For crying out loud, I'm not snobby! Or am I?!

[NoBreakNoProblem]

I moved to this area a year or so ago to be closer to work. It's a predominantly a working-class neighbourhood (nothing against the working class, BTW, my parents were ones - it's just a description). Except I tried so many times to be friends with the neighbours and other parents at my child's school. Everything goes perfectly fine and pleasant until they learn about what I did for living.

It usually goes like that: what do you do? Ah, well...I'm an academic researcher/university lecturer. Then, almost every time, a deafening silence follows! Almost always, they try to avoid speaking with me afterwards. Some even stopped saying 'hi' - including the parents of my child's best friends (they came to my house a couple of times before).

For the love of God, I'm not the 'elitist' snob they think I am. Take for example this, the other day the plumber came to fix something in our house. We were chatting and having a laugh for nearly an hour. As soon as he learned what I did, his attitude changed completely and started to stonewall me by being 'too formal'. It's either they don't understand what I do, hence the silence, or think I'm that educated snob similar to those posh snobs who have driven the country's working-class into the gutter. Then again, why the stonewalling and the avoidance? I don't really speak philosophy or political science to them.

I never ever experienced this before - until I moved into this area.

Please tell me what's going on?!

[Message edited by MNHQ]

I think we've a contender for the snobbiest person on mn.

'He went to Eton, he went to Cambridge, he works as a surgeon, his parents were surgeons, but don't you know, his gf was a miner. He's so w/c. I can always tell."

I think at a push you can MARRY into middle class. But you are still a working class person deep down.

Yes, you're on a wind up 😏🙄

LOL, Humps!

I know a couple where they probably have a household income of around £150k in public sector jobs in northern England. Both are management level and experts in their field who travel the world speaking at conferences etc. Neither have a degree, but they do have extensive professional qualifications.

They live in a naice house in a naice area and both their DCs are at Mumsnet approved universities doing MScs.

Both parents were born on council estates to families who worked as miners, barmaids, cleaners etc. What class are this couple? What class are their DCs?

I don't think it matters, but many would argue that someone who has well paid professional parents and grew up in a good area and went to a good school and has an MSc from a (probably, I'm not 100% au fait with university terminolgy but I know it's one of those seen as a genuine alternative to Oxbridge) top 5 university is not working class.

I'm an academic very glad to live in an ordinary mixed neighbourhood rather than the academic enclave in the posh part of town. I'm quite practical & don't think anyone would guess what I do!
But No-one is fazed by it. I'm a bit cautious in explaining & tend to say lecturer which sounds less snobby. Actually struggle to get anyone to think its a full-on job & not some public sector jolly when explaining why I don't have time to make cakes for the local sports club do... :( I just get so cross that its not expected equally of working men.

Basically OP I dont think you are BU. Where I grew up there was rather a presumption against higher education or trying to do well at school. Anyone who did go to Uni mostly moved away and never came back. I got into a well known "posh" university and more than one person stopped talking to me. A previous old friend told me I was "up myself" for even applying there. Despite what a lot of the posters here think, there are areas where a lot of people are distrustful of university/higher education.

And their children will be, and their children's children will be, according to some.

The first post surprised me. Whenever I mention I'm a lawyer if it comes up - like the other week when the central heating expert was here - they don't hate me and shut up - wow, no, quite the opposite, suddenly they want much mroe chat (not less), discussions about either legal issues with difficult customers or their other customer who is a lawyer or whatever. May be London just doesn't have the same kind of class differences some other parts of the country have.

I am not sure being a lecturer is some kind of middle class thing though - it's tends to be people who don't earn that much and who are left wing surely?

YetAnotherSpartacus Thu 14-Dec-17 13:18:58

I wonder if men downplay their occupations in order to be accepted / not raise eyebrows.

This. This. A million times this.

D'oh! OP is male!
As you were...

YANBU. There are lots all tall poppies in Australia

Sociologically, baring in mind stratification, meritocracy and mobility, I've gone up a rung. But my heart sinks when I hear phrases like, 'she comes from a working class background', 'look where hard work can get you'. It implies that one 'class' is superior and that the latter is a negative thing. I was brought up to believe that you die the class you were born in, which suits me fine as I don't see anything wrong with that.
I would love to live in a classless society (I used to, but not in this country) but I know from an academic perspective that we don't, and have been sneered at/looked down on on this very forum when I've posted about problems I've had in the past by people who clearly thought they were 'above' me.

They live in a naice house in a naice area and both their DCs are at Mumsnet approved universities doing MScs.Both parents were born on council estates to families who worked as miners, barmaids, cleaners etc. What class are this couple?

By the dictionary definitions they are middle class, they are not their parents and people can and do move between classes. I can see though there are people who dislike the idea of social mobility and would prefer everyone to stay in the same class for generations. Factually they are middle class.

Never ceases to amaze me how much info folk know about others and then post that info online

I don't really speak philosophy or political science to them

Well if they’re interested why not? I had a nice conversation with the apprentice our plasterer brought along when I was a postdoc. He told me all about his learning historical restoration techniques and moulding reproduction plasterwork, which was absolutely fascinating, and managed to do it in a jargon fee way that I could understand easily.
He asked me what I did and I told him about my research on the genetic pathways that cause cancer, in as jargon free way as I could.
A pleasant afternoon. Although I think he felt a bit sorry for me because he earned more than I did as a junior postdoc 😅

Lecturers, at least all the ones I’ve ever met, are predominantly slightly left wing, not terribly well paid and not particularly MC. Academia doesn’t attract the ruling classes because there’s absolutely chuff all power to be wielded (i hate to quote Kissinger but he was right about academic politics...)

Class holds us all down. I was called ‘terribly common’ when I first went to uni a million years ago and it really knocked me. I wasn’t behaving like a Hogarth sketch, I was just answering a question in class in a Yorkshire accent. I’ve never forgotten it. Very unpleasant

I would never think that job title was particularly high end or elitist though

It's clearly intellectually demanding and requires a doctorate. So that's "high end and elite" in terms of qualifications, isn't it?

Academia doesn’t attract the ruling classes because there’s absolutely chuff all power to be wielded (i hate to quote Kissinger but he was right about academic politics...)

Please confirm that HK actually said "chuff all" (I'm sticking with my misreading because I love the idea!)

Google suggests that lecturers earn around £35-50k which is not 'not terribly well paid'.

Ana One of DPs mates has his own business with a partularly artisan aspect of one of the building trades after starting out as an apprentice in the conventional methods age 16. He's worked on all sorts of listed buildings and his business website showcasing his work is beautiful. We often talk about our work, which crosses paths sometimes although he is interested in restoration and my involvement is more about extracting hazardous substances when old buildings are knocked down.

If you are referring to my post portia, I've tweaked the details enough for it not to be identifying without detracting from the point I was making. I know all these things because I've been work colleagues and friends with the couple since before the DCs were born.

Interestingly there has been posts suggesting that the DCs are both middle and working class, so class isn't as clearly defined as some people claim.

It's clearly intellectually demanding and requires a doctorate. So that's "high end and elite" in terms of qualifications, isn't it?

Well... I’ve worked with a few PhD students who were thick as mince. It’s not any kind of glorious exalted state, having a PhD.

Please confirm that HK actually said "chuff all"

I should have said paraphrase: the actual quote is along the lines of ‘academic politics are so vicious because he stakes are so small.’

However... in googling, it appears he wasn’t the first www.google.co.uk/amp/s/quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/18/acad-politics/amp/

I’ve worked with a few PhD students who were thick as mince. It’s not any kind of glorious exalted state, having a PhD.

It is to people who don't know anyone who has one, who didn't go uni, who know several people who are back at college doing their Key skills maths so they can get on to superviser level in their manual jobs. Etc.

Google suggests that lecturers earn around £35-50k which is not 'not terribly well paid'

To some that's paltry, to some it's a king's ransom and you've passed some of each group on the street today. Even if you spent the day in Knightsbridge.

These things aren't absolutes. They're a matter of perspective.

You are not coming across well on this thread.

Patronising is an understatement.

Self-aggrandising, quite possibly.

If this is how you speak to working class people in person, I would be not one bit surprised if you were rubbing them up the wrong way.

Working class people are not carbon copies, you know.
There are different IQ levels, interests and specialities just the same as any other class. Some of us even have a thirst for learning and curiosity about what you would deem academic subject matter.

Some working class people even earn a lot of money from their specialist area of expertise and would hardly consider themselves to be "in the gutter". That assumption is quite offensive.

I am working class myself but don't become instantly flabbergasted at words with more than two syllables, you certainly wouldn't stun me into silence with your occupational revelation. I might not want to speak to you further if you sounded as if you thought yourself better than me with how you chose to word it though.

To summarise, the OP should dumb down the job description in order for it to be understood by the “working class” people who are definitely not uneducated.