Working class children need to try to be more middle class to get on!

[rollonthesummer]

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10671048/Working-class-children-must-learn-to-be-middle-class-to-get-on-in-life-government-advisor-says.html

I am confident now but it has taken 40 years. I have also had to become confident because I am who I am, I am not even sure it is confidence it is just accepting things. I can't be different so there is no point in trying to be like anyone else.

When I went to university I had a really hard time and I spent years trying to be anybody but myself. When I first started working in my first " proper" job I tried to look like the women I worked with and many of them were horrifically cruel in their sneering at me for trying to look middle class and failing.

But I agree that you can still have problems if you have money. We own one of the largest houses in the village that we live in and own a fair chunk of land. We were made to feel very unwelcome when we arrived because we are not only new money - but also a bit rough. We had to work really hard to be accepted here - and even now it is begrudgingly for some people.

I'm not rich but no money worries - DP & I are complete scruffs - not at all flashy - we look poorer than we are (a carpet salesman once looked me up and down and basically said 'you can't afford this carpet -and directed me to the budget ones - he lost the sale, I got it somewhere else - his loss...) but I really think it is each to their own and how you feel - I personally wouldn't be comfortable any other way...

I went to Uni as a mature student so was an odd ball anyway - and as a youngster mixed with people from a really wide range of backgrounds - I was funnily enough probably about in the middle!

Do you think anything would have made you feel more comfortable when you were at Uni/first job? Anything that could be taught? Or not really?
Not necessarily something in you that needed to change....
I guess confidence just to be yourself would be good - but then we all get more of that with age!
Or can nothing be done and it just be down to social change - more people from WC background at Uni (I would imagine (hope) there are now) and people being more accepting (less snobby)

And I'm sure you know ...no matter what your background etc is you will always get people who judge you on appearances etc
They are the ones I try and ignore! The ones who are worth caring about are the one who have accepted you ...the others aren't worth bothering about...
Lets face it they are probably jealous you can afford a big house
And if you were 'old' money others would think you were high and mighty...or undeserving etc etc - you can't really win!!!

Were are quite flashy because we grew up poor and it is still quite exciting to be able to walk into most shops and buy what I want- within reason.

I think more people from a working class background would have been useful. I can only think if one other working class person that I knew at university - and I ended up marrying him!

I went to a Whitehall thing a while ago and a civil servant showed me a photograph of his house (which he kept in his wallet), saying that it was the biggest one in his street. I remember thinking - what's all this about?

I do not introduce myself as the person with the biggest house in the village.

However DH and I are proud that we have been able to give our children a wonderful home, maybe the civil servant felt similar?

PHILOSOPHY the sneering at new money makes me laugh. As if money you inheited makes you somehow superior to people who worked for it ...

the upshot is that the liberal middle classes support the working classes providing we're poor. Once we're richer than them, we get it in the neck for being too flashy...

And the working classes will support one another providing we stay poor. Once we're not, we beome 'fake' and betray our roots ...

I think the civil servant was single. I sensed issues. I wasn't sure what they might have been, but I decided to join one of the other conferences at the first opportunity. wordfactory - money doesn't make you superior, but it can (obviously) make you richer! Of the people who must rush off to Padstowe so that they can eat in Rick Stein's restaurant, that may say more about TV than it does about whether eating in expensive restaurants is a valuable part of our culture or not. By that token eating garden grubs and sleeping in the jungle is an equally valid part of it.

the upshot is that the liberal middle classes support the working classes providing we're poor. Once we're richer than them, we get it in the neck for being too flashy...

And the working classes will support one another providing we stay poor. Once we're not, we beome 'fake' and betray our roots ...

That is SO true!

I've reflected on this and I don't think people are as predjudiced as he is making them out to be. Many top scientists in Brtain have regional accents and it isn't even difficult to think of multi-millionaires or billionaires who have regional accents. (Whether they are in Cafe Rouge once a week, I couldn't say).

We can all submit anecdotal evidence of predujice (snobbery/inverted, whatever) but for children who work hard and who have the ability there are fantastic opportunities out there to do great things; which leaves me wondering why he is putting out ideas which conflict with that prospect? This is like saying, oh well you might have 3 As in sciences but unless you stop hanging around your parents and start talking like me a bit more, you're going nowhere.

If he can support what he said about regional accents with some fact I would at least feel reassured that he has the best interests of children at heart, even if I still think his remarks are misguided, but if not, where does it leave them?

I come from a place where being middle class didn't mean affluence and privilege. Also wealth didn't mean good education. Messed up world we live in.

Really good debate and some great comments - thanks.

The media reporting of the blog has been rather misleading and something got a bit lost in translation from what I said to the media reporting of it. You can see the actual post smcpcommission.blog.gov.uk/2014/02/26/whos-frightened-of-being-middle-class/

Incidentally, I consider myself to be from a working-class background myself (counter to how my background has been reported) both my parents worked so it's not like I'm from a massively disadvantaged background, but they both worked in ordinary non-professional manual jobs and I was the first in my family to go to university. Probably why the blog that inspired my post struck a chord with me at a personal level. And why the many stories of working-class kids who've gone to university being told on this blog are so interesting!

Couldn't get that link to work PeterBrant.

I think this debate is about several things at once;

The assumption of MC people that "educated" or "well informed" automatically means MC.(Of course WC people read, are interested in art/music/politics-why wouldn't they be?)
The confusion between speaking properly, and having a regional accent (you can do both)
And the idea of pretending to be something you are not, in order to get on-which of course you can't do without either being caught out, or despising yourself.

However, these ideas are all different strands of the same general problem, which is, that in this country children either begin life with the odds stacked in their favour, or they don't.
As a parent you can do right by them, educate them in the social skills, and cultural skills they should have, but the fact is there will still be a whole swathe of society born into extraordinary privilege who already have a massive head start.
The playing field is so un-level you would need a 4x4 to navigate it, so it's pretty laughable to suggest that the "working classes" struggle to fit in with the established standard of MC life, as this will help them get on in life.
Firstly, speaking properly, having manners and dressing neatly are not exclusively MC values (and often MC teens are dreadfully rude, I find), and secondly, what MC young people really need to get on in life are decent schools, libraries, sports centres, youth clubs, parks, and the sense that there is a world waiting for them to shape it, rather than for them to empty it's bins.

@ifnotnowthenwhen

Sorry - I'll try again

smcpcommission.blog.gov.uk/2014/02/26/whos-frightened-of-being-middle-class/

smcpcommission.blog.gov.uk/2014/02/26/whos-frightened-of-being-middle-class/

extraordinary privilege who already have a massive head start.

not if you both want to run a plumbing company and your dad is already a plumber they haven't.

Here is a quote from the blog:

I grew up in a poor and incredibly dysfunctional family. My childhood experiences lie in clearing sick off my father as he lay comatose on the floor, Stealing money from his alcohol fund to pay for lunch for my sisters and myself, hiding behind sofas and cupboards so as not to get beaten (again) by my mother. It lies in learning how to cook at a young age, having to get a job at 13 (yes – 13, not 14 which was the legal minimum) so I could make sure I could buy food for myself – and even occasionally some new clothes. From 16 onwards, in my own house, I became the queen of saving money where I could; turning off fridges and every gadget in the house to save electricity – the only thing in the fridge was cheap wine (to make life feel better – and I could drink it warm) and milk (which could be kept cool in a saucepan of cold water). I would go on dates strategically timed at the end of the month, because I would have run out of money to buy the cereal, beans on toast, and beans in soup that I lived upon. I loved working lunch and dinner shifts in kitchens as they were a great way to get fed on a regular basis at no cost to myself.

See, this is not a quote from someone from a low income/WC background per se. This is a quote from someone from a dysfunctional background.
Working class/low income does not =uncared for. That is something else entirely.
Also: Coming from a working class or lower socio-economic backgrounds and trying to culturally fit into middle-class lifestyles and jobs can be incredibly difficult”.

What are "Middle class jobs?"
There are proffessional jobs, and menial jobs, skilled jobs and unskilled jobs. No job actually has a requirement that you hail from a particular social class, and the idea that certain jobs are designed for certain classes is positively feudal.

In your own blog, PeterBrant you state that one of the barriers to working class young people is:
Different attitudes towards people and relationships (e.g. more subtext, nuance and casualness in middle-class relationships)

Really??
So, supposedly working class people don't understand subtext and nuance in relationships?
Here we are, back to the idea of MC=more intelligent, more sensitive.
If money made one more sensitive, David Cameron and his Bullingdon club pals would be actual poets, rather than the braying oiks they clearly are.

I agree, as a poster upthread mentioned, that if you grow up not knowing that certain jobs exist, or knowing anyone who does certain jobs, you are at a disadvantage, but the solution to that is NOT to try and mould children into behaving in the exact way privileged people have always behaved, but in providing REAL social mobility, as I stated previously; good solid education, local facilities for sport and music and art, access to libraries (the ones that haven't been closed through cuts.
And that is the nub of this whole "debate"; the fact that cuts to real public services are the main thing stymieing working class youth, not learning which cocking fork to use for the fish course.

@ifnownotwhen

As you've seen the blog and my inspiration for it, you'll know the barrier you question (subtext/nuance) was identified in the blog I was quoting from

From my own experience, and from the research I've seen, those barriers ring true, for me at least.

As I said, both of my parents were in manual jobs: I do not believe that the "middle-class are more intelligent and sensitive". Clearly this is not true and I'm sorry my blog is badly written enough to give you that impression.

And I hope you noted that my blog is not saying that working-class kids should "act posh" (as some media reporting suggested and is - understandably - still framing your response): more that there's real barriers which are complicated to fix. My blog does not advocate any solutions at al - the suggestions you make in the last paragraph about how they might be tackled are good ones.

On your "what is middle-class" point, I'm drawing on the definitions used by academics and statisticians based on occupation: broadly middle-class = managerial and professional occupations; working-class = the rest

Pete Brandt
WC kids need to be aware of the massive snobberies working against them, and how pervasive that is. It cannot be denied.

But then, and here is something novel, how about some cast iron policies on tackling these snobberies and educating the MC and the UC so they are not so ignorant about people poorer/lower down the social scale? And bringing in some laws to eliminate discrimination.

Hey! Just implement the socio-economic discrimination clause that wa in the equality Act.

And yeah that blog post that inspired you was great. But this was a frigging typical WC background, but a deeply dysfunctional and sad one.

Sorry for spelling your name wrong.
And for coming across angry. I can see you are genuine.

meant was NOT a frigging typical WC background of course..

@donttrythisathome

I get that - though I still felt the same barriers, "unbelonging" and lack of resulting self-confidence to a lesser degree at university though and academic research on widening participation shows these are real barriers to many kids from working-class backgrounds and does appear to put many off applying to the best universities due to feeling they are "not for the likes of me" or worries about fitting in

The MC need to stop looking down at the WC.

How about changing that?

economically i am firmly mc - but fuck that, because culturally and socially i am not

and i tell thee solomly, what the fuck with the aspiration to be MC? the WC do it all the time, i want to punch them in the face for it ( WC thing) " i own my own house i am MC" no, love your not - but the better question is why is this an aspiration at all

it is becuase the class system is seen as hierarchical - such as one may start out as WC and progress to MCdom

I felt that too Peter, but these feelings were buried and really only came to light recently.
What I mostly feel and felt very strongly is anger and disbelief at how ignorant and offensive many of my MC peers and colleagues were and are about the WC, and how this holds WC people back, and how much society is missing out on by not using our talents. And rage at how these clueless people get ahead of me and my ilk, and and and how badly the country and workplaces are run as a result. And and and...do you get it?