Lack of aspiration in school leavers : regional impact

[Talkinpeace]

I've just been to visit friends south of the Humber.
Wandering around the small market town near their house DH, DD, DS and I were watching the scooter kids.
So i looked up the secondary school and surprise, surprise its not great on getting kids to Russell Group Universities.
Why?
Because there is NOBODY round there to give them a role model to do so.

The rich people are hereditary farmers, hereditary fishing captains, hereditary owners of amusement parks and a few incoming executives in the energy industry.
Nothing that the child of a shop worker or farm labourerer or fishing crew can even relate to.

I cannot think of how to see if those kids actually have the academic potential to escape their circumstances without moving to the South East and adding to the brain drain.

But hopefully somebody on here will be more optimistic for the area than I?

HabbaDabba, do you think there isnt an underlying problem either?

I don'T see what's wrong with aspiring to work on your family farm. The sad thing is is that there are not enough jobs on farms. In the 1950s my grandfather employed 50 men (it was men). When my uncle gave up the farm in the 1990s the farm employed ONE full-time person for a large dairy/pig/arable farm. How can we expect kids within a couple of generations to go from being manual workers to aspirational "Russell Group" types? Bonkers. The same goes for areas which used to have heavy industry/factories/docks.

Around the country there are many estates heaving with people who are floundering with a new order where brawn is obsolete and young males are of little economic worth.

Good points lainiekazan.
It makes me laugh, not in a good way, about all the get back to work schemes.
In some areas, the work isnt there, and hasnt been for a long time.
Some people, men especially, are not suited to desk jobs.

I dont know if anyone watched the programmes called Skint.
It seemed to me that some of the root of the the problem in that area, was boredom.
When people are bored, they have plenty of time to get up to mischief.

I come from a WC community that went downhill when first the coal industry died and then British Steel closed its factory. Looking at their social media pages many of my childhood friends are still there. Same job twenty years later and living in the next street from where they grew up.

That wasn't the life that I wanted for myself but I'm a bit as to whether it's a 'problem'.

MN is full of SAHMs telling us how great it is compared to their previous life where they were a 9 to 5 corporate drone. But put that SAHM into a council estate and it's "OMG she would be a lot happier if only she had a career"

There is a certain amount of MC snobbery going on here. Unless you are visiting museums, going to a selective secondary/RG uni and working as a professional then you aren't happy so we must come up with policies that will make you 'happy'.

Trouble is, the people that I know who live in deprived areas, are definitely not happy with their lot.

"Same job twenty years later and living in the next street from where they grew up.

That wasn't the life that I wanted for myself but I'm a bit as to whether it's a 'problem'."

It's that old dichotomy. MNers are forever going on about going to their local school and being part of the community. But when the working classes stay in their community they are castigated for lack of ambition.
What does OP want: everyone to de-camp to London Town? How about metropolis sharing the opportunities and jobs around a bit more.

Ilike - yes but the assumption here on this thread is that they would be much happier if only their DCs could go to a grammar school followed by a RG uni.

I totally agree purits.

I especially like the comfort zone comments. My local highstreet is full of shops like Costa, WH Smiths , M&S and Boots. I can catch the bus (ok I have a car but I'm just trying to make a point) to the nearest big town or London but what's the point? Not wondering far from home is not a sign of someone who lacks aspirations.

My in-laws are both in care homes, which is where a lot of available work is now. The employees are all older people or Filippinos/north African. I've never seen a worker under 40 there.

Meanwhile people say there aren't jobs locally. Frankly I too would choose to have kids and live on benefits and have the free time rather than work in a care home. Women/girls have the option of avoiding menial jobs. But, just the same as factory/mining/agricultural work was the accepted norm in the past, service jobs and particularly working with the elderly is the present - and so perhaps we should come up with ways of normalising this for young people rather than telling them they should be going to Russell Group universities and leaving whole swathes of modern employment options to recent immigrants.

I would have to disgree with you there HabbaDabba. I do think not wandering far from home is a lack of aspiration.
Not saying there is anything wrong with that, all fine and good if someone is happy with their lot.

Ok. Lets try another way.
How much percentage do you think are happy with their lot living in deprived areas. 20% or say 80%?

Good point lainiekazan so long as that isnt the expected norm for those who do have aspirations and are capable of other things.
There is a whole world also outside the area that they live in.
A potentially lovely world for some.

I am wondering where the op is btw!
Perhaps she will be on here tonight.

Ilike - if I were to guess then I too would be guilty of imposing my definition of 'happiness' on others :)

My friend has a DD that has never held a job in her life. (she was a schoolgirl mom). She has no qualifications. Not that she wants to sit in an office all day. She definitely doesnt want some job in Boots or M&S. She is probably happier than a lot of us who are leading so-called productive lives.

And no, I am not saying that people living in crime/drug scarred estates are estastic with their lives. I am merely making the point that just because people aren't leading a MC lifestyle doesn't mean that by default they need rescuing.

HabbaDabba. If you are happy fiar enough.
If others are happy fair enough.

But they dont look and sound happy to me, the majority of them.
So it is ok for the op is right to start the thread imo.

[but I think I will wait for her to come back to it herself now]

Carrying on with purits dichotomy post ....

MC children who spend time indoors studying and doing homework are told to get out and climb trees and get muddy. WC children on the other hand get told to get off the streets and get studying.

MC parents who pursue a life of big houses, new cars and foreign holidays are told that there is more to life than making and spending money. WC people on the other hand need help so that they can earn more money so that they can consume and be as happy as everybody else.

Yes, because they are two different groups of people with two different sets of circumstances.

It is not the same person being spoken to, and advised to do 2 split things.

I'm often suprised at how midle class people, particularly left wing, liberal middle class people, assume that everyone wants to emulate them.

They see poor working class people as victims, and they activiely dislike well off working class people as being vulgar new money.

Yes, there is paucity of aspiration for education and middle class trappings in many working class communities. But I'm not sure this is somehting in need of 'fixing' for the vast majority.

Is the op talking about working class or so called underclass.

Depends. Is "scooter kids" an euphemism for one or the other?

I'm still trying to figure out why seeing them made the OP want to check the uni destination of the local school.

Many WC if you will people are happy with their lives,even if they do jobs you throw your hands up in horror at.

I'm not sure why MN thinks we all aspire to be MC.

I am glad. Sounds like a happy Britain in that case.

wordfactory. You are spot on what you say,at the end of the day wc people work,run a car go on holiday very much like mc people. Why people on this site think they should,want the same things as so called mc people i dont know. The reason i say it can someone explain what wc people are and what mc people are,because i dont know because some of the people i know who are financially very well off, have very limited qualifactions and some of the poorest people i know have masters and first class degrees from RG Universities. The class system based on education is very outdated and incorrect. Is someone who lives in a 1 to 2 million pound house but has no academic qualifactions wc, but someone with a masters who lives in squat mc.

Just got home from work and catching up.

"scooter kids" : kids who happen to ride scooters around at half term.

They may well be on a half term from boarding school. Where I was working today that was certainly the case for some of the ones I saw. BUT kids roaming the streets is not common today the way it was when I was their age in the summer of 1976.

Habba If people live where the jobs are then there is no reason for them to move as they grow up.
When DH works in Merthyr he is always astonished that the people who moved to the area for work have not left as the jobs have left.

Ilikethebreeze
I'm not even sure its a class issue - because many of the trustafarians I knew after University were just as blinkered and non aspirational, just better funded. Unfortunately with falling investment returns, their children are now having to learn how to work.

My point about where I was working is that money follows money (be it in farming, caravan sites or fishing) - social mobility has almost stopped.

So how do we restart it?
Or should be just give up and pat ourselves on the back that most of the posters on this thread are eloquent enough to look after themselves.

social mobility - by this you mean if the work moves or goes, you go to?

couldnt agree more.
Apparently the situation is even worse in Spain, with people, or it could have been young people in particular, unwilling to even go to the next town for work.
If there isnt work where they are, they just stay put.
And complain, I presume, could be wrong.

What you are describing is more "job mobility"

"Social Mobility" is what the high profile ex grammar school baby boomers all benefited from - the chance to go from a back-to-back house to grammar school to Oxford and thence to the elite

sadly they pulled up the drawbridge behind them in the 1970's
how many MP's under 50 have parents who were NOT graduates?
or FTSE 100 directors etc etc

but your point about Spain is bang on.

The Poles are here because the work is here.
Many of the first wave went home years ago with their cash and bought up their pre communist family farms
we have the second wave - some will stay, some will go - but they follow the work
the indigenous population do not.

unfortunately many of the "back to work" policies were designed for a pre global world - so are useless!