White working class children

[NotAnotherScarf]

The bbc has a report about a review of the academic system failing white working class children. The bulk of the population.

It's brilliant that this has been looked at but the recommendations are appalling.

Basically its saying that wcc's are only fit for manual jobs. That schools should push towards offering for vocational courses.

That's where my education went 40 years ago. One child from my year group of 242 went to university at 18. We had at most 6 kids from non white backgrounds. Many went subsequently. I have always maintained the school saw us as shop assistants, factory hands and dockers.

The other recommendations will help children of all races...free travel under 22. Promoting reading etc.

One of the reasons why kids from other backgrounds are doing better has been the push to get them into university...ie black boys being actively recruited and bursarys being given solely to them. Places sponsored etc etc.

Whilst I welcome the move to vocational training. And for many people thats a brilliant move, ts disappointing that the report thinks that that's the main option for wcc's. Basically its says "we don't think your good enough for anything else " .

BBC News - White working-class children 'failed by schools system' - BBC News
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq51j10q601o

You are still missing what I am trying to say
I agree they won’t know what admission processes and acas is, but they have formed a view of if they can do that / if the notion / concept of it is attainable for them.

think of if you asked an 8 years old if they thought they would ever go on a plane, they will have formed a view based on things parents will have said about affording a holiday, if they have already achieved that, if they have known of other people doing that, if it is something considered normal and achievable in theirs and their families community.
they probably haven’t actively sat and thought, will I ever go on a plane, but when asked will have a core belief.
same as can I climb a mountain, they won’t know about base camps and gear and electrolytes but will have a core self belief if they can climb a mountain or not

They don’t need to know anything other than uni exists (which through family, tv, friends, school most will) to form a core self belief of whether they can do that or not.

Except it never was working class lads. There is evidence that the Windrush generation were perplexed to meet poor white people. Poor boys get shafted again and again, life expectancy for the urban poor circa 1850 was 19 for men, cannon fodder in 1914. I am all for decolonising the curriculum but lets not pretend it was poor white boys who were responsible. The decendents of those who were aren't being educated in non selective state schools in areas of deprivation.

I do think improving vocational courses is a good thing because we definitely need to stop kidding on that everyone is academic. Practical knowledge is just as valuable as academic knowledge. Vocational courses also absolutely must have a business management aspect to them though! My nephew is learning to be a plumber and there’s no bussiness management aspect to the course! Luckily his grandad can teach him (my dad was self employed for 50 odd years, still is) but a lot of kids don’t have that.

I went to uni and I loved it. I went because I love to learn, not because it was going to get me a job. Funny enough my current job (maths tutor) has very little to do with my degree (IR with quants), but I would absolutely do my degree again. I got a scholarship/bursary though. To be honest if I’d had to take out the loan I would have, but I understand why people are reluctant. My main concern with this focus on vocational courses is that it will push WC people like me who just love to learn out of uni. I don’t really think the goal of FE always needs to be a specific job, but I do think you learn some key skills in a degree that can make you a better employee even if you don’t work in the field your degree is in.

How do you ask them if they’ll think they can go to uni if they don’t know what uni is?

I honestly don’t think most 8 year olds know what uni is. As I say I didn’t know what it was until I was about 18 and I’m in my 20s now so not ages ago.
And I had a normal upbringing so why would really poor kids who’s parents don’t care about education (the people being discussed on here) they would be even less likely to have heard of it

Haha! That's the new excuse is it? Perhaps the white girls suffered "systemic racism" through being passed from pillar to post.

Thank you, this is interesting..

I think it's valuable for people to remember that while white wc boys may struggle more in school, girls may have a harder time getting a well paid job if they don't do well a academically.

I did a thread about this a while ago : I've seen MRA types online say stuff like 'women would be bricklayers etc at the same rate we are if they wanted equality' ignoring that a lot of the well paying trade jobs are too physically strenuous for a large number of women.

Equivalent jobs for women are stuff like as you say, childcare, elder care, both of which are not respected or salaried as they should be, and then hairdressing, beauty etc which can be well paying often isn't particularly.

Exactly. Also doesn't explain why places like China, Korea, Singapore etc do well when they prioritise sit-down learning. Not saying we should replicate their system, but it seems inaccurate to say boys here must be innately less capable of concentration. As you point out, boys from other backgrounds here are able to, too.

I am solidly middle class as they come. By 8 I absolutely knew what University was ( both parents are graduates) it helped DM was a teacher, older cousins were at or were going to University. My parents friends and my friends parents were lawyers, journalists, teachers, nurses or accountants. I am fairly sure my 2 now aged 19 & 22 would have known at 8 as well.

I think that the biggest reason for the issue being ignored by the British authorities was class actually
Because that's a big part of it. They may also have been targeted by the perpetrators because of their witness/perceived lower worth and morals. But it's was ignored by the people in charge because of their class and perceived lower worth/morals. Maybe there's some intersectionality there. But pretending that this was purely a fault of a foreign culture misses the point that there was a British cultural element too.
If I wanted to draw more general examples, the killong of Harry Dunn by Anne Sacoolas might have been taken more seriously by the people in charge sooner if he had been from a posher, richer family and therefore easier for the people in charge to relate to

I really do think that whilst the UK has racism, classism plays a similar role here to racism in America. Right down to the adultification of Black girl children in the States and the way they are seen as party to their own sexual exploitation. There are some very direct parallels with what happened here except it hasn't yet generated anything like the same outrage. (And possibly it's less interesting to Americans than what happened in England is to those same Americans because the demographics of the perpetrators are different.).

This means directly importing talking points from America doesn't fit well here. On the left and right.

Hello
I apply to private charities and companies for grants for projects which my charity runs.

Grants can be as specific as they like because as you say, they are set up by individuals or businesses. Some are oddly specific and archaic.

However most are now set up by large businesses; Banks, Insurance, Lottery of course; Huge Charities etc. Wind farms, Supermarkets etc.

These are modern and have modern criteria. They are not set by the government per say, but in reality they are as they follow criteria from major organisations like the UN.
They help many people but there is a hierarchy:

Eg helping a Refugee is top, then LGBTQ+, black or Bangladeshi, then child carer. Then further down is disabled. No one asks if you are helping white working class. Sometimes it helps to be poor.
My cohort are not very high on this heirarchy.They are white working class boys and girls who need help accessing their educations. Basically exactly who is being discussed. I have to be quite nimble with my applications and am not considered by the majority.

I don't think race should come in to these applications as we all hopefully want good outcomes for everyone. I am thankful for all the grants we have received and I am thankful that others who need money and help are getting the help required.

I've just been assessing 2 people teaching bricklaying...they are passionate about it and inspire lots of working class kids to learn this trade.

My DS wants to study philosophy, but for financial security he'd be better off doing bricklaying. He would earn loads more probably, yet that's considered working class. If he studies philosophy at uni that's middle class though? Our ideas about class are silly, snobby and outdated.

There's plenty of bright, able working class people earning good money and middle class people stuck in boring office jobs. The blue collar / white collar class distinctions make little sense now.

As others have said, it's not the working classes that are the problem, its an unaspirational sub-culture in some communities - a dependency culture which is the issue - and repeated governments of all types, seem unwilling to tackle this.

I'm an education 'professional' who wishes I had a trade! I earn a very average salary, despite loads of qualifications in my field (and yes I'm decent at my job).
Let's have loads more apprenticeships of all types at all levels abs get away from obsession with uni (I work for one).

its explained well in the book “little soldiers” by leonora chu.

in short, corporal style training from babyhood.

Yeah, they aren't necessarily moving from that education into a better working environment. For a country with such a different economic model to ours and almost the opposite advantages/disadvantages it's amazing how similar China's issues with youth unemployment are.

I am not saying they won’t have heard of uni, just not the detail
are you really saying you never saw a film, tv show, conversation at school, friend or family member mention university/ further education or a degree until you were 18. Come on.

There are loads of tween shows about kids in high school where they talk about uni, loads of films, teachers or other adults sayind things like ‘that’s great you want to be a nurse/ doctor when you grow up, you need to get good marks to go to uni to do that’

I think you lived an sheltered life if you never knew before 18

My point exactly, yet no one wants to address the elephant in the room.

whiteness + class (which affects where they live, the type of school, support at home, financials, access to additional support) BUT when those variables are accounted for why is it that an Asian male say of Pakistani heritage will do better than a white male? I think it’s a sweeping generalisation to say ‘all Asian cultures care about education’ because again this will vary from family to family (and a lot of people from diaspora communities may have parents who don’t speak English so reading at home doesn’t happen there either). So why is it that they perform better?

the answer has to lie in how race and socio economic status and privilege interact

I was a weird kid kind of in my own world, I also had a child at 16 and took a year out of education I remember in the second year of college people started talking about it, I’m being serious when I say I didn’t know about it before 18.

I did not watch many films or shows as a child except for actual kids super popular films (like shrek or Alvin and the chipmunks etc) I may have heard “college” referenced in an American film or song but not given it much thought.

That probably is unusual but I still don’t think it’s typical for an 8 year old in primary school to know about it unless they have an older sibling or parents that tell their children about it super young as a few have said their parents did now. I don’t think that’s typical though

As an actual example, at a previous employer they were launching an outreach programme to disadvantaged young people to come in over summer for a week's paid work experience. The head office was in London and the suggestion was to approach schools in the East End of London.

As we also had a manufacturing plant near Sunderland and another near Carlos I asked if we could launch a similar scheme there as well.

I was specifically told by HR, no on the grounds that both Sunderland and Carlisle were not diverse enough (ie too white), that they were not "deprived areas" plus they were a bit far and a lot of hassle to get to (which I think was the real reason).

Not to mention MRAs love ignoring that a large part of the gender pay gap is actually because women get pregnant, breastfeed and take on the brunt of childcare.

Thank you for this recommendation, it looks really interesting.

I imagine Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong too etc are a bit different from China though: they don't have one party dictatorship in the same way, for one thing, which probably effects things (nor did Hong Kong until recently). But yes, the overall attitude towards childrearing is very different.

Chu was writing in 2017 and since then China has acted to curb the tutoring industry, so even the government thought the pressure was too much.

Having a child by choice at 16 isn't exactly a smart move

What relevancy does me not making smart moves as a teenager have to do with the point being made?

This, definitely. The police were also committing abuse in some cases. If middle class white girls had been targeted I'm sure the response would have been at least somewhat different.
In a way it's a bit like how Victorians turned a blind eye to the sexual exploitation of working class servant women.

Yes, there are parallels to the US : race & class intersect there, as you said, black girls, especially poorer ones are adultified. Native American women are much more likely to be poor & also to be sexually assaulted, too.

More books 😂 “the smartest kids in the world” by Amanda ripley also looks into Korea as once of the top performers internationally- their tutoring system is SO BAD the government had to bring in laws for the hours they could operate and we’re still dragging children out of tuition centres they’d raided at midnight 🙈 unfortunately high teenager suicide rates related to the pressure

i don’t believe Taiwan or Hong Kong have particularly high educational performance internationally

Oh it doesn't make me uncomfortable because no study is going to conclude with that. It's just inaccurate which is annoying but not uncomfortable.

Nothing wrong with reading books. Give it a go.