Aibu to think most European countries don't have an Education class system or a class system at all?

[Stellanotbud]

Aibu to think that most European countries especially former communist countries don't have a class system or educational class system like the UK.. Most kids all go to state school & muddle along? Snobbery isn't a prevelant in most European countries & educational standards are high & mostly state run.

@SweetSakura to be fair to OP, a lot of people are incredibly naive on here when it comes to communism, or losing rights ,complete control etc.

Ideology (and probably pretty basic at that) over practice I suspect.

Now you’re just being silly. You seem to be both broadly unhappy with rural Ireland and the ‘cold, cruel’ people of the UK, and you have some deeply odd ideas about social class, the university system etc. Your thinking doesn’t add up to any sense. You start off by saying you no longer speak to anyone you went to university with, and in your late 30s don’t know anyone who sees their university friends, and now you say university wasn’t important you because it’s a ‘bad system’, based on some completely unevidenced ideas about corruption because you have a friend you claim has witnessed and kept schtum about longterm falsification of student applications — so you believe this person who claims that an elite institution ignores the points system, ignores its own entrance requirements and interviews, because there are no qualified applicants who can actually pay?

Something similar can also happen with Welsh medium schools in parts of Wales. Some parts of Wales, all or most of the children go to Welsh medium, so it doesn't arise, but where most schools are English medium, the Welsh medium schools are more middle class, and more white.

Although thinking about it, I'm aware of one place with almost exclusively Welsh medium provision where the single English medium school is the more middle class one. I wonder whether it's always going to be the case that if one type of school is the minority, and therefore a bit harder to get to (e.g. having to travel further) or to get into that's the one that becomes more middle class?!

You are not unreasonable
I come from a European country and while we do obviously have differences in wealth etc. It is NOTHING like the uk. The uk is shocking to anyone coming from a modern, well off country. The class system here is very real, don't let brits tell you otherwise they are probably just gas lit.

Because true friendship is never linear and isn't based on place or time. Surely it's stranger to think "oh, I'm doing X now, so I won't be friends with the person I was friends with in context Y". Of course you lose contact, drift away from the people who were acquaintances rather than friends, but close friends are beyond a change of job or the end of a study period.
I have close friends from all of my "time" contexts. Hometown, University, various jobs, where I live now.
My best friends though are still the ones I went to university with. We were, until 2020 in 3 different countries.

At least in the uk they can rail against it. Here it "doesn't exist" until you watch the working class kid get shut down at school and university and what excuses they find for it. We're saving just so that we can send our kids to a child cruel British boarding school to finish in case we need to buy them out of having an immigrant background! At least in the uk you can mostly buy your way out of your class designation even if it's not fair

Then again, that's completely blat in the UK Don't like the school, buy a queue jump pass for private until you're back in the system where you want to be, same with healthcare and everything else. Damn these European systems with equality that you can't buy out of if you don't like it.

Re meritocracies, for several years a dd had an Italian boyfriend (they were both working for NGOs overseas), an architect, who told me that in Italy you absolutely had to ‘know someone’ in order to get any sort of good job.

He also said that in an Italian workplace you are judged by what you wear, rather than on your ability. He said they size up the cost/brand of everything you have on, ‘even your belt’.

Of course I thought he must surely be wildly exaggerating (should add that he was far from a ‘chip on the shoulder’ type) and some time later, I asked a highly qualified, successful young Italian who was working in the U.K., same company as dh, whether it was true.

He said yes, absolutely.

It’s not really “a system” though.
I’ve never noticed Brits from any social class not being able to mix with any other. Nice people are available in all demographics as are complete dicks.

Are they equal?

If you get funnelled into an education system as people have said it’s even more rigid.

And knowing from from various wealthy people exclusion is present if you’re at the top. It may not be as noticeable to some but if you’re in, then it can be quite sharp.

At least where I've lived it's rigid, but with very little chance to exit even with pay or connections. You get given a path for life and that is your path. There are ways to play the system but not so many. E.g. a rich dumb kid can't really buy their way to the top like in the uk. If the poor smart kid is lucky someone will spot them and they'll have much more chance of making it, but like everywhere there are a lot of lazy stereotypes that will hold them back. Once you're streamed, there's very little chance to change lanes. That you went to technical school will still be held against you at 50, even if you did a masters at Harvard later. The only excepting is the upper classes, who propagate through university societies and make sure the routes in are closed to people they don't like, just like the UK.

@Mooshamoo

your posts are strange. Your English family sound awful. However, I’m only ‘half English’ with a mum from a very different cultural/faith background and my English family have treated me as family should.

uk class system is entrenched, for sure. As a nation we keep comparing ourselves to peers etc. I certainly have many friends who haven’t had the advantages I did. They are friends. I don’t live in an exclusive bubble.

but go to any other country and scratch deep enough you’ll find similar hierarchies.

@StamppotAndGravy where is this & how do the upper classes close the barriers? Can one marry their way up the ranks?

Stellanotbud are you disappointed to hear the Soviet Union was not the model of fairness and equality that you thought it was?

What European system you can’t buy out of?

It isn’t necessary to practice blatnoy in the UK. That is practiced when there are no legal alternatives.

It's very strange that you have remembered every single thing that I said, and that you wrote it out in a long list form . I don't remember a single thing that you said.

Yes of course I believe my friend. Admissions into universities are corrupt. Universities themselves are money making machines. They are more concerned with making money than with people's education.

There was a newspaper article not long ago, saying that Irish universities made 350 million in one year, I think.

Universities are not well regulated in any way shape or form. It is all about them making money.

The entire university system is totally bizarre.
They tell young people that it is good to put themselves into 3-4 years of severe debt.

https://www.thejournal.ie/college-fees-2919927-Aug2016/

The biggest snob I've ever known was Swedish.

@Qbish no way! How? I thought Swedish society was supposed to be very equal especially educationally?

I come from Spain where there are 17 autonomous regions all with their own education laws and systems. I really think the UK has a bigger issue with class education than we have in Spain.

From Pedro Sanchez (PM) to most politicians sitting in Parliament, the majority attended state schools or concertadas - privately run government funded schools mostly free but some can have a monthly fee depending on location and how popular they are.

We don't have the same kind of Eton school with students primed to run the country like the UK seems to have. Maybe it has to do with the political governance of the country - while most European countries have Parliaments and Senates elected by popular ballot, the UK has the House of Commons (elected by ballot) and the Lords elected by the King on the advice of the PM.

@MaJolie totally agree with you and I've a similar background to you. None of my parents or their siblings stayed in school past 13 or 14 and now the current generation are all very qualified and we now have several with PHDs etc . One of the neighbours children is a dentist and she was a single parent so no idea where the previous poster gets the notion that no one can improve their situation.

Bless. You really don't know much about the countries that you are assuming to be so much better than England, do you? I mean, Sweden has a royal family. You do the maths!

Well in fairness I'm Irish living in Ireland. We don't have a monarchy. Enlighten me more as I obviously don't know!

Sweden has a royal family, but it’s an unfussy, pared-back ‘bicycle monarchy’ which is pretty much a ceremonial leftover, could easily be dispensed with legislatively, and is cheap, costing parliament about 6 million euro a year.

I went to school in Ireland. Sure, Blackrock College, Gonzaga, Rathdown, Kilkenny College, et al, none of these schools exist! Ireland has no class system at all at all!