?) The reason many people hate Owen Jones is because he's one of those people that would never have been given a platform had other people had their own way. Re the accent I'm not sure what that has to do with anything? We are sent on training every year with regards to public speaking. I speak posh for someone that comes from my area of the country. It doesn't make me any less fake than Owen. If you could come back with some valid points about why you don't like him. Posters on here might stop giving you such a pasting :)

soul2000

Social Science. An introduction to the social sciences , in this part of the course (60 UMS points) Politics, Psychology , Economics , Social Mobility.

You have to watch Owen Jones as part of your course?

Jesus wept. I thought education standards had only fallen in the state school sector. I hadn't realised the rot had spread all the way to further education.

What you find in the end Op is that you will be encouraged to take a critical look at all these commentators.

I think you will find that there are far more complex forces at play than grammar school education when it comes to limiting the life chances of working class people.

And good luck with defining working class in the 21st century

(the course sounds brilliant, I did three years of psych with the OU and am finishing this year. It's a challenge, it is an excellent university (having a first degree from and RG university I can compare) and it will benefit you. Good luck with it.

And flatpackhamster - I doubt that Owen Jones forms a core part of he social science syllabus

This just gets dafter and dafter. OP, NOBODY has suggested, ANYWHERE in this thread, that only graduates are worth listening to. I know lots of people without many (or any) academic qualifications who are interested in the theorists/books discussed, because they are curious about the world and have expanded their knowledge as best they can without many (or any) advantages in life. What leads you to think that only ideas people your circle of aquaintances have heard of are worth knowing about is beyond me. Attacking people for things they haven't said (or because of their accent!) is just plain silly, and indicative of really lazy thinking.

Ubik1

And flatpackhamster - I doubt that Owen Jones forms a core part of he social science syllabus

I really hope not. But I'm not convinced he has any place in any syllabus.

I think Owen Jones has a few valid points in Chavs about the way some media outlets are biased against the poor. But it misses out other aspects of the story. For a counterpoint, try Life at the Bottom by Theodore Dalrymple. He argues that while life among the poorest in society is indisputably tough, the whole mechanism of state-led intervention is predicated on values that absolve the poorest of any responsibility or agency in their own lives and as such actively contribute to a culture in which the poorest stay poor. Or, in other words, he argues that much of middle-class lefty doctrine is actively harmful to the people it aims to help.

Dalrymple is a bit harrumphy in places but writes from experience as a doctor in very poor areas of Birmingham and himself comes from a lefty background. From his perspective the Owen Joneses of this world are as often part of the problem as the solution.

I like Owen Jones. He makes some good points, but also spouts nonsense.

If he is on a show, then it is worth watching, just as if Bob Crowe is on a show too, because there will be some real debate with clear blue water between the two sides.

Jones is one of the only socialists with some fire in his belly and that makes him worth watching, unlike the rest of the progressive climbers.

However, I don't think he is really for real. When the Bilderberg Group held their conference in Watford, Owen Jones was nowhere to be seen. When teh biggest group of capitalists, bankers, bigwigs and political puppets converged in Watford, he was not with the people protesting about this secretive group and asking what their agenda was.

The Oxbridge graduate who writes for our press is limited to talking about "benefit cuts" and safe topics like that. That is why I think he is not for real. He plays his part in the left-right charade, but it is a safe part in a well-contained box and he ends up just perpetuating the game.

Even his book, "Chavs" is really a sociological non-issue, a diversion from the real issues that face the people and the country. As an Oxbridge graduate and socialist, the system promotes him and gives him as much publicty as it can. If he used the promotion the system grants him for real debate then he would be for real.

OTheHugeManatee I've just googled Life at the Bottom. It looks really interesting.

People's life chances are determined by many factors, we can quote many sources, but i believe that a major factor to people's life chances are the occupations of their parents. It can be argued with statistics that families in the lowest economic circumstances are more likely to stay in those circumstances throughout their lives, this has been shown in the recent OECD report. The report states that children born in to the lowest economic circumstances are eight times less likely to experience social mobility than children born in to more beneficial circumstances.

Education is seen by many as a way to improvement in life expectations and increase social mobility , but people in the lowest economic section of society are likely to have not benefited from quality education. These families are likely to have negative perceptions of education. This negative perception of education is passed on to their children, this can be seen in the fact that many of these children will massively underachieve academically despite having high academic potential. This is a huge problem for teachers and other
people involved in education( How do you Motivate) kids who have only ever seen failure or deprivation.

Other factors about life expectations are cultural, if you are raised in a higher economically advantaged family, you are likely to have benefited from regular foreign holidays, culture visits to museums. More importantly you have seen people around you become successful , this i think is vital in displaying positive influences and showing people how to succeed in life.

Flatpack. Thanks for the encouragement....

I liked Chavs overall. It was an important push back against the discourse at the time, which was a real demonisation of working class people.
My only problem with the book was that he sometimes seemed to go overboard and dismiss genuine problems. For example- he treats anti social behaviour on estates as a media fiction, put about to play on middle class fears.
Although this issue is sometimes presented in ways which feed into middle class prejudice- it is also a real issue which can make life hell for working class people. Mumsnetters who have posted here seeking advice on those very issues can attest to that!

On those points, i did read the book thinking that Owen Jone's personal background might be a weakness. It would take a working class writer to confront these issues sensitivly and from a left wing perspective I think.

I like him. Whenever he appears on TV i'm impressed by how articulate he is. I also like the way he is always very polite and respectful of the person they have lined up to oppose him.

However, I do find him very naïve at times.