middle class

[southeastastra]

why is it so important for them to all conform to a certain standard

the right playschool, the right school, university, job

the right clothes, politically correct opinions, cars. does it not get suffocating to conform?

You can usually tell someone's class. None of it matters and it's just a joke really. Most people in the UK treat everyone well. How it cuts across race and immigrant boundaries is interseting too. Indeed so bad has been the import of the Indian caste system to the UK that some Indians here have lobbied to introduce new laws against caste discrimination under Englisn law which would be a bit like banning class discrimination at work.
We are certainly not the only country with class distinctions and the Americans do have them by the way.

As for what most people are on MN it's hard to say. I am sure the advertisers require statistics where they are possible on the demographics. In common with the UK as a whole you will get quite a lot of lower middle class people as that was the movement. I have been watching the series about China www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b069c2rx/secrets-of-china-3-how-to-get-rich and that shows the huge changes and new middle class there.

I am pretty sure despite being the great grand daughter of a miner I am middle class - the second generation privately educated and all the next and my parents, me and all the next generation been to university and I suppose by our reasonably received pronunciation but does it matter at all? If you are happy then who cares less what class you are? Some people move class.

I would say my mother's funeral summed it up - she was very clever (mensa level IQ even in her 50s whcih I am not sure I would still be), passed 11+ and became a teacher - quite an achievement for her. We never met most of her 52 first cousins and in some ways she did move psychologically in terms of her interests from some of her family after she left home. At her funeral my older daughter flew up from University (Bristol) and did an amazinly good reading with of course no Geordie accent - not that I am knocking the Geordie accent; my son played the last post (he was a music scholar at his private school down here). I sang - from Faure's Requiem. All that in a sense would have been familar to my mother who like me had perfect pitch and sang in the college choir and had a really lovely voice, but it was the subtle clothes and accent and interests differences that made us very different from our generations of those 52 first cousins who were there - we were all good kind people but you could certainly see the 2 generations of class differences. Again not a problem, I repeat but definitely discernible.

The biggest immediate give away is people's accents and grammar. As just about anyone can speak in a way that may be more acceptable to some (not all) clients in the highest paid jobs in England there is nothing to stop anyone who wants that to get on youtube and practise again and again how they speak. On the other hand plenty of people have made a lot of money in London staying with their ways of dressing and acting. Others go the other way - privately schooled Corbyn did a Michael Foot.

Why the heck do people care about what class they are? The only reason I can see is that they feel insecure about themselves and want to look down on someone!

SheGot makes an interesting but one which possibly says more about the opportunity for upward mobility. It is true too that the old fashioned working class live increasingly middle class lifestyles.

Society has changed beyond the most thought of divides.

I was brought up upper middle by generations who nudged upper; dh was brought up lower middle by generations that were traditional working. It was the mobility facilitated by education that allowed the ILs and their siblings to leave their working class roots and dh to Oxford.

DH will always view himself as Northern working class. He has provided us with an upper mc lifestyle - my earnings though good would not touch his achievement. He provides a service to extremely wealthy companies/people so meets the traditional definition well.

The reason that MC families are no longer defined by their ability to send their DC to private school is the fact that the MC have increased far faster than the number of private school places, and the cost of private school places has risen much faster than the cost of living. Just as many DC as a proportion of the population go to private school as ever - the MC as a proportion of the population has exploded.

dolce people care because traditionally which class you were born into decided how much money ( and thereby freedom) you would have in life.

As this notion erodes particularly for a sector of the middle classes, they become more and more invested in the signifiers of class. Giving these signifiers value in and if themselves ( where historically they were about retaining position and money ).

Whatever the reason bobo the fact remains that a superior education to the masses is no longer the preserve of most middle class children.

If large numbers of educated MC people send their DC to state schools, the lobby against private school privilege and a self-perpetuating elite will get ever more vocal.

There is no "no longer" about it. Just as many DC go to private school as ever. The MC has expanded, that's all.

I am middle class. I had no idea that I conformed to anything- it would be easier if I knew what I was expected to 'conform' to!

You would expect that bobo.

You would expect the MC to realise their situation and mobilise with the WC to improve state provision or the abolition of private schools it whatever.

But currently in the UK it's not the case.

The MC are very reluctant to recognise their situation.

If MN is a decent MC barometer you will find no battle cry. Instead you will see a new found dismissal of concerns regarding state provision.

The bottleneck to receiving a good education is the chronic shortage of well-qualified teachers. Teaching, by and large, no longer funds a MC lifestyle and teacher recruitment is becoming acutely difficult. Importation of teachers from lower-wage economies (Spain, Eastern Europe) will become widespread - a bit like importation of nurses.

The lobby needs to be for better wages for teachers to attract better-qualified candidates. And to put a stop to the obsession with small class sizes which eat up cash.

I agree but both those things will require a mind shift in MC parents that I do not see coming any time soon.

I think that the truth about the teacher shortage needs to be formulated better and more truthfully in the media by the powers that be. All those MFL candidates for PGCE aren't really going to be teaching Spanish (there are far too many teachers of Spanish) - they are going to be teaching maths.

Tube train driving has become a MC career and teaching a WC one...

The lobby needs to be for better wages for teachers to attract better-qualified candidates. And to put a stop to the obsession with small class sizes which eat up cash.

I agree.

My grandmother was a London reception teacher in the 1940s-70s and her classes were frequently 40-strong. No TA, either. Mind you, a lot of them were West Indian children and she, and the parents, were strongly of the opinion that any behaviour they didn't like could be dealt with by means of a smack.

And yes, better-qualified teachers being paid more.

At one stage about 25 years ago my teacher husband was paid the same as our nanny and he nearly gave up until he got a bit of pay rise. I don't think teacher pay has ever been brilliant in the UK and everyone who does into it knows that.

My mother taughter 40+ classes after WWII and actually she did not want a TA. She hated if ever any other adult was in her class as it interfered.

I can't remember ever having TAs in the class. Student teachers, sometimes, but that was all.

Not that our primary school was an exemplar of good teaching, combining the worst of late 60s woolly theories on education and corporal punishment-obsessed nuns.

I wouldn't say having a degree makes someone MC though as these days an awful lot of people have them! Maybe back in the day when degrees were rare it was a good class signifier, but I wouldn't say so now.

I think MC is mostly to do with profession, I.e. Something that requires some post degree training, like doctor, lawyer, accountant, officer in armed forces etc.

Now, were you drinking prosecco when you posted this SoutheEast

Janet - teachers have never been well paid but if we are to raise educational standards in a market we need to recruit better teachers than ever, and more of them than ever. And therefore need to make their pay and conditions better relative to other possible career choices.

I think having a degree or a professional type job makes you middle class. Or if you go to work in an office in a suit or business dress. I don't know anyone from our way who had a degree or a professional type job or that but the other half's side are obsessed with it. I worked in the chippy when I was at school and left school at 15 and had to wait a year to go into the factory because you had to be 16. Everyone I know did the same. You left school at 15 16, you got an apprenticeship and a trade or u went to the factory or something. I'm proud of where I come from

I suspect we don't have the money to increase teachers' pay, but it is always about market forces. So it does tend to go up and down over the decades.

A degree certainly helps if you want to move classes although you can be rich but not middle class - the Beckhams for example and Alan Sugar.

One way to pay for teachers is to reduce face time and increase private study. Technology offers plenty of avenues for increasing guided private study.

Bobo only problem with that is that teens wouldn't do the work.....