Does coming from a deprived background really seal your fate?

[Pinkjenny]

Just wondering, really, listening to Nick Clegg on R5 live. I come from Anfield in Liverpool, not deprived really, but certainly not affluent. My mum worked in a shop, and my dad was (and still is) an engineer.

I credit all of my success (relatively speaking, of course) to the way in which I was brought up, and the attitude of my parents, who told me I could be whatever I wanted to be, as long as I put my mind to it.

Does giving children money for their first shoes and first suit really help break that poverty cycle?

Or does it depend on the attitude of their parents and their general upbringing?

I repeat they are deemed very effective. Don't knock something until you have seen them in action. If even one teenage girl thinks twice about having a baby then surely they are worth it and far from being "silly dolls".

Try and give the girl better opportunities than working in Mcdonald's in the first place which comes full cycle to better education = better prospects.

In Scotland we are following the 'Curriculum for Excellence' which is about subjects overlapping and trying to give pupils fully rounded fully formed education, equip them with life skills not just pythagorous theory and the Treaty of Versaille! It begins at 3 and my DS1 is following it already at pre-school.

Exactly, the girls' prospects must be improved. That is my point here.

the dolls are irrelevant. Who knows how effective they are-girls tell authority figures what they want to hear, and who wouldn't want to get rid of a crying doll? It doesn't mean the desire for a real flesh and blood baby will go away.

"It doesn't mean the desire for a real flesh and blood baby will go away".

But it just might so irrelevant they are not.

They're irrelevant because they're a smokescreen.

Trying to paper over the massive, root issue of the girls' lack of prospects with some dolls is disingenuous.

The social problem here is that the girls have no prospects. Any girl with sense would be able to see that raising a family is more rewarding that working on a till for the rest of her life.

"Exactly, the girls' prospects must be improved."

ok now I disgree with you

the girls must improve their own prospects

a better and more rigorous education will make this happen

Sakura - this is where you show your naivety. It is an unfortunate fact of life that someone needs to be the person flipping burgers and cleaning toilets. It would be lovely, wouldn't it, if the person flipping burgers was always the one least able to do much else, irrespective of his parents' social class/ethnicity etc. You want it to come down to nothing but inherent intelligence and ability, without any class barriers.

But often young people from poor backgrounds have very poor social and communication skills, low standards in personal presentation, even if they have a high IQ. And they often lack the discipline needed to function effectively in work. Not always their fault I know - they are products of their sub-standard environment. But they just are not always an attractive choice at interview compared to a child from a more middle class background. I'm really not sure what we can do about that. Education is all very well, but a child's peer group and parents are a far stronger influence on them than school will ever be.

As soon as a child from a poor background improves his own lot thorugh hard work and education, he becomes more affluent and 'middle class' (even if he rejects the label) and then his children are perceived as privileged. But if he is intelligent and self-disciplined, then there is a strong chance his child will be too, so his child isn't the one left flipping burgers - his child is the one training to be an accountant. And so it perpetuates.

So what of the people whose only hope is burger flipping? Are you saying that on account of not being much use in the workplace at anything other than minumum wage jobs, they just shouldn't bother - and we should be ok with that?

Even burger flippers can work their way up to Area Manager, CEO, or move into other areas of work with a good stong CV. It's a bit like the lottery - you can't win it if you're not in it!

But of course if flipping burgers is beneath them, then they can just settle for a life on benfits.

Headless very very well put. Full marks.

"IN 2009 the OECD revealed (through its routine statistical publications) that Britain diverted a larger share of its school education spending (23%) to a tiny proportion of privately educated children (7%) than did almost any other rich nation. That inequality had been much less 30 years earlier.

It is not too hard for most people to know that they are not special. Even affluent people, if they are not delusional, know in their heart of hearts that they are not very special; most know they are members of what some call the 'lucky sperm club' , or perhaps lucky and a little ruthless.
However, you don't carry on winning races that have fewer and fewer winners if you don'T have a high opinion of yourself.

Only those who maintain the strongest of narcissistic tendencies are sure that they became affluent because they are more able. A few of those who couple such tendencies with eugenistic beliefs think that their children will be likely to inherit their supposed acumen and do well whatever circumstances they face.

The rest, the vast majority of the rich, who are not cocksure, had a choice when equality appeared on the horizon. They could throw in their lot with the masses, send their children to the local school, see their comparative wealth evaporate with inflation and join the party, or they could try to defend their corner, pay for their children to be segregated from others, look for better ways to maintain their advantages than leaving their savings to the ravages of inflation, vote and fund into power politicians who share their concerns, and encourage others to vote for them too.

(Dorling, pp 62, Injustice)

IT is also revealed that the OECD has already segregated children of developed countries, including the UK, into 7 categories of competence.

This is not how children actually are, you understand. This is how children are according to the OECD, a bunch of economists.

My goodness, my private wealth would not evaporate if we went to the local school. It would proliferate and multiply. It's evaporating at a rate of knots in private education.

This is such an old fashioned view of the poshies and the commoners. It's because state education is so crap that poorer people are scraping together the cash to escape the kids who are ruining lessons and the stultifying primary curriculum.

SO how do you propose to convince a young girl whose only prospect in life is working on the checkout of Maccy D's that working on the check-out of Maccy D's is better than having a baby?

If you are looking at it from a biological point of view you could apply that same theory to every woman working in an office, in a hospital, running the country even.
Karren Brady is a mother of 2, had them quite young too, I suspect the difference is though she knew that motherhood is a part of your life not your entire life and that is where education is vital, but so is the removal of the incentives to jump the que and have the baby before you are financially responsible.

It's because state education is so crap that poorer people are scraping together the cash to escape the kids who are ruining lessons and the stultifying primary curriculum.

True I'm afraid the difference in my children in just 18 months of private education is breath taking, I am so upset we ever sent them to state and almost apologetic to them for putting them through it.

Yes, that's true mamatomany. Teaching financial responsbility is most probably one part of the jigsaw puzzle. It should be taught in school, as a module, along with other life skills such as book-keeping, credit information, and cooking.
But it can only succeed alongside real prospects. The way the education system is set up at the moment, two-tiered as it is, is the root core of the problem.

Hang on

A second ago, everybody was saying there's no two-tiered system, that it's all about the parents' input

Now everyone's done an about turn and are talking about how crucial it was to get their kids out of one tier into another tier

Eh?

'But often young people from poor backgrounds have very poor social and communication skills, low standards in personal presentation, even if they have a high IQ'

and there lies one of the problems,people who generalise like that..nothing will ever change that attitude towards the poor people

I don't believe a minute it's down to parental input you can be as willing as you like but if the curriculum is limited or methods not helpful the parents are fighting an uphill battle, the maths for example at my girls school was so bloody complicated we struggled with it ourselves when trying to help the girls out with their "work sheets".
Now they are back to using H T U, the old fashioned way it's all fallen into place for them and they no longer believe they are crap at maths and DH and I can help them out too. The answers are still the same which ever method you use but one knocked their confidence and one let them feel they were achieving.

Education? Britain is a highly civilised nation where ALL children aged 5-16 have education funded out of the taxes of the work force. That education is accessible irrespective of sex, caste, colour, disability or any other bizarre reason that applies as a barrier to education in many parts of the world. That is equal opportunity. Some people choose not to access that opportunity fully - truancy, disruption or disinclination or negative family attitude. Is it really the State's role to direct more funding towards those groups? That's favouritism. Equal opportunity is not the same as equal result.

UsualSuspect I am talking about not talking about all 'poor' children, I did say 'often' not 'always',.Many poor children are intelligent, well-mannered, articulate and delightful. I should know - I was one!

I'm sorry if it sounded like I'm lumping them all in together, We seem to have blurred the lines in this discussion between poor children from decent families trying hard to get by and succeed in life, and a feckless chaotic underclass who inflict neglectful dysfunctional parenting on thier children.

But what I said is true, unfortunately - we know it is. It may offend our sensibilities to admit it, but it's true. It shows from baseline assessments of reception children right through to university applications. Ask any teacher who works in an area of high deprivation whether they struggle on a daily basis with basic social and behavioural issues, and poor communication skills that lead to frustration and difficulty in self-expression and an unwillingness to engage in lessons.

Yes, we're a paradise compared to some countries in terms of schooling for everyone. Chinese girls do best in school I think. So part of how people turn out can be the family view of work and culture at home.

Of course if lotus eating and idleness is fine morally then these issues are all turned on their head. We're assuming my way is the right way and yes I do think I'm good at what I do. I suspect that kind of internal self confidence (and I've no idea where it comes from) is a key reason why some children even from the same family don't always achieve the same as each other.

6pack and mamtony, yes you are right.

I don't think headless was giving a judgement on "poor people". It's more of a fact than a judgement. It's what everyone is saying: whether by their own fault, their parents' fault, the fault of education, the fault of their upbringing, often it's the misfortune of deprived/poor/disadvantaged people that they are less articulate and less well presented. And how are the children to acquire impressive social skills when the parents have none? And there ARE parents like that and it's not the fault of "the state", "society", insert convenient blame target here. There just are parents like that and they are their children's first teachers.

Xenia this is the quote from the EHRC landmark report this:
"Apart from Gypsy and Traveller children, the performance of White British boys on free school meals at GCSE is the lowest of any group defined by gender, free school meals status and ethnic group; by contrast the highest performing group at sixteen are Chinese girls, with those on free school meals outranking every other group except better-off Chinese girls."
Some groups show that you don't have to let financial poverty define you and your family values will more or less determine whether you suceed in life !

That was what I was referring to. The articles about the Chinese girls have been in the press this week. Unless we think the genetics of the Chinese mean they are brighter (and they did invent a lot very early on this planet) but assuming that is not so, then it must be down to culture and very hard work.

Appletrees ..Poorer children stand no chance then really, do they ..with attitudes like yours towards them

Bows out of thread

The truth is that poor children by todays standards are pretty well off, they generally have a roof over their heads and are fed by the state. But no they don't stand much chance, they never have but the biggest enemy they have working against them is their parents, one hell of a obstacle for anyone to over come.

Would that be all poor children? or just the ones you read about?

I'll tell my ds and his friends, some of them who ,shock horror, had free school dinners to stop doing their A levels then shall I ...you know nothing