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

No, it's not racist.

There clearly WERE huge problems in the Pakistani community in Rotherham-most prominently among the men, but probably among the women too.

By your logic, it would have been racist to say in 1960s South US that there were huge problems with Southern white attitudes to black people.

Nah, the racism was there first. 30 years ago you'd have thankfully missed the National Front of the 1970s and 80s - and they learned it from the racists of the 50s and 60s.

when they see themselves that they are also disadvantaged but it was completely ignored, well not just ignored, it was actively denied.

• this isn't fully true though. There is financial support available, contextual offers etc for people of all lower economic backgrounds, including white boys. But yes, the problems of white wc boys were not specifically addressed and that nuch change. Also working class white girls.

No valid study is going to conclude that "white parents from certain backgrounds don't value education". I mean that is ludicrous. It's not even measurable.

That’s what they said during the aftermath of George Floyd, it was considered racist to say all lives matter or to mention white people who’d been killed by police.

But when it’s about grooming gangs as one example where victims are mainly white and perpetrators non white the same people are quick to obfuscate with stuff about how anyone can be a rapist

The same used to be said about black boys. It's still said that the crime rates are linked to more black children growing up without father's. It didn't stop society trying to fix it.

and yet it did. Big traveller community is part of that picture but not all. We have one of the lowest average reading ages for adults in the country. There are a lot of white, traditional working class families who hated school and put those views on their dc - tell dc not to bother with homework, don’t back teachers. I’m talking about the families who demand school don’t confiscate their 13yo’s vape because it undermines their parenting choice and they’re fine with them having one (actual thing that happened).

you can deny stereotypes all you like but evidence exists that there are patterns. Not all but most.

So many of these suggestions don’t address why it’s boys and not girls though, so ultimately it must be down to parenting because societal view and norms start at home.
The structure and formality of schooling hasn’t actually changed all that much since the time when boys outperformed girls.

I mean there's zero chance that it did but ok, have it your way.

why don’t you just link us to the outcomes so we can see for ourselves?

Probably black boys in those situations are more likely to be Carribbean. Funding has helped esp boys in London, but as pp said, improvement is also due to higher achieving boys from arriving African immigrant families. I'm not sure how much father absence and educational underachievement have improved among working class Carribean boys, though definitely somewhat.

Carribean boys also have a gender gap- girls tend to do better. Why? I do think boys' peer culture can be part of the issue maybe?- without strong parental reinforcement maybe boys are more likely to disengage. Also if father is absent or not very involved, there's less modelling even if mother tries very hard. Moreover, working class boys may see trades or other options as ways to make money without academics, whereas girls have less of that.

That's not racism - they don't choose the girls because they want to punish white people, they choose the girls because they are vulnerable and unprotected and it's easy.

.

Excellent post!

I will say that I've seen stuff on here & in other places more generally about stuff like Shakespeare or Dickens being too hard or distant to appreciate. Apparently similar issues in some US schools. But saying that about wc kids adds an extra classist angle.

Exactly.

And this should also apply to female working class jobs. As TempestTost said, hairdressing isn't automatically easy. And it's disgraceful that nursery work, elder care of society's most vulnerable is often seen as something people do if they can't do anything else etc

Still it is white men that are statistically over represented as sex offenders

Agree 100%, the impact of all this is that kids switch off especially white working class kids. They know when they are being fed BS, and like you say, mostly this ideology is coming across the Pond.

No you’re extrapolated that out to mean a lot of Pakistani/ Muslim men think poorly of white women which is racist.

and no by my logic it wouldn’t have been racist to say white people were vile to black people in America in the Deep South or frankly at any point because you can’t be racist towards white peoples. Racism exists due to white people and white supremacy. White people benefit from racism they aren’t victims of it

@5MinuteArgument
I totally agree that it is wrong to favour one race over another but why do you assume that these black boys came to this country. What if they were born here? Its interesting how a black or brown person is automatically put into the category of someone who “came here”

No because white people, try as we might to play the eternal victims, are not a marginalised community.

muslims in the UK get a tough run of it in the press and whilst we should definitely call out that misogyny we can’t allow that to drift into a Tommy Robinson style of thinking. We also have to remember that as outsiders to a specific community some conversations aren’t for us, us wagging our finger from the outside and telling them how bad they are will do nothing

That doesn’t mean the girls weren’t targeted because they’re white and seen as less than.

White people abuse other white people, that doesn’t mean that some white people aren’t racist and target people of other ethnicities to abuse.

So a white girl can be forced to have sex with a dog while ten non- white men laugh and call her a “white slag” and “white scum” and tell her “this is all white girls are good for” and you don’t believe there is a racial element to their hatred? Or that she cannot claim to have been racially abused (along with every other manner of abuse) because some white people are better off?

That makes me really sad.

But were the other girls targeted because they were white or because they were vulnerable or exploitation and non Muslim and happened to be the largest demographic available?

to me this says more rampant misogyny than it does about race

but my point is, this line of thought gets very brown men= problem and ‘we need to protect ‘our’ women and girls from these Muslim men’ very very quickly

Well, when the girls were being raped and being forced to have sex with dogs for large numbers of the perpetrators, they were frequently told that it was all white girls were good for.
Which leads me to believe they were targeted because of their race. Yes.

My point is not to say that brown men are bad. They aren’t. And they absolutely do face racism.

My point is that white people can and have faced racism.

It doesn’t naturally follow that it leads to “we must protect our women” and we cannot allow fear of that conversation to stop us asking awkward and unpleasant questions about behaviours in any community.

I find it deeply concerning that so many people on this thread think that white communities can’t be marginalised, or that white privilege trumps any other perceived ill.