To ask, if you grew up working class or not well-off and have done well for yourself?

[TheHouseOnTheLane]

Do you ever get a weird longing for the past and the way it was even though you know the reality wouldn't please you?

Do you ever feel a sort of guilt if you left your home town?

DH and I have done ok...we're not rich but have a lovely house in a very lovely town. Blah blah...DH is from a middle class family but I grew up in a steel town during the 70s in the UK...my memories are probably tainted but I sometimes hanker for the close community that was my home town...I feel guilt for leaving....or something...what IS it?

Weren't there arguments (around the time of the Comprehensive Act) that grammar schools didn't actually benefit that many working class kids? I know it did benefit some, but many were tipped onto the scrap heap aged 11 in terms of their education.

I'd argue that it selected a comparatively small number of working-class kids and allowed them to compete for professional careers at a time when a burgeoning economy and an expanding welfare state and a rocketing birth rate created a need for unprecedented numbers of Doctors/Dentists/Nurses/Teachers/University Lecturers etc.

I'd argue that grammar school educated working-class kids 'got on' not because of the quality of grammar school education, but because they came onto the job market at a time when there was a possibility for social mobility to a degree that doesn't exist today.

I think that's a fair analysis of the situation, the social mobility that we are discussing here definately does not exist in the same way.

Sometimes, when talking with my DCs I feel sorry for them, they have to compete so much harder than we did, with a lot of others who have more resources.

For example, the university that I went to now asks for AAA for a similar course, it didn't back in the day. Jobs that are quite averagely paid and not even in that high demand ask for internships and work experience first. There is no such thing as renting cheap property while you save up for something better (although that wasn't always ideal either).

In the end it all adds up, so some very able people are unable to get on because they can't afford to, whilst others who aren't as good have their paths smoothed for them. Meritocracy my arse.

I am 28 so not that far off in age either.

I escaped the cycle of deprivation because I had access to a comprehensive education. If I had grown up in a grammar area I would have repeated the mistakes of my parents.

Firstly my parents would never have entered me for the grammar test, if I passed they would not have had the bus fare or motivation to get me to school. Grammar schools tend not to be on council estates. They would not have paid for the extra uniform and books. My parents did not really value education and wanted me at work or settled with a man ASAP.

I would have struggled in the middle class grammar school environment. I struggled at university at 19 because I was a fish out of water, I even struggled in my first job because my middle class colleagues made it very clear that I did not belong. I would never have managed at 11 at a grammar school.

I have not read all the posts here. I have seen something which I found strange and I wondered if anyone else had seen similar.
Comfortable family background. Grand parents and parents all privately educated. The adult child these parents and grandparents would not attend school regularly despite being delivered in person to the HT. Decided to have a baby rather than University, moved to a poor area, mixed with the type of people not usual for the family and generally seems determined to make no effort to maintain and improvement is totally out of the question.
Seems a strange thing to do? Any views?

I would have struggled in the middle class grammar school environment. I struggled at university at 19 because I was a fish out of water, I even struggled in my first job because my middle class colleagues made it very clear that I did not belong. I would never have managed at 11 at a grammar school.

I wonder how common this is. I went to grammar school and was bullied so dreadfully that I begged to transfer to the secondary modern. My DM refused which was (with hindsight) the right thing to do. It was the naice MC girls doing the bullying of course - I was laughed at because of my WC accent and my chaotic family (DM was a dinner lady at the time, DF was an alcoholic).

This was Bucks in the late 80's/early 90's - hardly the Enid Blyton era. There were a fair number of WC kids there but we were not particularly popular. Many of the kids already knew each other from the local prep schools - my first experience of the "old boys" (and girls) network.

In the late 50's my mum was the dux of her very wc school in an ex mining village and offered a full scholarship to a nearby private school. She turned it down and left school at 15 to work in a factory. Married at 19 and had kids and only ever worked part time in menial jobs. She died a few years ago, i wish I could talk to her about it.

I went to a comprehensive school which did not encourage further education at all but my parents were very aspirational. I came from an immigrant background were education is seen as a passport out of poverty to a better lifestyle.

My teachers continually told me & my parents that I was setting my sights too high, that I should go and work as a cashier somewhere like all the other girls. I did feel like the odd one out, when everybody was out partying I was in the library revising.I was the only one who went to university & got a decent job and moved out of the area.

There was a definite resistance against being hard working and aspirational, it was & still is a very wc area. The teachers in the school had a similar mindset to the wc students that they taught. It was as if their sole purpose was to teach the bare minimum and to keep the wc students in their place.

My mother went to a grammar school. She says all the poor girls like her were put in typing classes and encouraged to become secretaries. Their level of intelligence and academic ability did not matter.

When I was young, miners were well off. They earned a good wage. So not surprised some here from mining families say they had foreign holidays.

But we were "working class", and to be fair, if you've ever known a miner, they grafted for their cash. Lots of the manual labour was decently paid, when British Steel closed in Consett I remember lots of the men were shocked at the wages they were expected to work for.

Mind you if you worked in a mine, or in steel a lot of it was danger money.

Social mobility IS going backward, and quite markedly so. In fact one of the reports slipped out by the government on the last day before they broke up for Christmas was the Social Mobility Commission telling David Cameron that whilst he talks a good talk, he is actually sending social mobility backwards, and his policies need to change if he will achieve his "stated" aim of everyone being able to get on. It's almost like he doesn't believe that and just spouts it so that the gullible will believe him. Who knew?

A topic close to my heart - unexpectedsocialist.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-greatest-battle.html

I wasn't saying miners did not work hard for their cash. They worked very hard. But they were much better paid than lots of working class people. So those who had a father who was a miner before the strikes and pit closures, would have experienced a financially better off childhood than many children from working class families.

Well we weren't "well off" but we didn't go hungry, there was a definite difference between being working class and being poor back then.

Yes, my Dad was a miner; we were as financially comfortable as the kids at my high school whose Dads worked white collar jobs. The difference was cultural rather than financial.(I'm talking seventies here).

I remember going to their houses for tea and having my mind blown by simple things like the Dad doing the cooking and vegetables being steamed and not served in a a semi liquid state.

Interestingly I never felt in any way inferior though, either at school or at university. At uni, (during the miners strike) I was incredibly proud of my background. I remember lots of heated debates with middle class friends and even their parents, (I must've been an annoyingly bolshie guest).

I wonder what rich and middle class folk thought the wc lived like back in the 60s to 80's.

I know we were better off than lots in our estate but not everyone was on the breadline at all. My gd was a miner my dad a steelworker. He could cook and clean, look after the kids when he had to - he was very capable and remember him making our bread during the bread strikes.

They had been living in a one bed and kitchen with no bathroom and a shared loo but only because of the lack of housing. We had a car and foreign holidays, even made it to Australia in the 70's. We had loads of books, a lot of them classics. It was hardly Shameless by any means - i think lots of people think council estates and wc are like that.

Put simply for me, having more money gives you more choice -where you live, what you can buy. it removes the worry that lack of money gives you.

My parents lived in a "nice" area but we were the odd ones out -no maintenance to house, very old cars, selling stuff to be able to go on holiday every other year. Listening to my parents arguing about money was hard.

My brother choose not to have children because he thought history would repeat itself.

I don't feel any better with what I have now but I remember what is was like to not have and I feel fortunate.