To think its not undesirable to be working class?

[HotSince82]

And that actually you can live a perfectly nice life and be quite content, with no aspirations towards upwards social mobility?

I have been noticing in the news at present that WC children are being termed 'disadvantaged' with regards to homeschooling.
Presumably this is in relation to a supposed lack of laptops/ipads etc to aid online learning and/or lack of parental engagement/education level.
From personal experience I don't believe this to be the case. My children and their peers almost without exception have access to these things and parents are motivated and educated sufficiently to support their children's learning.
I am however in no way denying the very real experiences of the children who are living in economically and socially disadvantaged circumstances. I fundamentally believe that every possible scrap of governmental/educational support and assistance available should be provided to them throughout the covid crisis and beyond. I simply don't believe that such disadvantage is a reality within the very vast majority of WC households.

Surely WC isn't synonymous with disadvantage? I feel as though my family has a perfectly nice lifestyle as do those of my acquaintances who are all, broadly speaking very much WC.

I would go so far as to say that I would be content if any of my children replicated a standard of living which is similar to how they have been brought up. Yes, if they become extremely high earners that would I'm certain be rather lovely, but it is in no way a prerequisite to an enjoyable, contented life.

I'm pretty sure that I am correct in this assumption but if I'm missing anything I know that you will all point me in the right direction.

Agree 100% OP.

There seems to be the perception that people are either WC which means they are on benefits or service industry/zero contract jobs, live in council houses, spend all their money on smoking and down the pub and have no education or aspirations.

OR they are MC which means they live in a detached house in Surrey, work as a solicitor, privately educate their kids etc.

Most people are somewhere in between.

But then if people just identify with what they see themselves as rather than what the indicatiors would describe them as, how is that an accurate measure of anything? How does that drive improving things? I get the concept, I just personally don't see how it's a particularly useful tool

Because people who discuss class from a cultural aspect are not collating data that could be used to inform government policy. They’re discussing the old English class tradition, if you will (we are a funny bunch ) that is ingrained in to our culture.
The social scientists and sociologists who are using the method of measuring class that they invented will, one would hope, use that data to actually drive change and then, to measure that change.
I’m not an expert but let’s say that a particular data set tells us that the population classed as the ‘Precariat’ are more likely to have bad health outcomes. And that these people are concentrated in certain areas (disadvantaged areas) therefore, will be going to the same school (disadvantaged school) one would hope that the government would use that data to inform policy change in that particular area - more funding for the school for example - and to improve the health of that area (more funding for local health authorities perhaps?) And that sociologists can then revisit the numbers to see if changing the policy had a positive effect on social mobility.

Im probably not explaining myself very well here so apologies

Right. I was totally unaware of these different sociological/cultural class definitions. Can you please either provide a link or explain to illustrate?

I think we are all clear about who is disadvantaged, especially in lockdown and trying to continue with education as it being those with lack of resources, space, time etc but it appears that 'working class' has erroneously been used as a shorthand for those disadvantged due to these reasons.

Eg an example on yesterday's school meals thread was given of a traditional middle class family where the breadwinner either left or died and the remaining parent couldn't afford to keep the family home running and it was repossessed and they couldn't afford to work and make childcare work etc and ended up in a B&B/insecure rental accommodation with almost nothing left over for food after basic bills so wouldn't be able to properly feed their children and certainly not afford things like laptops for schoolwork. But they'd probably still consider themselves middle class if that was their background, so also probably wouldn't agree with being labelled 'working class.

Conversely, people always cite people like Wayne Rooney as evidence that, no matter how much money you have, if you were born working class, you don't stop being working class. Does this fit into these different cultural/socialogical definitions?

Working class is a very wide gulf.

University education, and the general educational demands of employment have caused a significant blurring of boundaries between working class and middle class. "Working class" manual/ semi-skilled jobs can pay much better than some "middle class" or professional jobs. Living on that kind of cross-class income, staying in cheaper working class neighbourhoods and keeping to more working class recreation can give more financial stabikity and disposable income than aspiring to a more middle class lifestyle.

Then there is the "underclass" where chronic dependence on benefits becomes a lifestyle and the financial practicalities of seekking (low paid, minimum skilled) work outweighs the benefits. I've taught across the county across the full spectrum of state education and you can get localised clusters in inner cities and pit towns, where education was never needed to work down the pits and in the factories, and the culture against education has never caught up with the reality that functional literacy and numeracy are essential and for a decent quality of life you need more than a handful of scaped GCSEs. There is a retained working class pride, which at this level traps people into accepting survival standards because that's what their parents did, and their grandparents did. There is a mistrust of getting above one's station and seen as rejection of the family. There is often a generational trauma caused by undiagnosed SENs, mass unemployment from dominant employers, disability/ poor health or addiction/ crime. "Progress" left these people behind, trapped in a cycle that's difficult to escape without intervention, but intervention is seen as intrusive and suspicious. Shortly before austerity hit, I was teaching in an inner city girls school and their aspirations were to exist until they could leave school, get a boyfriend, have babies, get a flat and replicate the lives of their mothers and grandmothers. They existed well enough and they had very little wider experience and opportunities to inspire anything more aspirational and comfortable. It's a mindset/ culture that is very hard to shift.
It's a world away from benefits being a temporary stop-gap.

With the current focus on educational support polarising between classes, at the bottom end of working class/ underclass there just aren't the resources of technology, time, parental skill, space, patience, life experience and adaptability to deal with this situation. The more money and connections you have, the easier it is to mitigate one of those problems. If all your mental and physical resources are spent on surviving, there is nothing spare left to give.

Coincidentally, I watched Jason Manford's 'Muddle Class' show the other day.

Maybe that's what most of us are now? 'If you have a mattress in your front garden, but it's memory foam, if you go on ski trips, but fly there on Ryanair, or eat olives while watching Jeremy Kyle' then you're muddle class.

Barbara

Here is a link to a sage paper about what they referred to as the ‘great British class survey’

journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0038038513481128

I haven’t actually read it but I will now I have found it
The more simplified version is the class calculator on the BBC website:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22000973

If you read the introduction, it explains a bit about the thinking behind why this was done.

I agree with your estimations of people conflating disadvantaged and working class by the way. They are very different things and it’s careless journalism to refer to the disadvantaged as WC. Because they aren’t! They are labelled the ‘precariat’ which is a portmanteau of proletariat (Marxist term for WC) and precarious.

However, I wouldn’t get too worked up about it because - as I say - class from a cultural stand point is different to that from a sociological one.

Social mobility is far more possible if you use the sociological definition of class. You simply earn more (or controversially, have more MC friends or do more MC activities!!)
From a cultural stand point, it is much harder. Mainly because it is so hard to define. I think most of us know where we fit in and which class we identify with. I do think it is possible to change class from this point of view though. I think it would be akin to identifying with a different political party for example. You can’t measure it, you just ‘feel’ differently I guess. It’s probably largely tribal as well and based on who your peer group is.

Sorry - I am rambling now

Forget about class labels for a second.

I read this article when it was published at the start of May and found it fascinating.

It's long been known that one of the biggest determinants of children's success in education is their mother's level of education. The article I linked to is about the gender divide and so focuses on women doing more childcare and homeschooling than men.

However, they also find a big difference across wage levels:

The amount of home schooling children are receiving in lockdown appears to be particularly affected by the income of their mothers, with the lowest-paid women spending 2.1 hours a day educating their children each day (over an hour less than the highest-paid women).

I found this interesting as presumably higher paid women are more likely to be working long hours from home and so in theory have less time for homeschooling.

This is why we need to be talking about social inequality ATM. Looking across a population and speaking broadly (obviously there will be loads of individual counterexamples):

• children whose mothers have lower levels of education were already at a disadvantage.
• those children are now missing formal schooling from a qualified, experienced professional
• if we assume women with higher incomes tend to have more education
• then their children are receiving significantly more schooling ATM
• increasing the gap between them and poorer children.

If we take "working class Vs middle class" as a polite way of generalising "less wealthy and educated Vs more", then that is why working class children are being disadvantaged at the minute.

It's not just availability of tech, it's parents'ability to

Gah.

*Parents' ability to help with the work, and the importance they place and time they spend on education.

For me working class is about background and culture.
I’m actually pretty rich these days and well educated, but consider myself still working clsss with absolutely no aspiration to be middle class.

Mindy
Great post and the kind of thing I was referring to above by using statistics to (hopefully) inform policy.

However, I would say that this statement:

If we take "working class Vs middle class" as a polite way of generalising "less wealthy and educated Vs more", then that is why working class children are being disadvantaged at the minute

Needs to be rethought - it’s be more accurate to say “Precariat vs Working class AND middle class” as I doubt there is much difference between WC and MC in this context. Just an opinion of course

I found this interesting as presumably higher paid women are more likely to be working long hours from home and so in theory have less time for homeschooling.

I would imagine that is explained by the salary/hourly wage divide. Higher pay grades have more discretion over their working time, are more likely to be able to WFH etc. Lower paid employees are more likely to clock in and out, more likely to have to work on site (even during lockdown) and have less discretion to juggle other activities alongside work.

Who is using the term 'working class'? I've worked on projects and researched social mobility for years and working class isn't the terminology used.
We tend to look at socioeconomic groups, parental education, postcode etc.

@Ethelfleda sure. I'm not a sociologist and I'm not from the UK so the British class definitions and obsessions bemuse me.

But whatever labels we use, we do need to acknowledge that children from houses with lower income levels and lower education levels were starting from a disadvantaged position and are being disproportionately affected ATM.

I would've thought that over the population, working Vs middle class would broadly correlate with income and education, but like I say, not my area.

@Ethelfleda

Oooooh, I always hated the BBC Class Calculator (the extended version is fine).

It misses out parental income (and habits) entirely, which is a big flaw when it comes to mobility. In my early twenties (not too far post recession), my personal income and assets were low but my cultural and social capital was high (family friends). I came out as Emergent Service Worker.

But this totally neglected the recession and graduation into a lower-paid workforce, the likelihood (now realised) of money gifts from parents, and the comparatively vast sums of money to which I am a legatee (between parents and one or two family members, joint legatee to around £2m).

Unintentionally, I'm sure, it creates a circumstance by which you can change class as you age and your career progresses. When actually it was virtually inevitable that I would end up in the same bracket as my parents by the calculator - Established Middle Class.

(I do approve of the increased range of types, and I recall that when I took the extended one such flaws as above weren't there - and I'm not being snotty about Emergent Service Workers! It was simply ridiculous that I be classed as one merely for being 22 in my first job out of Uni without a house yet...)

Also FYI a lot of ‘middle class jobs’ pay is really crap compared to what you think, for example an architect, you don’t really earn decent money unless you’ve been in the industry 10 years or more and have worked your way up, similar for junior doctors and lawyers the pay is crap. London’s salaries are not the basis of the rest of the UK. Tradesmen tends to earn more.

By your definition op, pretty much everybody is working class then. Which renders this particular grading system completely pointless.

ThecatsThecats
You’re absolutely right there. And it is interesting as I have just started to read the paper associated to it (I linked to it above) and it acknowledges huge flaws in the calculator and it’s ability to collect meaningful data. So they did also carry out a much more representative and in depth nation wide (and face to face) survey so that data could be used in tandem with that collected from the BBC.

What really made me smile, is the paper says that not only did a disproportionate amount of MC people take that online survey (apparently, one producer at the BBC commented to Savage eh al that they had “attracted a typical BBC news audience there”)
But that the people who took the survey weren’t even true representatives of their class. They very politely put it like this:

“They possess relatively more cultural and social capital than their peers, and indeed the very act of participating in the GBCS was a ‘performative’ way of claiming cultural stakes”

Ethelfleda
That was a good explanation.
You can hypothetically use 'cultural stuff' in research though (I'm a social research student) but it's trickier as you'd usually have to design the survey specifically, rather than use a pre-existing dataset, or do more qualitative work which is used less for informing policy.

Off the top of my head early years education research is one where 'cultural stuff' is often asked about eg, asking parents how often they do certain activities with their DC such as visit museums etc.

Personally, I think social and cultural capital is just as big a determinant of life chances as parental income, but it is harder to study and is more subjective.

I like the new bbc survey but I agree the emergent service worker category is a bit weird in that a lot of people will go from emergent service worker to established middle class/elite just by ageing 5 years and buying their first house.

(I really should be writing my dissertation right now but my 4 year old wants to help me type as soon as I get my laptop out)

I don't think your level of income is a judge of your class, but your level of education and profession is.

My dad had a terrible level of education. He grew up in Ireland and at that time compulsory education was age 7-14. Even during those years he was rarely there. He came from quite a poor farming background and my grandparents did not hold much with education. So if a cow was calfing or whatever he'd be expected to stay off school and help. Through no fault of his own, he was semi literate, at a guess I'd say his reading age was similar to a 7 or 8 year old. He could manage the Sun or Mirror but in fact got most of his news from the telly. I don't ever remember him reading for pleasure. All forms had to be completed by my mum with his signature. He could manage ok on a day to day level e.g. could go into a working man's cafe and order lunch from the menu but it was a struggle. However, he had a lot of common sense and a strong work ethic. He learnt the building trade and did financially very well, much better than his four children! I'm the only one of the 4 who didn't go to uni, but I'm a nurse and the only reason I didn't go was because when I trained it was the traditional apprenticeship model. So although all 4 of us if we have to put a label on us could describe ourselves as middle class going by education or profession we do not earn as much as our dad who could only be described as working class.

Not that class really matters. It only seems to matter on Mumsnet.

Cultural and social capital is really important. I research how people choose universities ( and whether to go at all) and cultural capital plays a huge part.

I like the new bbc survey but I agree the emergent service worker category is a bit weird in that a lot of people will go from emergent service worker to established middle class/elite just by ageing 5 years and buying their first house

Yes, the BBC survey tends to categorise me as various forms of middle class, or even elite, usually varying due to how I answer the 'jobs of people you socialise with' category (I belong to a diving club and go on lots of days out, holidays etc and there are people from many walks of life as members, so it tends to vary on who I think of first).

But a lot of their assessment of my class seems to come from the value of my house and pension - I own a fairly cheap house with a very small mortgage remaining (am of an age where houses were much cheaper than now) but as a slightly above average salaried person with some final salary pension (moved over to defined contribution now) I am aware that, actuarily, my pension is worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

So by that definition, my net worth is probably in the 'above £500k' category, but I don't know if that's how they intended me to answer, but that's what it says.

I don’t the the bbc survey is great tbh. It’s the best out there for modern day, but that’s not saying much at all.

I was born into a WC family, poor deprived little me lived on a council estate, I went to uni, I have a good life, I’m still working class & always will be.

People think that when they move from their council estate, get a bit of an education, & earn too much money for fannying around all day doing eff all, they then become MC, oh & don’t forget your telephone voice 🙄

Personally, I think social and cultural capital is just as big a determinant of life chances as parental income, but it is harder to study and is more subjective.

Yes, I'm professionally involved in lots of Early Years initiatives myself, and the above is resoundingly true. My parents income was middle class, but my cultural capital means that a lot of people peg my sister and I as privately educated.

Museums, castles, trips to cultural locations, tv mostly adult and literary based, education in Greco-Roman, British and Egyptian mythology, books as gifts, language tutoring, a house with thousands of books, encyclopaedias, parents with four degrees between them (science/computing/history/english, so wide ranged too), calligraphy, riding, membership of geeky clubs - young ornithologists and archaeologists, St John's Ambulance, different geographical environments, science documentaries... all of that, in spades. I didn't bat an eyelid at any sort of concept being introduced at school because I already had the grounding.

If you lack cultural capital, then you start a lesson learning what the seaside is like, rather than dashing off to write a poem about a shell etc.

“They possess relatively more cultural and social capital than their peers, and indeed the very act of participating in the GBCS was a ‘performative’ way of claiming cultural stakes”

Oops! Haha, yes. Pointing out the flaws of a demographic survey is pretty meta in terms of performative MCness itself

People think that when they move from their council estate, get a bit of an education, & earn too much money for fannying around all day doing eff all, they then become MC, oh & don’t forget your telephone voice 🙄

But then what's the point of using the class system at all? Is it just people are born what they are born as and that's it? Is my DS now middle class because he is growing up in a high earning household even though we are both from quite deprived backgrounds? It all seems outdated and ridiculous to me really.