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

[donttrythisathome]

I think it is insulting, ignorant and patronising to lump all working class people together and make out they are unspecialised and wouldn't know how to behave in a restaurant or office!

However, I do agree that there should be an emphasis on learning the soft skills and kids should be taught how to fit in anywhere and why this might be important. I never learned these things when young, only through hard experience, and it has held me back.

Of course people shouldn't have to fit in. But it is nice to know what you need to do and the advantages and disadvantages.

How you can teach all this if you are not immersed in it through your background is beyond me though.

[Hullygully]

Plus ca change

[donttrythisathome]

Unsocialised, not unspecialised!

[columngollum]

donttrythis

Can you hypothesise a bit about how lack of soft skills could hold somebody back? Don't make it too personal. But I can't understand what you mean.

[Ubik1]

What if wc child has interest or aspiration fir medicine or law? I'm sure they would be pleased to hear your appreciation for the electrical wiring done to your extension but perhaps they would have made a brilliant doctor.

Conversely I have a few friends who were hothoused through private school and into university. One runs a pub after many years of bar work, another takes odd jobs as a photographer and another dropped architecture to go into nursing.

Also there's nothing wrong with a trade job, nothing at all, but it is often very tough physical work in all weathers through the night. People break down. Their physical and mental health suffers. It's not all about plumbers earning £70,000.

[moonbells]

I turned up to (RG) uni with a broad northern accent. I was instantly labelled 'Northern trainspotter' and pretty much socially excluded. I'd love to go to a reunion one of these days but I still would find it awkward because those narrow-minded people would still be there.

I swore I'd lose the accent, and by the time I graduated I was a good way to being RP and I remember surprising my very home-counties RP landlady a couple of years later when I said where I came from. She said the only word I ever said differently was 'one'. Accent did make a difference in the 90s. Not sure about how much it does now.

The hard part was every time I went back home, people I'd grown up with made cutting comments that I'd gone all posh and implied I was 'above them'. Again resulted in social exclusion, which hurt. I'm sure this also applies to things like how to behave at a formal dinner party, going to the theatre etc.

If a child today changes something from their background, it may make it easier to 'fit in' somewhere they aspire to, or are told to aspire to, but it also has a high probability of alienating them from the culture and family they grew up in. Not an easy situation either way.

[donttrythisathome]

Columgollum, it is hard to say. Mind you, many people don't want to conform to middle class ideals as They find it stultifying. Nevertheless if you choose a middle class job you may be held back by such things as I set out below!

A lack of self-confidence, or how to demonstrate it appropriately can hold you back. As can not feeling at ease in certain environments or a lack of subtlety and leadership skills. A lack of understanding or appreciation of how the various hierarchies operate and what you must do to get ahead in that system. A lack of knowledge of the type of politeness required-not just please/thank yous, but a certain reserved way of being.

In short what the game is, and how to play it.

All of this makes you stand out as different, and not in a good way in certain environments.

[columngollum]

Then "When in Rome," bears truth. But why go to Rome in the first place. Or, if you do go to Rome then buy a toga.

[Grennie]

When I was at school, you had to do a separate exam for Oxford and Cambridge before your UCAS application. I had no idea until I came to complete my UCAS application and found it was already too late to apply there.

[Retropear]

Ofgs what a crock.

Swotty,less attractive,over weight,too attractive,too posh,not posh enough......everybody will feel out of place and feel excluded in a variety of places.Get over it.

Why is this country so utterly obsessed with class?

[donttrythisathome]

Yeah, but to have a real option about whether or not you'll go to Rome, you need to know it exists, what the culture is, and how you can fit in and thrive with the natives. And what will get you deported.


Whether or not you decide to go there is of course up to you.

[Hullygully]

I have long maintained that children should be taught Roman ways chez school

[dashoflime]

Hmm Mixed feelings on this.

I think its worth pointing out, up front, that working class culture is not inferior or wrong. It is different to middle class culture because it is adaptive to different circumstances

I suspect Michael Gove would disagree with me though because he is a bigoted tory

Having got that out of the way, I do agree that an understanding of middle class culture, rules of behaviour etc.. is useful in certain environments. Both to avoid a sense of alienation and to avoid other people's ignorant snobbery. So I agree with him, on that narrow point, at least.

I think it is an indictment of the British Class system that learning a whole new language of interaction and cultural references should be necessary but there you go.

Also worth pointing out that, while anyone might want to "do as the Romans", a working class person finding their way in a middle class environment is adapting herself to the ways of a more dominant group.
So she may feel compelled to understand her new colleagues whereas they are unlikely to attempt to understand her (as a dominant social group- they don't need to, to "get on")

I think that dynamic does lend itself to internalised feelings or inferiority on occasion as well

[NK5BM3]

I don't know if you can see this hum.sagepub.com/content/66/2/219.full.pdf+html

but if not, the abstract is here:
For leading law firms in the City of London, diversity and inclusion has become an important human resources strategy over the past 15 years. A recent focus on social class within the sector has been encouraged by increasing governmental concerns relating to social mobility, which acknowledge that elite professions, particularly the law, have become more socially exclusive over the past 30 years. Based on a detailed
qualitative study of six leading law firms conducted between 2006 and 2010, this article asks: why do leading law firms discriminate on the basis of social class? It argues that discrimination is a response to conflicting commercial imperatives: the first to attract talent and the second to reduce risk and enhance image. The article describes these dynamics, emphasizing the role played by the ambiguity of knowledge.
It argues that until these conflicting demands are reconciled, organizational and state sponsored initiatives centred on the business case for diversity may achieve only limited success.

Ashley, L. and Empson, L. (2013) Differentiation and discrimination: Understanding social class and social exclusion in the UKs leading law firms. Human Relations, 66 (2). pp. 219-244. ISSN 0018-7267

[Hullygully]

They don't need to because they ARE Rome

Whether or not they should bother trying to extend understanding is a different point

[Hullygully]

People are comfortable with the familiar, that's why it's hard to change the status quo re lawyers etc.

[dashoflime]

"People are comfortable with the familiar"

I agree with this Hully.

I also think that a situation where different social classes are unfamiliar to each other doesn't happen for no reason. The difference is a product of social division and not a cause.

Where you have relatively more social equality- you also tend to see relatively more social mobility (between classes). Partly because people are less unfamiliar with each other.

So I think Gove is putting the cart before the horse by suggesting that social mobility could be improved by working class people changing themselves.

[dashoflime]

Yuck- horrible clunky writing there You know what I'm getting at though

[columngollum]

There are people who make a good living everywhere by stoking up social division. It's a branch of politics.

[MerryMarigold]

It's worrying if it's actually getting worse though.

[Hullygully]

There was a thing in the paper yesterday about more movement 500 years ago than now. The surnames ie the families and their scions in power have remained more or less the same for the last 500 years.

So cheering.

[NitramAtTheKrap]

I think he is entirely correct.

My parents left school at 15, my grandaprents at 14, g grandparents at 13. I lived in a very working class area with working class parents doing working class things speaking an accent so broad that some of it was dialect.

I am a senior professional in the South now despite this.

I had none of the experiences that my 5 year old even has - ie different activities, trips to theatre, museums etc.

It makes a massive difference and to pretend it doesn't will not help the kids.

[MerryMarigold]

Hully !

[donttrythisathome]

People shouldn't have to change themselves. Although positive changes are good-gaining self esteem etc is good.
But they do largely have to in the current system unless they choose different paths, or are happy to not get ahead.

I don't agree with the way the govt sees it though. Fundamental change is needed to make this society fairer. Hierarchies and the class system in England are not natural and inevitable. They were created and are now maintained. I am an outsider so see this clearly. They are much more extreme and limiting than where I come from (not saying they don't exist in most places, just to differing degrees).

[MerryMarigold]

Nitram, no one is saying it doesn't make a massive difference. The point is that, in an ideal world, it shouldn't. Why should it, really? And by bowing down to it, we are just reinforcing it rather than changing it.