Education Underclass

[OddSins]

Having exhausted the "Superclass" thread, there seems to be support for this conversation.

By way of approaching it. Do we agree there is one, who are they, why does it exist and what can we do?

Ill leave my tuppence worth to later.

It is attitude. A prostitue may be a fantastic mother who is spending time with their child and is wholly supportive of the school. The parents may be second generation unemployed but determined that their child will get the most out of education and have a choice of jobs. The child may have a very supportive granny. E.g I knew a child who didn't have a game to take in at the end of term but his granny made him one. I was just a parent at the school gate and he was very proud, he showed it to me.
Unfortunately it goes with lack of money. Those with money who have poor parenting skills can pay for the best care.
The education on offer might not be the best but you have to value it and see that your child needs it and work to use it to advantage. In developing countries children will walk miles for education and parents make huge sacrifices- here you get it free and some people don't value it.

If a 5yr old comes out of school proudly holding their junk model and the mother turns to her friend and says 'more clutter', the child isn't going to do as well as the one who asks how they chose the design and other questions.

No, you're wrong there, I was definitely the JUST SAY NO to junk modelling mother (it's not just clutter, it's the worst sort of clutter, absolutely irredeemably useless activity) and my kids have all so far done better than most.

If clutter is a problem because you've reached the book event horizon, your kids are probably in a better position than kids living in book free homes whose parents embrace junk modelling.

I overheard a conversation between a mother and child. I cant exactly remember the subject, it was something like his picture didnt win in a local competition and had worked really hard at it and the mum replied, well almost snarled "well you will have to try harder next time wont you?" The boy looked gutted.
The family in question was not "education underclass" in that case, but it is a bit along the lines of what SatinSandals may be meaning?

You can't take it in isolation! Not liking junk models is OK if you are supportive in other things. I was a bit mild calling it 'clutter' , I have actually heard a mother say 'God, we don't want more of your old rubbish' and failed to see the look on the poor child's face.
People keep trying to put these things in the norms of society, maybe they can't imagine a house where a grandmother has to make a game because if she gave him one the parents would sell it!
You can do a lot with no money. Conversation is free! My father used to make up wonderful stories as we passed a crumbly old railway bridge, which was the setting for them. We played word games like 'I went to market and bought.........
It is attitude - and an attitude that is outside the norms of society, that is why it is an underclass. I would assume that anyone here, approached by a strange child, proudly showing you something would find something nice to say. It is what we do.

I am sure that if people on here couldn't afford to clothe their child and they were given sets of good quality, clean clothing they would give it to the child and not sell them! (actual case)

I was on a bus once going past the train station. A girl said to her mum, look mum, the trains are all asleep and the roof is like a blanket. The mum said if all you can do is talk nonsense then just be quiet.

I thought, you miserable cow. You don't deserve imaginative children.

I should say, my parents were stony broke when I was young but they talked to us and encouraged us endlessly. Engaging with kids is free, parents who don't or can't do that are culturally/ emotionally impoverished. Money or lack of is no excuse at all.

Satin thank you for the explanation.

Having looked a bit harder the term and definition of who's in it, seems to have come from The Centre for Social Justice, and Iain Duncan Smith who (I think) set it up when he stopped being a Tory leader.

It seems to me to be a good way of getting everyone to look at a very small group of children who have potential poor outcomes that can be blamed entirely on parents, and ignore the much larger group that also have potentially poor outcomes that can't so easily be blamed on a group of shite parents and kids who need 'saving' from them.

Why do we need a fancy misleading term rather than saying children of parents who dont or cant care about education at all?

It's a pretty small group, most parents at the bottom of the heap care one minute and not the next over education according to what else is going on, how they and theirs get treated, and get knocked back a lot, so look at things in life they can do something about, rather than what they can't. Most feel very powerless about eucation.

I left anything I made at school because I didn't want a thick ear for it. The school used to chuck it straight in the bin instead.

The world is opening up to more and more people via the internet. Internet usage is commonplace and classless. Schools in this country have an agenda that is aiming to equip kids for the world of work (collaboration, soft skills etc) but many DC won't make it into that world. Luckily the better schools are fostering curiosity and creativity too which might prompt some DC to look beyond the end of their street.

Give a kid a good grounding in the basics of reading and writing, show them what to aspire to and some of them might just make it.

However, my experience of Comprehensive education in England is that those DC in the lower sets feel disenfranchised by the education on offer. They feel patronised when role models are wheeled out and they have an animosity towards those DC that are perceived as doing better.

A primary school where I live is doing amazingly well at nurturing vulnerable children. They provide a warm safe place, food, clothes etc and the Head is on the case making sure the kids get to school. Educating these children is another matter entirely as they require constant support and reassurance.

TBH satin If I was at the point I really couldn't clothe them, and that had happened, I'd have probably sold the good quality stuff, brought cheaper clothing and used the change carefully.
But the truth is I'd have done socially unacceptable stuff and sod the judgement, to make sure they weren’t walking around looking in need in the first place.

MorrrisZapp, is that for real? That is just so sad.

'the trains are all asleep and the roof is like a blanket'

If one of my DC said something that beautiful and poetic I would be enthusing about how marvellous they were and how I loved the way their brains worked and encouraging them to write it down/use it in a poem/a story.

It has pulled at my heart strings too.

Ah that is sad. What a lovely thing for the child to say.

Word factory I usually agree with everything you say bit here I don't understand. You are saying that my children, who live in a capital city (not London), have parents with PhDs, grandparents who are university professors, go to a bilingual childminder, and will go to the best state school in the city because we can afford a flat in the catchment - are in the educational underclass? Because they don't go to Eton?

If that is right, I think that is diverting attention away from the children who really are being failed and do need help. It seems a bit, well, pointy-elbowed.

But then I really do disagree with 100% of what tony parsons says

bigkids well, yes, that's what I think doesn't make sense either. My kids live in a stupid bloody place, admittedly, but it so happens that we live close enough to one of the top Grammar schools in the country for the girls to go there. They have parents with masters degrees and professional qualifications, one who is a university academic and one who has one of those whizzy international/city jobs. I went to cambridge DH got his masters from UEA which isn't a BAD university. The kids all have cultural capital up the wazoo, they all play multiple musical instruments to a very high standard and are ridiculously well read. Their educations are most definitely equipping them for the sort of international elite jobs so beloved of MN but they really aren't interested, they all want to pursue careers in the arts. They are most definitely not, by any standard at all, members of an educational underclass.

People here have the advantage of understanding a point in poetry existing, and the idea of imagination not just leading to how to get away with doing something you could get locked up over, or making yourself seen as so do-lally so you end up with the bloke no one else wants.

Yes she was a miserable cow, but you can argue she's trying to keep her daughter thinking about what matters now which might well be get food down her, her homework done and not be in trouble in school again.

For all you know she's come from parents evening having just been told she comes out with nonsense answers in class, and keeps pretending to be a cat, and needs to focus more and play less.

It's easy to see what we want to see.

Yesterday a visably middle class mum was hurrying along with a screaming well dressed 2 year old in a buggy. She wasn't strapped in, and suddenly face planted straight out of the buggy with a terrible scream onto the concrete, screaming harder as mum accidently ran her over and trod on her.

Mum didn't speak just scooped her and tried to stuff her rigid, grazed and raging back in to buggy, I'd stood back up for her, using her knee in the child's stomach in the end to force her in and an elbow in her chest to strap her in. Child threw it's returned beaker away, and threw it's hat off, mum just dumped them in a bag, ignored me pointing out her hands and head were bleeding, told me she was making a fuss for attention, refused a wet wipe to deal with the grazing, and still not speaking to her pushed the child round a supermarket raging and grazed and out again by now hysterical. No cuddle, no concern. Just nothing.

I know what I think I saw and it made me sad and angry, but I know I also don't, if you see what I mean.

When my kids were little I used to sell their outgrown toys at the car boot sale near here.
Lots of simple beginner reading books - 10p each.
Kid came along with grandparents
"can I buy a book"
"only if we hide it from your mum as she does not like books"
I gave her a book

sitting in the doctors sugery, two mothers with their 9 year old boys
"are you going to send your lad to YobCentral school 1?"
"no they make you work there - so he's going to YobCentral school 2"
both schools closed and merged into a sponsored academy that is failing

even if such children are bright, the rug of opportunities is being dragged out from under their feet by their own parents.

Their educations are most definitely equipping them for the sort of international elite jobs so beloved of MN but they really aren't interested, they all want to pursue careers in the arts. They are most definitely not, by any standard at all, members of an educational underclass.

metebilis this is exactly what I was trying to say in the post you took exception to. I accept that I probably worded it very badly.

bigkids say your DC wanted to be a barrister and you couldn't afford to send them to bar school, couldn't afford to keep them through mini pupillages, pupillages and the lean years of tenancy etc Couldn't afford their gowns and wigs and special dinners at Inns of Court, then all your PHDs in the world won't help!

There are so many opportunities closing now to everyone but the wealthy and well connected. It's not right!

And I guess the reason I think it's worth admitting that the vast majority of people are in the same boat when it comes to opportunities,is that's the only way I see a change coming.

If that huge majority accepetd they were all being short changed, they might force a shift in expectation.

Whereas, if we pretendthat the problem only really exists for a tiny minority, then where does the pressure come from? It's no really worth doing anythig about, is it?

laqueen I think connections are nice to have, but they're no substitute for hard cash.

It's the later that will see a DC through an intership or six!

In terms of attitude it can be true that doesn't take much to spark a child's imagination and interest. I remember seeing some programme on swapping children's schools / backgrounds. Ok it was one programme. But on seeing the vast house and excellent school the child didn't say oh this isn't for me. They said oh this can be me. Why not, I'm not different.

Then it's years of parents saying you can't, not for people like us. That drives out the imagination and lowers the expectation. Children naturally are generally fairly positive and open to encouragement. It's sad that it can be squashed.