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.

I'm just looking at Ireland aswell. I'm in Ireland. People will say that there is no class system in Ireland. But there is. People totally stick within their social circles.

People from wealthy families hang around with people from other wealthy families in Ireland.

I often think marriages in Ireland is less about romance, and more about the University degree and family wealth.

For example, if I know a man with a university degree in Ireland, I know he will only marry a woman with a university degree . The wealth of the family is also important.

Men from rich families will only marry women from rich families.

I have lived in Ireland for a long long time. I have never seen a man from a rich family marry a woman from a poor family.

I have seen poor people in Ireland be told that it is their fault that they are poor. Children of single parents in Ireland are totally looked down on. Even if the father just left the mother.

To succeed in Ireland you need to have had a wealthy father, get a good university degree. And then you are marriageable.

@Mooshamoo I think the education system in Ireland is much more equal than the UK system, as is university admissions. It's easier to get into medicine in Ireland than it is in UK, the CEO system is a much more even playing field.

I 've stood the school playground many of them as they flash their Invisalign, Boden special smiles whilst they brag about how gifted George is, as they engineer 'suitable' friendships.

Someone posted the other day that in Germany the grammar equivalent high schools are packed with middle class kids and there are much less working class or immigrant kids

What rot! I'm from a corporation estate in Dublin. I now live in a leafy multicultural commuter belt spot and mix with all kinds of people, from similar backgrounds and different ones.
Ireland has great social mobility, I know so many people who got educated and worked their way out of the crime ridden, drug ridden areas (which are now mostly gentrified and expensive and full of hipster coffee shops !!)

There are tons of single parents, nobody cares. If anyone is looked down on, its people that have never tried to better themselves. You definitely do NOT need to have a wealthy father to get ahead, I had no father at all, and a very poor mother!! Plus, I married a man from a soldly middle class family, so that's another theory shot down.

This is the most ridiculous post. Does OP not know that other European countries have royal families and aristocracies? That rich people, esp those with "old money" tend to hang out together? That there are private schools all over the place and throughout Europe? UK boarding schools have a healthy representation of European kids. I have lived and working in Europe for about 20 years and many of my Dutch, German, Swiss, Italian and Scandi friends/colleagues attended private schools, either in the home country or overseas. Those that didn't went to highly academically selective schools or schools that had a very specific educational philosophy that tended to be in the more exclusive areas and were therefore financially selective.

@So1invictus - dp is Italian and your post chimes with my experience of his circle. His family were not well off and he went to a technical college before studying engineering at uni. He has any friends who come from wealthy families, however, and they all went to the liceo Classico, regardless of aptitude or interest. They are the ones who have gone on to work at their dads’ law firms or financial advisory services or - after many years of extended study - to try their hand at journalism and similar jobs. No pressure to start working. Similar story with Italians I’ve met later in life - if humanities were their thing they tended to go to modern languages schools rather than the classico unless they were of that particular class.

Also interesting is that most of the liceo classico goers managed to avoid national service for various reasons, whereas dp and his peers did not!

There's a lot of international kids in UK boarding schools. Does the 0.7% include them?

Yep, everywhere else is a utopia.

No, don’t be daft - there is a class system of some sort in any developed country, and the UK has fewer kids in the private sector than many.

You live in Dublin. Dublin is bigger and is definitely different to the rest of Ireland.

Dublin is so big and anonymous , people would not even know what you are doing, let alone know or care if you were born to a single parent.

In the rural areas, and in small towns in ireland, people know everything about you. There absolutely is huge stigma if you are from a single parent/poor family.

I went to school in rural Ireland. All the rich girls stuck together and refused to speak to the poor girls. Your social standing was very dependant on what your father did.

For example, the most popular girl in our year in school, had a father who owned a massive business in the area.

The least popular girl in our year in school. She was a from a poor family. Had a single mother. The girls would sneer and laugh at her all the time.

Everything was to do with money and connections.

I have lived in Ireland for a long long time. I have never seen a man from a rich family marry a woman from a poor family.

You will find it pretty much everywhere - consolidation of wealth and power, regardless if people want to admit it or not.

I don't live in Dublin, and I used to live in a small town in Cork. You're still talking rubbish. You're stuck in the 1970s. It's a completely different country now, we're not all stuck wiht our hail marys and yes father and know your place. Now its tech companies and hipster restaurants and colleagues from all over the world and nobody cares who your father is, because it couldn't matter less. Money talks, like amywhere else, but everyone I know with money has made their own.

Put down the Angelas Ashes and catch up with the rest of us!

@Mooshamoo
First of all it's the UK, then England, then Ireland and now rural Ireland!

So? What's your point?

I start by saying a place, then define where in that place I meant.

All counties have class systems

if you’ve only just been to the UK, how would you know the schools are cruel (😂)? I think what you are talking about is elite boarding schools, which educate a tiny proportion of the population - and they are far from draconian these days.

Finally, are you on the sauce?

I think it's important to say negativism about class goes both ways- itsall very well to comment about middle class people 'sneering' At 'working class' folk- I'm from a midlands mining town originally until I was29 and the 'they get everything down south' attitude was very common- even with people in their 20s and 30s with nice family sized houses and jobs that didn't pay that much different. It was as if they thought everyone was on £70k plus and a 5 bed house. Being negative works both ways.

In my experience, most boarders in Uk schools below the age of 13 are foreign. At my DDs prep school, all the boarders were overseas pupils. My DD boarded for an occasional night in her final year of prep school to try it out as we were looking at boarding schools for her senior years.

I think this hand wringing about class is a MN thing. Claiming that the UK is the only place in the world with a class system (they clearly haven't travelled!) and saying everyone is obsessed with what school you went to. Unless you are from the upper echelons of society (which vast majority aren't) I don't think anyone cares. I don't know anyone in real life that has these discussions.

In reality, there is very little difference between MC and WC. Because we all have to earn our living. And we're pretty equally screwed by our common enemy - the ruling class. It makes zero difference who you choose to socialize with or where you shop - only to yourself.

I'm talking rubbish? I grew up in Ireland. Not in the 70s. I grew up in the 80s. I saw heaps of abuse towards the poor in society.

"I'm talking rubbish and it's a completely different society now".

So because you've moved from being poor to being rich now in Ireland, you're now denying all the poverty in the country. All the suffering that people are going through. Just because its not happening to you, doesn't mean it's not happening.

Ireland currently has a huge housing crisis , a huge eviction crisis , and huge problems with poverty. May people are at risk of homelessness

Front page of the Irish independent this week, were stories about the many people at risk of being made homeless in Ireland.

Don't you ser all the stories in the Irish papers about people being made homeless?

Because you are making sweeping generalisations about everyone and everywhere, that the school system in the UK is completely draconian, that class systems are cold and cruel ( when it is individuals that may be) Because you are saying that class causes inequality in Ireland, except in Dublin because it's different there!

I didn't say that Dublin is completely different. I said that Dublin, like any big city is much more anonymous, and people don't know much about what you're doing.

I grew up in rural Ireland. Everyone knew everything about everyone. Everything.

When I was older, I lived in Dublin for one year. It is much, much more anonymous. You could live next to your neighbours and never see them. It is the same in every big city. People don't know all your business.

Ha! I reckon @Mooshamoo is actually a bot. Either that or she is v deluded and quite frankly best ignored.

Wow. That is incredibly immature. Are you 5. That's the first time I've been called a bot on here

A bot with a massive persecution complex!

France doesn’t have a class system? Bwhahahhahahahahah!