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.

To have a royal family is, by definition, to have a class system. You may have swallowed the "Swedish egalitarian" idea, but they're just like ever other country. Stratas exist.

The Communist countries were far more 'class' organised, if you were not a party member, in a one party country, you were the lowest of the low, very unlikely to get a decent job, flat or even place to shop. It's a very naive idea that other countries don't have a 'class' system, I've never lived in one that didn't have one based on something.

Never expected to read such sense on MN! Many people on here think that everything is wonderful elsewhere, the grass is greener idea.

Sounds like a hyper-grammar school system that the left were keen to destroy here.

Ironically only stupid/troublesome (not my words) kids went to private secondaries, as the only way they could get in was to pay for it. Same logic applied to paid for unis as well .

So the reverse of the English system but just as snobby.

This is bonkers to me!
Would disagree with 99% of this 🤔

You wouldn't speak to someone who works a certain job? That is pathetic.

On a three week tour of India our guide told us something about the caste system and that he was from the Rajput caste, one of the highest castes. We asked him for the names of the driver and the waterman, he was appalled that we would expect him to know the names of such low caste people, despite the fact that they often worked the same tours!

Many British Prime Ministers in the recent past have been state educated Major, Thatcher, Brown, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, May some of those were from working class backgrounds. Eton has had a few (too many) but not true to say they have a monopoly.

I am a European who lived, studied, and worked in several EU countries and in the UK. Quite frankly, UK’s obsession with schools is ridiculous to the outsiders like us who travel within UK across the class system. Particularly amongst the middle class who spend times obsessing about choosing a good school while ending up choosing one where their kid is most likely going to end up on unrestrained middle class drug - cocain - and end up leaving school with no or very poor qualifications. Why? The definition of a good education for the English middle class is mixing with the same people as them. For Europeans, the definition of good education is purely based on academic attainment - and everyone is quite well aware that you cannot buy it with money. Sure, you may pay extra tutors, but that would still not make you the smartest kid. It’s the approach to education that fundamentally distinguishes the Europeans from the British, and in particular the always anxious to impress English middle class.

“A friend of mine grew up in Soviet-era East Germany in a poor single-mother family. But academic prowess siphoned her off age 11 to a specialist boarding school -the education was free for everyone. That was an attempt at a meritocracy, I suppose.”

Soviet-era grammar school? It was an ideological detention centre. Laughable that there would be anything meritocratic about it. Most likely the single mother had to join local communist comittee and spy on dissenters - who were the underclass despite often coming from grand, aristocratic families. Anyone who thinks communism is egalitarian does not know what they are talking about. Utter nonsense and ignorance. Go ask those whose families were killed by Russian snipers in Estonia or Hungary.

I've heard in Germany there are differences between eduction and uni in the west and east. I can't remember which side is said to be the best.

France absolutely has a class system in education. It just looks and works very differently to the UK. There are super elite higher educational establishments called Grandes Écoles which have a completely separate intake system to the universities, and which basically everyone who is in power went to. The intake definitely aligns strongly with better-off socioeconomic groups.

I have known some incredibly sniffily snobbish French people. Just saying. Including, when were once on holiday with a small touring group, a Parisian woman who refused utterly to have anything to do with two of her compatriots, a pair of non-Parisian female friends who were clearly out to have a fun time. I forget the actual words, but she couldn’t have made it more plain that to her they were ‘common’.

Not that this was snobbery, just a statement of fact, but when I was 14 and on a French exchange trip, for the last couple of days I went with the French girl to her school. After I’d met one of her classmates my exchange girl whispered, ‘Elle n’est pas fille comme nous. Sa mere est comtesse.’ (She’s not a girl like us - her mother’s a countess.’)

I too am ‘a European’*, and I’ve found quite differently to you. Being able to send your child to a gymnasium over a technical school, or to a British, French or Swiss private school, was and is considered something to aspire to. My parents did just that, and I was far from the only foreign student. Class anxiety was and is also rife.

Despite the aspiration (and they are firmly nouveau riche as opposed to middle class), they both came from socialist countries, where there was a ‘healthy’ system of parents using connections and bribery to get their children into elite schools and universities.

*what sort of European are we talking about? Because there are quite a few European countries with their own distinct cultures.

I suppose more than a country, it depends on background - or as you put it, class. As you say, it’s mostly the middle class and nouveaux riches (note it’s necessary to put x at the end of nouveaux as it is a plural) who suffer from such anxieties. I believe such anxieties and their possible excesses were well described by Karl Marx who correctly identified that these classes are prone to radicalisation. I am guessing you are talking about Germany and Austria as they are the only countries in Europe placing an excessive importance on gymnasium education?

So a nebulous concept then? I’m not sure how you can generalise how ‘the Europeans’ think, when ‘the Europeans’ think many different things. It isn’t just Germany and Austria that place an ‘excessive importance’ on gymnasium education, either.

I’m using the commonly used vernacular, as opposed to the correct French, which is nouveau riche. Thanks for the lesson, but you could have saved yourself the typing.

No, neither Austria or Germany. The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, actually. Where class, and class anxiety, very much existed despite all protestations to the contrary. The scenery changed, but the situation regarding the maintenance of a class structure, did not.

It is simply how humans are - they want the best spear in the jungle; they wanted to triumph over the Neanderthals back in the day; they want their children to thrive and they protect them - I call that love and it is a moral good, not a problem. China tried in the cultural revolution to send the children of the professional elite to work as road sweepers in the countryside to try to undo this; some groups have tried communal living so children do not even sleep in the same houses are parents; others have tried allocation of property by the state as in North Korea but no one has managed to remove difference between us - we would all have to be clones of each other to ensure a boring sameness

In fairness, you are more class-conscious than most, and more Thatcherite. Sending your children to private school is in no way a form of ‘love’ or ‘moral good’.

@Mooshamoo Good luck with turning back millenia of class-based societies

Yeah... no.

Where I'm from ,not Austria or Germany, the hierarchy is like this:

1.Good/great academic high schools.
2.Average/bad high schools.
3.Technical/skills high schools.
4.Private high schools.( basically too dumb or badly behaved to get accepted into -or allowed to stay at- any of the above. Or at least that's the common thinking ).

Admission is based on grades in a national test and there's no catchment.

There's a similar hierarchy for Unis too.

Plenty of snobbery(and cheating,and bribery)just the other way around.

YABU and very naive. Of course there's a class system, it's just called different things. I know it's MN folk wisdom that Britain is shit and everywhere else is better but you don't get this one.

/ Remainer/rejoiner before you all start

No-one is saying we don't have a class system. " differences in wealth, etc". I o w a class system. If anyone's being gaslight, it ain't us.