Student snobbishness?

[keysofhope]

Hello there,

I was just wondering if anyone else has had their children complain of snobbish course mates? DS goes to a place full of very very privileged students, many of whom from the most famous boarding schools.

He finds many to be quite snobbish. He says that he seems to think that people think him a bit thick and instantly to be working class as he is from Scotland. They also assume as he is not from London that equally he must be dirt poor and only got into said university for access reasons. They also think that as he went to a Gaelic state school, then he must once more be not worth their time.

What DH finds funny (who is from the sort of background as those in complaint), is that many of them are second generation immigrants with parents who've done well, but now see themselves as the English gentleman sort.

For the note of it, being working class is great (my mum was), but I am putting it like this as it's a definite looking down ones nose for it.

[BubblesBuddy]

Owen Jones? So not biased reporting then?

[LoniceraJaponica]

I have never heard of him before. Why is it not unbiased?

[BubblesBuddy]

There may be a few grammar schools that offer the requisite A levels for classics at top universities but not many ordinary or low performing comps do. GCSEs are not enough for Oxbridge for example.

The assured young people will have the requisite A levels but so will DS. I was trying to say that if DS is on the course he is as good as anyone else. So it is about confidence. I don’t believe everyone is snobbish on the course either. So he has to find his niche and believe in his strengths. Whatever he thinks about other threats, they are not going to alter their backgrounds.

[IrenetheQuaint]

You absolutely can get into Oxford and Cambridge with just Latin GCSE, though I think the course is longer. However, most classics degrees are still dominated by privately educated students.

Encountering the loud, confident public school types for the first time is indeed a horrid shock - but other posters are right that there will be nicer, quieter students without privileged attitudes around too. The OP's son needs to go on a mission to find them.

[MarchingFrogs]

Why is it not unbiased?

English newspaper columnist, political commentator, and left-wing political activist (Wikipedia) possibly. We do take the Guardian along with the Times, but I'm afraid I had to look him up! (My excuse is that the former is officially DH's paper, although I doubt that he'd have been able to tell me who OJ was, either).

[goodbyestranger]

Irene you can get into Oxford and a number of places for Classics without even GCSE Latin and the course is no longer (at Oxford anyhow - four years for everyone).

DD is keen on applying and Latin isn't taught at any point in the curriculum at her school, despite it being a grammar.

[TonTonMacoute]

In a subject like Classics I imagine that there might be a bit of a divide between students who have done Latin, and possibly Greek as well, to A level, and those who are starting from scratch. This would quite likely be along private/state school lines. I have no idea what OPs DS has in the way of A levels, or if this is the case here.

A lot of Classics students go to summer schools, so may already know each other, which may also be a factor why he feels a bit left out.

[NewModelArmyMayhem18]

DSis did Classics at Cambridge from a state grammar school However, she did Latin at school (and A Level) and did a summer course (which was full of public school types) somewhere at least once. She was also taught Greek by her best friend's mother who had herself done Classics at Cambridge.

I think it would be quite strange choosing to do Classics without any basic knowledge of Latin or Greek - how would you know it was the subject for you?

[corythatwas]

I think it would be quite strange choosing to do Classics without any basic knowledge of Latin or Greek - how would you know it was the subject for you?

Couldn't that be said about an awful lot of subjects studied at university- particularly for those students who come from comprehensives in poorer areas with limited choice of A-levels? Should they just not go to university at all? I know people who studied Assyriology and Old Egyptian- how could they possibly know it was right for them?

I'm a Classicist from another country where Latin and Greek provision pre-university was available but very limited. My country has still turned out some very fine Classicists: we cope perfectly well. But I do find myself riled at the frequent suggestion of British Classicists that you can't be expected to be any good at it unless your learning trajectory is exactly that which would have been provided at a British public school.

OP, your ds needs to tell himself that he is part of a change here. Classics needs people like him, universities need people like him. Encourage him to socialise widely- not just with other Classicists- and ignore any barbed comments.

[goodbyestranger]

I find it a strange to find it strange that a seventeen year old might want to do a new subject at university level :)

[Needmoresleep]

You might. However my understanding is that, at Oxford at least, the ab initio spend their first year being taught seperately from those with A levels. And that the first group is mainly stste, and the second, mainly private.

(My sourse is a state school pupil, not grammar, who took Latin and Greek A levels so found themselved in tutorials very dominated by private school pupils.)

[goodbyestranger]

Well that would make complete sense Needmoresleep. Independents all offer Latin don't they, so convincing an Oxford tutor that you had access to Latin but didn't choose it but now want to do it at Oxford would be fairly tough. So no doubt the ab initio language classes are all comprised of state school students. But they then integrate I think, across all the other options.

[Polkasq]

It's true that students from independent schools don't "dominate" at university as a percentage of all students. However, they are still vastly over-represented in higher education, especially some institutions, considering only 7 per cent of children go to private schools. They often dominate in their demeanour and confidence in a way which can seem mystifying, scary, glamorous or dismaying if you haven't experienced it before. This can be a good or bad thing depending on the person, of course. Someone who uses their social confidence to improve things is very different from someone who uses it selfishly and to keep others down.

[BasiliskStare]

Needmore - this is a friend of Ds's experience - he did Latin GCSE and A level and 2 years Greek at 6th form. On a four year ( his is 4 years ) course the ab initio students were taught the language more intensively during their 1st year & yes separate classes ( for language) . Ds's friend said after this initial year , any advantage from school taught Latin and Greek language was pretty much wiped out & then just into how good you actually are.

[Needmoresleep]

Basalisk, but this would still have a state school student in their first year, and I assume your sons friend was state school, with a large number of private school pupils. I think it is first year OP is talking about, as this is when any culture shock usually hits.

I also understand that that classics at places like Oxford for those with A levels can be very boy dominated, and that several of those boys will have had very little experience of co-education.

All Oxford classics courses, as I understand it, are four years.

[BasiliskStare]

Needmore - yes DS's friend was independent - my only point was ( apologies if did not make it well ) that those who did not do Latin and / or Greek ) were in their first year given more intensive language lessons to catch up with what others will have done at school in Latin and/or Greek language. DS's friend ( who had done both ) said school Latin and Greek isn't that hard to catch up with so if all else well , this is entirely a thing which on a practical point does not need to be worried about from those who did neither language at school.

So yes I speak just practically, not re culture shock etc nor re entrance , just that the amount of Latin and Greek taught at school , in a practical sense , Oxford can catch you up in very quickly if the student has an aptitude. Sorry if explained badly.

[BasiliskStare]

& yes I was addressing a specific point about Classics not the wider "snobbish thing" - so I did go of piste there. Apologies

[goodbyestranger]

Needmoresleep if it's correct that the course is not only public school but also boy dominated then I feel I'm doing those poor socially awkward boys a service by propelling my co-ed state schooled DD towards them. All part of broadening their horizons/ life's rich tapestry etc.

[Agustarella]

However my understanding is that, at Oxford at least, the ab initio spend their first year being taught seperately from those with A levels. And that the first group is mainly stste, and the second, mainly private.

There were some pretty intensive extra language classes which were taught separately, but those on the new course (probably no longer called that as it's 23 years old, I was in the first intake) went to tutorials alongside the rest of the classics year group in their college, and everyone had the same lectures in the first year. I think it's the same now, except there's apparently a swanky new faculty building where I suppose they have lectures instead of having them in the Exam Schools like we did.

I see that @Tinklylittlelaugh gets it, but plenty of people are keen to chime in with their view that if they haven't experienced something it can't possibly exist. At my college more than half the undergraduates were privately educated, and all the other classicists in my year group were from the major public schools: Eton, St Paul's, Sevenoaks and maybe Westminster IIRC. They formed part of an exclusive clique and would not speak to me at all except under duress. I can't say I wasn't warned at school what the culture of certain colleges was like, and I wish I'd listened. It wasn't fun for the most part, and I regret not just walking out and getting some random job instead, which would still have been possible back when I wasn't academically "overqualified" for every normal job in existence. I hope my own DCs will learn a trade.

[greendale17]

What DH finds funny (who is from the sort of background as those in complaint), is that many of them are second generation immigrants with parents who've done well, but now see themselves as the English gentleman sort.

^Oh yeah hilarious(!). Your husband sounds like a dick.

[dapplegrey]

They formed part of an exclusive clique and would not speak to me at all except under duress.

August - My son experienced this as the only privately educated student on a course. He was ignored by his fellow students except when they were imitating his accent and sneering at him.
However maybe you think he deserved it for being posh an all.

[Needmoresleep]

Agustarella, I may have got some of it wrong, but from what I have heard, certainly the non ab initio classicists are very predominently public school and male, some with very little experience of sharing a class room with females. I understand that this can be quite isolating.

The ab initio group are more diverse. (But again from what I heard the catch up is intensive.)

[Agustarella]

August - My son experienced this as the only privately educated student on a course. He was ignored by his fellow students except when they were imitating his accent and sneering at him.
However maybe you think he deserved it for being posh an all.

Not at all, @dapplegrey. Everyone deserves courtesy and, while people have a right to choose their friends, it''s grossly unfair when one member of a subject group is socially excluded and thus put at a psychological disadvantage during group tutorials, which are gruelling enough to begin with.

I remember one fellow student - a nice girl, not a classicist - she was of Asian heritage and came from the north of England where she had attended a local independent day school. She told me that back home people thought she was "posh" (not in a good way) because she went to private school, but at Oxford she was "common" because she had an accent! Like me, she was totally ignored by the blue-bloods - her private school wasn't a famous one - and every time she left the first year halls the townie drunks on the bridge would shout out "Oi Pki, fck off home" or something along those lines. I hope she is very successful now because she certainly earned it! And no, I don't know why some people have to be so horrible to people who have never done them any harm, but I've never thought that this was purely an upper-class phenomenon. It's just that possessors of the old school tie have so much more scope to act out their sociopathic fantasies: I think my college has produced more Tory MPs than any other, for example.

Agustarella, I may have got some of it wrong, but from what I have heard, certainly the non ab initio classicists are very predominently public school and male, some with very little experience of sharing a class room with females. I understand that this can be quite isolating.

They generally come from single-sex schools but hang out in mixed-sex social groups. They might not have shared a classroom with girls, except maybe at summer school, but they are well socialized and (superficially at least) mature, sophisticated and cosmopolitan, to an extent that is odd and rather daunting to young people from an ordinary background. Their distinguishing feature, however, is their deeply-felt aversion to their social inferiors, to the extent that even making eye contact is uncomfortable to them. It is a kind of instinctive revulsion which a white supremacist must feel towards members of other races. I think George Orwell, writing from experience, once described this feeling well, but I'm too old and brain-addled to remember the quote or even which book it came from. The strange thing is that the average person in the street has no inkling of the contempt in which he is held by the Bullingdon set, and if he did he would be more likely to lob molotov cocktails through their windows than to elect them to parliament. Rather, you have to observe the patrician clique in its natural habitat to know what you're dealing with.

The very first ab initio group consisted of me, a thirtyish female Scottish academic and a 24 year old single mother whose daughter had just started school - a remarkably diverse group, and all three of us at different colleges. They were nice ladies and managed better than I did IIRC, though I got a middling 2:1 in the end. The next year's intake was bigger I think, so it must have been a qualified success. I'm not sure if state school pupils are better represented in college now than before (I would know if I bothered to read the marketing crap/begging letters the alumni office sends out) but I remember that the Laura Spence scandal broke when I was an undergrad, and I think that must have put the SCR on the back foot. I don't think the college was necessarily averse to letting us state school kids in, but they had not yet made the requisite display of inclusivity.

[CurlsandCurves]

I think regardless of background that rush of feeling, knowing you are at university and all that this can mean goes to some people’s heads sometimes.

I went to uni, did well, but didn’t know what I wanted to do from that point. So ended up in a job in the service industry that I wasn’t expecting to do but absolutely loved and it ended up being my career. But I can remember being in a situation with some students visiting their prospective university. And they were saying to my team ‘I’m going to be your boss in a few years’, totally sneering and looking down on us all. Deep breath, smile and know that in time they will know it takes more than a degree to be a big shot...

[goodbyestranger]

Agustarella one of my DDs also went to Magdalen and didn't experience the schism you're talking about, certainly not within college. She neither looked up nor down on the Etonians (I think there were four in her year), they were simply her peers, and not significantly more equal than others.